Sales organizations spend tens of thousands of dollars each year investing in training their sales force to improve methodologies, product knowledge, time and activity management, negotiation skills, etc.  Yet most organizations neglect development of competencies critical to influencing the factors that fundamentally drive all prospect decisions: Human Psychology.

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EBITDA and Estimation - Anything in Common? As I have been traveling in the last 3 months, working with business application partners in North America, the one thing that has stood out in my mind more than anything is the lack of rigor around the estimating process and the HIGH cost to partners in terms of actual earnings.  I am coming to believe that there is direct correlation between how much rigor a partner has on their estimating process and their actual bottom line. Consider this:

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Imagine a scenario where a sales person and a project manager go hunting for grizzly bears. The sales person, in the lead, gets the first scent.  The sales person manages to chase the bear into a cabin and the Project Manager quickly follows. The salesperson then shuts the door and says, “Here you go, I’ll go catch another one”. Does your partner company leave Project Managers with grizzly projects to contain?  This can be the first sign that you have a need for an integrated sales and implementation methodology.  A key success factor in driving Sure Step Adoption at a partner company...

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We have all seen it. Surfing online, whether it’s for a business software solution or the perfect bed and breakfast, poor spelling, incorrect use of punctuation and overall bad grammar is out there. When you are writing copy for your website or company blog, you need to take care that you are leaving the right impression on potential buyers. Your online presence can make or break a sale. I often research my purchases and make final decisions, at least in part, based on a company’s website. And I know I’m not alone.

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In the world of sales, what’s the best way to start a fight? Easy! Walk into a sales person’s office and ask about their forecast. That’s because forecasts are an Equal Opportunity cause of ulcers. No matter where you are on the org-chart, forecasting always raises the blood pressure of everyone in the room. As Sales Managers, nothing makes the blood come spurting out of our ears faster than

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Increasingly, organizations are distancing themselves from software and implementation vendors during their business application software (ERP/CRM) selection processes in an effort to maintain (the illusion) of control; an approach that more often than not increases, rather than decreases, project risk. There is a mistaken belief within procurement circles that

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Gone are the days when a common response to a technical support call is “are you sure that your computer is plugged in?”  Dynamics Partner support teams are now faced with a myriad of complex questions that require an understanding of networks, communications, databases and functional areas like accounting, sales and marketing.  But perhaps the biggest challenge of all is the human factor.  The people at the other end of the phone line are rarely happy, sometimes abusive and often stressed.   Certain times are worse than others – month end, year end and first thing in the morning (they...

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Over the last two quarters, most Microsoft Dynamics Partners have seen IT investments postponed, capital expenditures reconsidered and funded projects reprioritized.  However, new opportunities are still being identified, albeit at a slower rate than at this time last year. Partners have not seen projects cancelled. As a result, many Partners have extremely large pipelines full of "on hold" projects.  Successful Sales Managers will find a way to unplug these sales pipelines over the next couple of months, in time to close them by the end of June. We recommend a three step process to do this.

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Throughout every sale, there comes a moment when the prospective customer makes a decision to buy from you. It can happen anytime from the first phone conversation at the very beginning of the process through to your final negotiation. Regardless of when it happens, most partners don’t recognize when the event has occurred, and most don’t make an effort to influence its development. Before we talk about the “Diagnostic”, we should spend a few moments on what this “Tipping Point” really is. Most ERP and CRM prospects are looking for

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Sales managers (as well as introspective/paranoid sales professionals) are always looking for models to measure both the maturity and future potential of individual contributors. Whether you are separating fact from fiction during a hiring campaign or simply culling the herd, behavioral competencies should be weighted as strongly as historical economic contribution. Sadly, past performance is not the end-all indicator of future success we believe it to be. Over the past few years ERP & CRM solutions have stabilized while customer buying behavior has evolved. Combined, these shifts...

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It is an absolute given that your organization needs to be GAAP-compliant. No company ignores Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, at least not for long, and not without penalty. The same is true of Sales. So, is your company GASP-compliant? If not, you’re losing potential revenue.

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Hiring an effective sales professional can be an onerous process, but bear in mind its purpose: to provide ample opportunity for those "Marginal Sales Candidates" to show themselves prior to you hiring them. A Marginal Sales Candidate can cost your business up to $790,000: $60k to $90k in salary and costs before you end up letting them go and starting the hiring process over $700k average in lost sales opportunities over the 9-12 months you keep that poor performer We've created the SALESWORKS Guide to Hiring Sales Professionals to save you those costs as well as the wasted time and effort...

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Sales cycles have binary outcomes; win or lose, profit or loss, growth or contraction, celebration or regret. As large enterprise ERP and CRM publishers and partners aggressively pursue mid-market opportunities to shore up declining revenue streams; sales strategy and methodology execution will increasingly determine who triumphs in this last remaining business application battleground. Old school feature/function, show up and throw up, “lead with the product” selling will no longer carry the day and VARs that are unable to penetrate the executive suite, add meaningful value throughout...

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