Sales is the stepchild of business. That’s why it’s the “S” lumped in with “G&A” on so many financial reporting structures. Given the obvious importance of sales, why is this? It’s simple, really. Businesses are generally conceived of as static…
How to eliminate the #1 risk of B2B startups in 7 easy steps: Step 1: 30 minutes Craft a breakthrough script using plain language. (See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-sentences-change-your-life-part-1-chris-beall/) Step 2: 30 minutes Buy a list of 1,000 hypothetical decision makers from ZoomInfo.…
In sales, we have long had the notion of a territory, granted as a kind of fiefdom to a salesperson willing to mine it for us. The notion is fundamentally feudal, but still congenial for a certain type of person…
In Part 1 of this two-part blog series, I made the claim that sales headcount is not a growth constraint for most B2B companies. This claim must, of course, be wrong. How do I know I’m wrong? Because the entire…
While there is variety in the business-to-consumer world, it is nothing compared to B2B. The reason is that there are only so many kinds of human consumers (I’ll leave our cats, dogs, pigs, and weasels out of this one!) constrained…
Let's imagine you own a gold mine. For years, you've been walking into a dark hole in the ground, using your headlamp to follow a promising vein of gold-rich quartz, and using your pick and then a shovel to fill…
Part 4 of this series focused on the possibility of industrializing the top of the sales funnel. The question has been raised: “Why just the top of the funnel?” After all, if we don’t close more deals and dollars, have…
As we left Part 3 of this series, I promised to lay out the parameters to answer the question, “Is it possible to industrialize the top of the funnel?” Let’s dissect! The first industrialization question is “Can we obtain needed…
I concluded Part 2 of this blog series with a promise to look at the top of the funnel as a candidate for industrializing sales. The reason for doing this is two-fold: Changing an entire company is hard enough when…
As I wrote at the end of Part 3 of this blog series, the false “No” is the worst disposition one can get when making a cold call, because it tricks you into disqualifying the well-qualified, perhaps even the perfectly…
