The Rapport Equation
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…
Part 2: One Constraint to Rule Them All
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…
Part 1: One Constraint to Rule Them All
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…
The Golden Rule of Sales — Follow Up!
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 5: Can B2B Sales Be Industrialized?
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…
Part 4: Can B2B Sales Be Industrialized?
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…
Part 3: Can B2B Sales Be Industrialized?
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…
Part 4: A Fishy Tragedy, Avoided
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…
Part 3: A Fishy Tragedy, Avoided
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog, I discussed the tragedy of false negatives: mistakenly labeling sales prospects as negatives when they don't fit our selection model — when, in fact, many of them do. And I pointed…
Part 2: A Fishy Tragedy, Avoided
As I said at the end of Part 1 of this blog series, the real question is, what’s on the hook? Because every fish that swims off before you have a conversation with it is a tragedy worse than the…