Category: Sales

Leadership, Sales

Role of culture in a sales team.

Culture is what transforms any team to greatness or failure! Sales teams are no exceptions to this. There is a specific culture in each and every sales team, doesn’t matter if someone has carefully instilled it there or it just got there by accident. So, what is the culture like in your team and why is it so important? I met a sales manager recently. He indicated that he wanted to have a high performance culture in his team. When I prodded him to explain what he meant by high performance, he said that he wants everyone in his team […]

Sales, transformation

The lure of large deals

If you are a sales leader, working in the software industry, you would know the importance that any organization places on the deal size. The bigger the deal size, the better it is for you. Right? WRONG! In my experience, really large deals (aka, multi-million dollar deals) rarely prove to be a success; for both the parties – buyer and seller. This sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but it really is true. When I think about why this is so, I came up with the following reasons because of which this is not good for the buyer: Typically, once such a deal […]

Sales

66 Things You Should Know About Your Customer & some more

I just came across the article “66 Things You Should Know About Your Customer” in the Inc.com website written by Harvey Mackay. He talks about the importance of knowing your customer in selling to them. He also stresses the fact that, even though you may be selling to a business or an organization, the real buyer is still an individual and it is important to know about the individual as much as you know about his company, if not more. He also has developed Mackay 66, a 66-question customer profile that includes absolutely no information about the envelopes a company […]

Sales

Selling real estate (Homes)

I have been out house hunting for some time now and am appalled at the quality of sales people and sales processes that are being used by the best in the industry. The current sales process works as follows: Prospecting: Use advertisements (traditional & new age), road shows, email campaigns, etc to create awareness and interest in the project. Prospects who are interested in the property contact the builder. Qualification: The prospect is maintained in some system, CRM or otherwise, for future follow-ups. The only qualification question that is asked are the following: Type of apartment is the prospect interested […]

Sales

Effective sales review meetings

All sales managers hold fortnightly or monthly or quarterly sales review meetings. How managers use these meetings talks a lot about their leadership skills. Does your team look forward to these review meetings or dread them? Do they think it adds value to them or is it looked as a necessary evil? I think sales managers can use these review meetings to do the following: Identify any good wins and celebrate them. Facilitate learning from deals won/lost.   Gauge the motivation level in the team and pep the team up. Discuss the sales numbers (target v/s actual), current pipeline health check. […]