In order to improve your relationship with the customer, you first have to understand where you’re starting from – in the context of the customer’s decision cycle. Typically, when a customer is making an investment, they are doing so in response to a problem they need to solve, or an opportunity that they can see.…
Contrary to some current misconceptions, B2B buyers are not in fact conducting much of the buying cycle unaided by sellers, evaluating solutions on their own, and only reaching out to suppliers in the late stages of their process. According to Inside the Buyer’s Mind, which researched over 1,200 buyers and sellers, over two-thirds (67 percent)…
I have worked with talented sales professionals around the world and I have found that failing to access the key people, or to influence them effectively (by demonstrating value), is one of the most frequent reasons cited for failure in a sales campaign. This holds true whether the sellers are in pursuit of a new…
If you‘ve read many of my posts you know that I like to do a lot of primary research and look beyond opinion to real data to get insight into the reasons why certain companies perform better than others. Why is it that some companies experience win rates higher than average? How sales forecast accuracy…
Over the last few weeks I have posted here, here, here, here, and here to describe the underlying framework to build your Ideal Customer Profile. Doing this well is one of the most impactful exercises for Marketing and Sales professionals. In this post I will pull it all together in a model that you can…
We are now onto the final of the three categories of attributes that describe your Ideal Customer Profile. Firmographics: Who should you call? (See here) Customer Business Problem: What problem do they have? (See here) This post addresses Positive Impact Potential: Will they be successful?, possibly the most important category of the three for companies…
