From the category archives:

Strategic Selling

Costco CFO Richard A. Galanti talks with Executive Conversation about sales professionals

June 15, 2011

Mr. Galanti joined Kirkland, WA-based Costco Wholesale Corporation shortly after its founding in March 1984 as Vice President of Finance and later became Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Executive Conversation spoke with him about retail investment trends and the factors that influence capital investment decisions at Costco.
Q: With all of the vendors who [...]

ROI: Using Assumptions and Estimates

June 9, 2011

Presenting ROI to executives and business decision-makers can challenge sales professionals as much as any part of the job.
Why?
Common reasons we see are sellers:

Mistakenly presenting Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) numbers – which don’t recognize the required investment; only cost reduction.
Neglecting to take the customer‘s hurdle rate into consideration.
Relying on an [...]

Lost in Translation: What are you selling, exactly?

April 21, 2011

Leading. Scalable. Unique. Streamlined. And of course, optimized. Ever use these terms to a) sound businesslike, b) impress customers or, c) explain your solution?
If so, the good news is you are not alone. Of course, the bad news is also that you’re not alone.
Business decision-makers hear this messaging too often. It’s ineffective. It won’t [...]

3 Ways to Make Executive Sales Calls Less Intimidating

March 9, 2011

A sales leader at one of our clients recently expressed disappointment at all the excuses she hears on why her team doesn’t call higher in their accounts: “takes too much time,” “executives don’t want to talk to us,” “we just get referred down,” etc.
She then shared her suspicion of the real barrier: they’re intimidated.
Here’s [...]

How to Ask an Executive to Sponsor a Deal

February 28, 2011

You finally succeeded securing a meeting with a key customer executive. Now what? If you’re going to invest your time, and you’re asking the customer to do the same, then both of you better get a result.
Recognize that every executive engagement must have a clear objective. It does no good to have a meeting [...]

How Well is Your Organization Capitalizing on Vertical Market Opportunities?

December 16, 2010

Customer growth strategies vary by vertical market. Your sales strategy should do likewise.
Amid economic headwinds, companies have largely focused on moving costs out of their organization. Now, as customers refocus on growth, readying your team to align solutions with growth and innovation should be a key organizational priority.
Almost all companies are actively seeking to innovate [...]

How to Have Customer Issues and Initiatives Spelled Out for You

December 6, 2010

Struggle to find time to keep current on all of your accounts?  Missed a quarterly analyst call and can’t find a recording?  No worries!  This website provides free, actionable insights and information for over 1,500 public companies’ earnings call transcripts, including the S&P 500.  Plus, the site includes edited articles from top blogs and investment [...]

How IT is Set Up to Fail

February 23, 2010

I wanted to share with you an article by Martha Heller that I found both informative as well as insightful.   Heller writes about the traditional CIO role and some of the issues they have traditionally faced, the problems of transitioning from one regime to another, when bad technology meets good people, etc.  What takes this [...]

Take a Look at Great Sales Give

October 29, 2009

Interested in free resources?  Then check out Great Sales Give, a new site that colleague and best selling author Jill Konrath launched to share her expertise with those who need it, but may not have budget available. Each month, she’s giving away one of her audio programs, ebooks, etc. and conducting other drawings for free goodies too.
There’s just a couple more days left in October [...]

Three Steps to New Sales Opportunities in Changing Government Markets

October 26, 2009

Money is tight and budgets are strapped, whether you’re talking about the euro, yen or dollar.  Anyone selling to government entities today knows it’s a problem. As a result, many officials are turning to the private sector for help.
Now’s the time to capitalize on this increasing trend toward public-private partnerships (PPPs). Structure your proposals around [...]

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