Ned Daubney, a guest columnist, talks about the role of an embedded “customer strategist” in closing large B2B sales.

There are many forms of sales organizations and structuring the right one can be difficult and challenging. The more popular forms of sales structures are: 1-Product sales orientation: here sales people are well versed in the products that the enterprise has to offer.  This can be a specific product or a suite of products or [...]

One of your competitors has just announced a significant price reduction on one of their products that competes directly with you.   What should you do? Before you answer the question, have you done and do you understand the following issues in determining your selling price? 1-      Are your current product price objectives in line with [...]

In business to business markets, I am often asked which is best to focus on, advertising or personal (relationship) selling. Before I answer the question, let’s look at what functions each perform and then draw a conclusion. Assuming your enterprise has a direct sales force, it performs many functions such as; relationships, promoting your company, [...]

Like everything else in this world, there are often multiple choices that can be made. Selecting a sales channel is no different. I have listed below the more popular sales channels and a very high level advantage and disadvantage of each. Channel                                                      Chief Advantage                        Chief Disadvantage Direct Sales Force                                  Account Control                                   Can be expensive      If you [...]

Recommendations for sales people on how to use LinkedIn to generate sales.

A post suggesting that Internet disintermediation will cause the traditional field sales person to be replaced by telemarketers.

A post showing how the Internet has the potential to replace the telemarketing function.

  The most common response I hear when I ask a sales person how he or she did for the quarter or the year; is something about their quota. i.e., “I made quota” or “I’m at 70% of quota, but with two big deals hanging fire.”  While quota should always be part of a performance [...]

Suggestions for the CMO on using April data to forecast the year, using the information derived to make mid-course corrections, if needed.