Thanks for coming back! Please use the comment function below to let me know what issues are on your mind and what you’re thinking about. RSS Feed Had a lunch meeting with a sales exec this past Friday, a prospective client. A colleague brought us together and it was the first time I’d had contact [...]
What’s in it for the customer? From day one of a sales career, the necessity of thinking in that context is crystal clear. Everybody knows it. Everybody believes it. It’s intuitively obvious!!! BUT …sometimes the obvious is not so easy to execute… Ready for another humbling experience? Here’s your mission… Randomly choose five quotes and/or [...]
I’ve blogged before about the work ethic displayed by my client in Mexico. They also have an innate sense of customer-centricity that can provide a lesson to us all. (By the way – I urge you to read this all the way through, AND collect a few case studies from your own team, before you [...]
April 12, 2010 – 10:25 am
Knowing your customer’s decision process is critical, but not enough. There’s also the requirement to understand decision criteria and what it is about those criteria that make them important.
Ever wonder how Rodney Dangerfield came up with his signature, “I don’t get no respect,” line? My guess is it first hit him when he still had his job selling aluminum siding. Yep, that’s how he supported himself and his family before his big break on the Ed Sullivan Show. Anyway, talk about a tough [...]
I don’t need my cup of extra-strong coffee to get going this morning. If you’re in sales, you won’t either. Just read about this Ogilvy & Mather-led contest that insults the intelligence of sales professionals, managers and executives everywhere. Selling a red brick to a panel of “executives” from Ogilvy & Mather, OgilvyOne, IBM and [...]
More often than not, weak value propositions are the result of a weak or poorly executed value proposition development process. I’d love to hear your opinion on this situation and process… The Situation: An industrial distributor has partnered with a provider of systems integration and engineering services. The distributor gets a whole new and wide [...]
January 29, 2010 – 6:37 pm
If an opportunity deserves pursuing, it deserves a compelling value proposition. Problem is, crafting one is often quite challenging. Thinking in terms of Personal, Pervasive, Permanent and Persistent value can be a big help in getting started. What do think? Is the framework useful for you?
November 26, 2009 – 1:16 pm
by Todd Youngblood For the last 90 days or so, I’ve been asking customers, prospects – actually everyone I talk to – to quickly state the overall value proposition for their organization. I’ve been amazed at the dismal quality of the responses. Over half fell into what I’ll call the “I dunno” category. There literally [...]
