Growth & Leadership Insights

3 Ways to Earn Stakeholder Commitment

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Earning the customer’s commitment on your proposed solution often requires the successful completion of many intermediate steps that may affect multiple shareholders within the customer’s organization. Different stakeholders play different roles in the decision process with some being more influential than others. Here are 3 ways to earn commitment from the key decision-makers: 1. Be a partner, not a peddler Act as a problem-solving business person, a partner more committed to making them money than …

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The Price of “Free”

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Offering something for free to capture attention remains an effective technique – everyone can be seduced by a zero price. But are you attracting the right prospects? Could they become customers who actually invest in your product or service? What is the true price of “free?” Offering something for free often attracts the wrong type of prospect. Something in your message appeals to these folks and they react to the word “free” but they rarely …

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Why Should Customers Trust You?

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Some companies profess allegiance to their core values while behaving in utter disregard of them. Customers observing this disingenuous behavior doubt the sincerity of that organization’s commitment. Why should customers trust you? Our daily existence in this world depends on our ability to interpret the signals delivered to our brains by our senses. We receive all of our information in this way. These signals are received as sensations, feelings. “We are feeling beings that think …

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Goal Alignment

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[separator top=”40″] Earning your customer’s commitment requires many steps, and Grolistic has teamed up with SalesFitness™ to create 6 video resources highlighting successful techniques that produce thriving customer relationships. This video, Goal Alignment, covers the issues of: Learning the concept of producing Strategic Value for the customer; Aligning your proposal to ensure that the value produced addresses the goals and needs of those key stakeholders to deliver a win/win result. SalesFitness™ exploits mobile technology and the best of online learning principles …

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“A Customer Is Never Out of Warranty”

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Many companies invest heavily to measure their investment in customer support. They track the cost per hour or other metrics to monitor their investment in the support function when, in fact, their business would gain more insight by measuring customer retention. Customer support is not a cost center, it’s a profit center. The title of this blog comes from a Seth Godin blog posting that highlights the increasing value of preserving customer relationships. On the …

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Three Ways to Ensure You Get Paid

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An order is no good unless you are paid for it. Sales folks are often compensated for the orders they book. This makes sense – without orders, there is no business. But getting the order is only part one of the transaction. Getting paid creates the profit to compensate the salesperson, and everyone else. Proficient salespeople realize that they share responsibility for ensuring that their company gets paid for every order they book. Follow these …

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Is Keeping Your Promise Obsolete?

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David and I were working to strengthen his company’s unique offering, the distinctive value proposition his company “owns” in the marketplace, when I asked: “When you propose a solution, you are making a promise to your customer. Do you understand the emotional bond created when you call it a promise?” “A promise?” he replied. “That’s a really jaded word these days. It sounds outdated or obsolete. Does anyone actually believe in promises much less use the word? “Promise” …

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Trade Value for Price Reductions

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When you hear “I can purchase this elsewhere at a lower price,” remember that your quoted price is linked to the total value you are promising to produce…and evaluating value goes both ways. It’s just a trade…the customer is trading you price for the value to be delivered. Focus on defining value. Buyers might think of value as how much you are willing to discount while you see value as the additional benefits you will …

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5 Ways Sales Managers Can Help Low-performing Sales Reps

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In today’s tough economy, sales reps are taking on bigger territories, working with higher quotas, and making more customer contacts than ever. But less than 55% of sales reps are making their quota. Sales managers can help their reps with these challenges in various ways. In this blog, I share with you 5 inspiring ideas from industry authorities. For these ideas, I add my own suggestions for how you can easily apply these concepts for …

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Is ‘Busyness’ Your Excuse?

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There are only a finite number of productive hours in your day. Every leader is busy and often it feels like there isn’t enough time to accomplish everything you planned. Is ‘busyness’ your excuse for not investing enough time to build your business? Is it sabotaging your growth? How many of your hours are wasted on simple, routine activities that rob you of valuable time and distract you from your planned productive day? You shift …

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