Have you needed to focus on surviving rather than thriving? As a leader, getting your head up to find the future is your responsibility. If you don’t do it, who will? Begin by recognizing that every business really has just two strategies. The first strategy involves protecting and optimizing your current core business, the mature activity that is paying your bills today. Investing too much of your time in this strategy keeps you mired in …
There are three key ingredients that help earn a customer’s commitment on your proposed solution. Gaining customer commitment on your proposal begins by identifying the key stakeholders in the customer’s decision, learning why they are influential, and aligning the benefits of your proposal to meet their needs. This enables the development of advocates for your proposal within the customer’s organization, and reinforces your position as a problem-solving business partner, not a peddler. Responding to requests …
In its recent study about growth drivers, “Pathways to Growth” evaluated eight proven management parameters to identify why some companies grow on a sustained basis while others fail to grow or experience a short-lived rapid expansion before sliding back to negative performance. Their report specifies key drivers for sustainable growth. Companies seeking to achieve sustainable growth should emulate the proven best practices of small and mid-size organizations that have produced prolonged growth performance. Three of …
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 …
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 …
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 …
[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 …
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 …
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 …
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” …