Helping Sales People Win More Deals
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,700 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
Happy New Year To You All!
Our Best Regards,
Stefan & Håkan
I have to admit, against my better judgment, I have fallen for some trends. Perhaps I’m getting to an age where I have surrendered my principles, but I am doing it to gain something else. Statistics! I love numbers and have found a couple of areas that are trendy right now that provide me with them. So, principle for numbers is my trade-off.
The first trend was to exercise. Not that I am lazy and against it, but in my past I have NEVER done anything without the goal to be best or accomplish something extraordinary (like my pipe dream to do an Ironman). If I started with an activity I would drive myself to be a winner or I would quit. But exercising just to stay in shape is new to me. So I got the App “Run keeper” to set goals, follow up my workouts and to stay motivated. It has been fantastic to push me to take that extra run in the week, just to maintain my numbers and to keep pushing my kilometer time.
The second is connected to another part of the health trend, losing weight. So I got a diet App called “ShapeUp”. It has been very helpful to log all my intake and my output. There is a database with all types of food and a bar scanner connecting the scanned product to the calorie input in pieces/slice/weight or volume. Really helpful for med to quickly add in my intake without any big effort, and therefore I do the work and I get my graph. I also track my weight and there are more great features. This helped me lose 8 Kg and kept it interesting!
Why is this relevant? Because the apps I used where tailored to theses specific areas, because they got me to do all the work no other person or software ever got me close to doing before and it delivered results!! I enjoyed doing it! Apart from me taking part of the information, it is now part of the Big Data cloud as information that can be used in a number of areas. I have provided structured data, packaged and ready to be analyzed and it only cost the companies the development cost of the apps to get it.
Why doesn’t this work within companies? Why do tools in companies have to be so complicated and general? Ok, I see that there is a cost, but as a company, can you afford to miss out on data because it is too complicated to collect? At what cost are you missing out on information? What usually happens is that the need is recognized, but the budget is set so that the solution only goes part way. And when people are not filling in the information it’s their fault things are not going the way management expected.
So, before you pack too much into your budgets for 2014 think about this. Find your key areas of change that really matter for your business and make them happen. Make them simple, user friendly and…fun.
Don’t assume where you should know…
While driving home for Christmas, I’ll just try to give you all a short summary from the post Sales Tactics for Dummies.
As you know, my defintion of Sales Tactics is the ability to act proactively on issues that are unplanned and deviates from the strategic plan or the possibility to reach it’s targets.
To establish that sales tactics ability to act, you need to:
First, the Culture. I’d just read a great blog post written by Anthony J. Bradley, Group vice President in Gartner Research, that provides insight that it’s time to take advantage of social behaviour in our professional organizations, and not only in marketing. No-one these days can disagree that social media has made a huge impact to our businesses. Why shouldn’t the benefits be used in other processes as well?
A great start could be the sales process.
Even if a more collaborative decision making style may give some benefits, it’s not really any big effects if you don’t support that with a software. The software would in every aspect help you gather comments and bright ideas – from your management team or sales reps on the street. New truths you never would have been aware of may pop up – painfully honest. But take advantage of all new insights and make better decisions and communicate decisions with higher level of acceptance by those people that are affected. Not to take this opportunity – it’s reality today – is only stupid.
A software platform should include the following:
Looking forward to 2014, it seems to be the year collaborative decision making will blossom. The advantages are there. The softwares are on the shelf to grab. But is your organization ready?
We’ll keep in touch,
Merry Christmas!
/BR
Stefan
The Sales Process Blog 