Comments for Sales Scale Partners

Comment on Scaling Sales – Welcome! by David Shedd

David Shedd — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:11:01 +0000

Paul,

Great subject. I look forward to hearing your insights. As someone who blogs on Winning B2B Leadership, I see and have personally experienced the difficult challenge in scaling B2B sales and making a better, more effective business.

Comment on Best Practice Customer Stories by David Shedd

David Shedd — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:54:37 +0000

Paul, excellent article. You hit the nail on the head with the importance of telling stories to help sales sell to customers. Well Done! As an addition, I think that you can use social media, such as blogs, to collate some of these customer stories and additional vignettes. That puts the story easily at hand for the sales people, tells the company successes and stories in a unique voice (much better than the typical “voiceless” web site), and allows for a great follow-up as a way to tell a confirming story after the meeting (send a link to the blog or paste into the follow-up E-mail).

Comment on “Thought Bubble” Inflation: The Sales / Service Handoff by Molly

Molly — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:20:22 +0000

Paul, I love the cartoon illustrating the “thought bubble” inflation. As a sales person and a consumer I’ve had this experience. I never thought about the importance of this gap until now.

Comment on “Thought Bubble” Inflation: The Sales / Service Handoff by Wil Bradley

Wil Bradley — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:29:54 +0000

Great article. As someone who has been on the sales side, as an SE, a consultant and part of the execution team, this hits home.

Setting expectations is key to any type of sale, especially technology.

Sales definitely needs to have the SE or a consulting rep review SOWs. Involving them at the kickoff meeting may be too late. It might be a good idea to have the SE review technical reqs with the client during the sales cycle. This can be done over the telephone or via Goto Meeting between sales calls. Preventing the unexpected always helps.

The "bubble" usually bursts with implementation. The customer implementation group runs into unexpected issues or requirements. If they haven't been included in the buying process, it leads to a "You should have asked us first" mentality. Things go down hill from there.

Sales people hate it, but I believe including some type of technical review by the implementation group during the sales cycle, can keep the bubble floating to the next sale.

Comment on New Rep Checklist by Jeff Ernst

Jeff Ernst — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:16:11 +0000

Paul, I didn't realize just how much infrastructure there is to set up a new rep before seeing your checklist. When it comes to ramping up new reps on our value proposition, we've created a "New Rep Onboarding" sales playbook at Kadient which is organized differently than our various sales playbooks for working new opportunities or expansion sales. This onboarding playbook lays out the various pitch decks, demo scripts, industry sheets, etc. in a logical order for a newbie to absorb, rather than pointing them to an overwhelming pile of stuff.

Comment on Measuring Winnable Opportunities by Wil Bradley

Wil Bradley — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:22:21 +0000

You’ve revealed a very important truth. In sales teams I’ve worked in, its all about the sale, not really about the profit. I see potential challenges in convincing sales people, who live and die by the quota.