This is an extract from the Executive Sponsor Program section of my book: Digital Sales Transformation in a Customer First World. Executive customer visits are often clumsy attempts to close a deal that the account manager has not been able to close on their own. These types of meetings often do more harm than good; the…
In a previous post I have written about the value of an Executive Sponsor Program. The benefits are clear; but it is not always straightforward to embed it in an organization. For an Executive Sponsor Program to work, it must first of all be a program: a series of strategically crafted objectives, activities and measures,…
I too have heard the horror stories. The senior executive arrives to join the ‘closing call’. Because she is not well prepared she sends the deal sideways. Or because there are no agreed rules of engagement she overrides the salesperson’s pricing strategy during the meeting. Everyone’s credibility suffers. I’ve seen this happen too many times. Sales…
I’m a bit of a geek / nerd / techy. I love technology. However, I worry about where we are today and where technology is headed. I worry about the over-reliance on technology to do our thinking for us and I worry about the deceit and betrayal of trust we see what happens when an…
I want to tell you a story about how investing time to learn about the person behind the buyer helped me in a very large sale. It was April 2015 and I participated in a Deal Review – at Altify, we call it an Opportunity Test and Improve – for a multi-million dollar deal with…
There is an old adage that says: ‘Companies don’t buy, people buy.’ The message is that, in order to get a company to buy something from you, you have to get the people in the company to buy. Of course, this is true, but I don’t subscribe to the notion that the two are disconnected.…
