Month: June 2016

Sales Management, Sales Techniques

How to build a kickass business case to drive more revenue

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Everyone’s sales process is different. The basic steps, though, are often the same in B2B sales. What you really need to do is make sure you get under the skin of your sales prospect to understand how you’re going to help, not just the person you’re selling to (your key contact), but other people in the business as well. Often you follow all the steps in your sales process, send a proposal, and talk about pricing. The key is to show, every single time, how you’re going to deliver great, return on investment for the business with your product or service. Here are some simple steps to building a kickass business case to close your deal.

How will your champion benefit?

To build a foolproof business case you need to get to the root of why the prospect wants your product or service. What it will do for them. How they will individually benefit. What will it do for them? You need to understand their challenges and what they really WANT. What is their goal with this purchase? Is it a change that they are trying to make or a problem they are trying to solve? Will it make your key contact’s life easier, their job easier, improve their standing in the eyes of their boss? You must really dig deep, do your research and then ask lots of questions until you really understand. This is the only way that you will be equipped to really build a strong business case. Talk about how it’s going to help your day to day contacts do their job better and make them look great in the eyes of their boss.

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Leadership, Motivation, Sales Management

6 secrets to building a winning sales team

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Managing a team of sales professionals is one of the hardest jobs in any business. You have a group of guys and girls that will, no doubt, be a mix of talent, skill and ability. That is just your starting point. Then you have to lead, manage, motivate, engage and coach this lot. Throw into the mix what they have to deal with the day to day… huge highs and lows of being in sales. It is not like finance or product teams where they can just put their heads down and finish their task or project with fewer interruptions or curve balls. It is a whole different ball game. So when you put all this together with the pressure of sales and delivering a number it’s a big job, and a very hard one to get consistently right.

At Reward Gateway (which was Asperity), we went from doing less than 250k per year in 2007 to £2.9M a year in 2011, just in new business. Recently a VP Sales asked me what the secret was behind this. He was looking to make 5 new hires while scaling and growing his SaaS business. The truth is all the things you naturally think of as being really important like Lead generation, CRM management, Marketing automation, Your Sales playbook and Pipeline Management are not the defining factors in high performance. Most VP’s of Sales can come into a business, work with the team and vendors, and implement these processes. What truly makes a high performing Sales Team is the other magic you put on top of this. Here are the 6 things that I feel are most important when building a successful sales team.

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Motivation, Sales Techniques

5 ways to stay consistently motivated in Sales

Posted on by Tom Lavery

As a professional Sales Rep or Manager, you face many challenges and roadblocks on a daily basis and sales is always a rollercoaster. It’s easy to be motivated when things are going smoothly. You’re reaching contacts, setting appointments and closing deals. How do you stay motivated the rest of the time…when you are getting more no’s than yes’, can’t seem to fill your calendar and pipeline or when your quota seems unattainable? This happens to all of us.  Here are a few tips that will help.

Be positive

In sales, we all know you have as many ups as you do downs. Don’t focus on failures. It is better to focus on each success no matter how small or large. Always try to find the positive side of things. If you experience something that seems negative it is often a valuable learning experience that will make the next similar situation easier to work through. When you look for the positive and start with an optimistic attitude, you will find it makes everything run more smoothly. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” So believe that you can!

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