Demos, Pilots, and the Sales Cycle
by Daniel Shefer

www.shefer.net
DS_PM/delete-this@spamex.com

Enhancing the product demo and controlling the pilot will result in shorter sales cycles and a more satisfied buyer. As the market space becomes more crowded, we must become more experienced sellers. This article will discuss ways you can help prospects evaluate your product, shorten the sales cycle and increase sales.

Ten Things Product Managers Should Know About Sales
by Daniel Shefer
www.shefer.net
DS_PM/delete-this/@spamex.com

This article discusses ten things that Product Managers need to know about sales. PMs routinely support the sales process but many time lack enough knowledge to do this. This article is the first of two on the subject of sales. This article discusses the sales process and the role of the sales rep. The next article will detail ways for PMs to better support sales cycles.

Nine Things Product Managers Need to Know About Supporting Sales
by Daniel Shefer
www.shefer.net
DS_PM/delete-this/@spamex.com

This is the second part of two articles that address how sales work and how Product Managers can better support them. The previous article in this series covered the Ten Things that Product Managers Need to Know About Sales. This article discusses how Product Managers can better support the sales process and sales reps.

The 11 Secrets to Sales Leadership
Copyright 2005 Lexien Management Consultants, Inc

In his classic book, "Think and Grow Rich", Napoleon Hill discussed the eleven secrets of leadership. Recently, as I was reading the book, it occurred to me that the attributes of strong leadership and effective selling have a tremendous amount in common. After all, to be really successful in sales, you need to be a leader, both within your own organization, as well as to your clients and customers.

Selling Globally through a B2B Exchange
By Nowshade Kabir, Rusbiz.com

Participation in B2B Exchanges is increasingly becoming one of the fastest growing marketing methods for businesses looking for augmenting their client base beyond their local markets. Any good B2B Exchange offers direct contact with thousands of prospective buyers in a single location. For some new participants of a B2B Exchange, it appears to be a goldmine as they discover unexpected quantity of readymade clients without much effort from their side. Of course, there are many other great benefits companies can reap from getting involved in a B2B Exchange.

How To Use A Powerful Leadership Tool To Step Up Sales Results
Copyright © 2005 Brent Filson , All Rights Reserved
The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.
http://www.actionleadership.com/

Good sales people can close, but few 'step up' for even more sales from that close. Yet stepping up should be one of the easiest accomplishments in sales that is if you know how to build the staircase.

The Art of Selling
(and some tips to help you manage your sales team)
By Stuart Ayling

Selling. Cold calls, introductions, interviews, appointments, proposals, referrals, call cycles, building rapport, listening, asking for the order, overcoming objections, closing the sale, and rejection. There's a lot to know about the business of selling. No wonder many people are a bit overwhelmed when they are asked to do it.

And it's not a job for the faint-hearted. Selling is a communication-rich activity, with lots of verbal and non-verbal clues to simultaneously recognise, understand and respond to. It's a tough job looking after the interests of the customer and the company at the same time. Especially when you have to do this many times a day, every day.

Creating Effective Competitive Sales Tools for Your Sales Reps

Daniel Shefer
Director, Product Architecture
MDRM
DS_PM@spamex.com

There are volumes of information out there on how to collect competitive information. Typically, these books and articles discuss competition from a corporate perspective and how to position yourself to be competitive in a chosen market, but I have yet to encounter a well-written text about how to convey, train and ingrain specific competitive advantages into the field sales force. The process of creating and effectively delivering competitive sales tools is a classic role of Product Marketing.

High End Technology Sales
Infatuation, dating, romance and marriage by Guy Smith
Silicon Strategies Marketing
www.SiliconStrat.com

Sales is a many splintered thing

In one of my more poetic moments, I made the observation that:

Dating is a dance of incremental intimacy. We avoid pain by risking only a little at each stage of courtship.

Certainly this is not the most profound thought ever uttered over cocktails, but it is a fundamental truth. Long-term commitment – the alleged goal of courtship – has such immense ramifications that no sane person would jump into marriage without an extended and incrementally advancing courtship process. Well, nobody outside of Hollywood that is.

With technology sales, the same dynamic applies. The risk of commitment – be it for a new CPU in the laptops made by Hewlett Packard or a new ERP system deployed within General Motors – is huge, and such a commitment is not taken lightly.

Profit from the 80/20 Rule. Flaunt it at your own risk.
by Paul Lemberg

Back in the 19th century, an Italian economist quantified the general relationship between a minority of producers and a majority of output. Sound familiar? The simplified version of Vilfredo Pareto's ratio, known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principal, says that in most cases, 80% of production comes from 20% of producers.

Quality guru J.M. Juran referred to Pareto's Principal as "The Vital Few and the Trivial Many". If you are running a company the 80/20 rule has powerful implications for every area of your business.

Pareto's postulate says 20% of your effort will generate 80% of your results. There is also a corollary: 20% of your results absorb 80% or your resources or efforts.

The game is knowing which is the right 20% - distinguishing the Vital Few from The Trivial Many. 20% of your customers yield 80% or your revenues, and 20% of your customers yield 80% of your profit. But not necessarily the same 20%.

Your sales force (even if it's just you) will intuitively spend more time with the top 20% customers, but will it be the right 20%? There is also likely to be a top 20% of customer types, a top 20% of territories, and a top 20% of distributors.

Which customers get the most service? Your service team spends 80% of its time on 20% of the customers - although they may not be the most profitable 20%.