
Sales Articles & Whitepapers
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3 Strategies for Peak Sales Performance: How to Create Renewable Competitive Advantage (Point of View Paper)
Traditionally, a company could win long-term advantages with new products, or dominate with deep pockets and massive size, or capture markets with widespread brand recognition and global presence. Today, these attributes may produce a temporary market advantage, but may also create a competitive disadvantage. learn more
3 Vital Strategies to Protect Your Customer Base: How to Retain Your Most Profitable Accounts
Sellers as well as buyers are taking stock of priorities as the economy continues to show weakness across most industries. As a result, most sales organizations are pursuing new business—which often means taking advantage of competitors' complacency or mistakes in providing service to customers. learn more
3 Winning Strategies for Prospecting: Right Prospects, Right Message, Right Attitude
If your organization is like a lot of sales organizations, you may have intensified prospecting efforts lately as old customers downsized, cut spending, and in some cases, switched to other suppliers. The problem is that prospecting is often time-consuming, costly, wasteful, and hard on the morale of the sales team. learn more
The ABCs of Sales Coaching: Essential Tips to Amplify Your Team’s Performance
What would a 29% increase in top-line salesforce performance mean to your organization? Our research shows that when sales managers have the right skills, the single action of coaching has the greatest impact on the performance of your salesforce. learn more
Aligning the Selling and Buying Processes: A Consultative Selling Approach
If you think your salespeople can control the way buyers buy — think again. The old adage that "people love to buy, but hate to be sold" has changed to "people know how to buy, and won't be sold to." But, that doesn't mean it's time to fire your salesforce. With a little insight into today's buying process, salespeople can understand how customers buy and dramatically increase their sales results. learn more
Balancing the Consultant and Strategist Roles: Managing the 4 Sides of Sales is Key to Highly Effective Selling Skills
There was a time when a salesperson could fulfill a unified role as a vendor, trusted advisor, and challenger. But today's hypercompetitive market requires the salesperson to play two distinct yet complementary roles—that of Consultant to the customer and Strategist to both the customer and his or her own organization. learn more
Changing the Differentiation Game: Creating Real Sales Differentiation Your Customers Value and Competition Cannot Replicate
What if your salespeople could expand your offering and create a highly differentiated solution that represents unexpected business value to your customer, and is hard for the competition to replicate because it is unique to the customer? The very thought may hit you like a triple shot of espresso! learn more
Competitive Sales Strategy: Influencing the Decision to Win the Sale
How does a done deal come undone? Your rep had a good relationship with a great contact, the right solution to meet the customer's needs, and strong buying signals right up to the last. Then came the dreaded call: "Thank you for the proposal, but we've decided to go with someone else." So, what happened? Could this loss have been prevented? learn more
Consultative Selling: Is Your Sales Team Creating Real Differentiation?
To avoid the pitfalls of competing on price, salespeople are often told they need to "sell the value." Another strategy is to "value-add," by offering the customer extra services or product features without charge. While these strategies can be effective short-term, neither of these approaches produces a sustainable advantage. learn more
Customer Experience Is the New Black: The Key to Revenue Generation in the 21st Century
Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Learn how to build a branded customer experience that enhances the customer's perception of value. learn more