Articles

Whether a deal is worth $50K or $5M the need to engage procurement early and often is something I’ve seen the most accomplished sales executives avoid or stumble over. The question I am left asking many is simply, ‘Why did you wait so long to start talking to procurement?’ The response is too often silence; however, it does not need to be. One of the critical factors today is figuring out how to engage procurement to win your deal.

There has never been a time when successfully closing complex, B2B deals depends more on a sales person’s credibility.

Reading the sales headlines lately is enough to make any sales professional anxious. Robots taking their jobs, buyers not needing them, millennials not wanting them. I am not surprised some of the professionals I talk to wonder when their career will end.

Early in the first quarter is the time to focus on building our pipelines to achieve, or even overachieve, our sales goals in 2017. This requires us to market to generate opportunities, nurture current leads, attract new buyers, capture web visitors and drip content to potential buyers, presumably, until they are ready to buy!

Having spent the last decade working for agencies I can say, from experience, it is a tough business – especially when the goal is to scale creative agencies. Digital agencies, marketing agencies, PR firms, management consulting or any other flavor you can think of, there comes a time when leadership focuses on remaining relevant and revenue growth.

Sales training, just as every other initiative in a company, must compete with shifting priorities and an often fluid business climate. When training is delayed there is an impact to the bottom line, to shareholders and to employees – but how many companies spend the time to quantify that impact? What is the actual cost of delaying sales training? While funding sales and marketing training may be a game of managing priorities – there is one priority that never goes out of fashion – REVENUE GROWTH.

GUEST: Evan Knox, CMO at Caffeine Marketing