5 mistakes that lead to unsustainable sales deals

Sustainable selling is something we frequently speak about. Why is that? It’s because sales is a specialism that’s full of people offering quick fixes, which can result in unsustainable sales. Search Google for sales questions and you’ll find plenty of “clever” questions designed to manipulate customers. Not to mention the countless lead gen businesses promising…

Moving sales from an artform to a science

Successful selling. Is it about working alongside someone and collaborating on solutions, or is it about getting them to do what you want? Is it about helping them or manipulating them? We hear both of these views and there are believers in both approaches. Nor is it easy to draw the line between these styles.…

Influencing customers without pitching

Why? You might ask ? When it comes to influencing customers without pitching, just think – how many times have you met someone at a networking or business event and been forced to listen to them drone on about how important they are? At what point did you mentally switch off and start looking for…

How do you increase value for customers in 2023?

Times are challenging – there’s no surprise in that news. And the messaging everywhere is about ‘value’. Adverts for products and services claiming to be ‘better value’ compared either to a former version of themselves, or their competition. When trying to increase value for customers, what exactly constitutes value in the first place…is it the…

Lead gen – 7 reasons you should avoid spending money on it

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a small wooden cottage in a forest. This was home to the sales fairy. Thanks to the internet the sales fairy was able to sell lead gen services to hopeful business owners. Signing them up to unapproved mailing lists she was able to…

What’s a sales culture and how do I get one?

Building a strong sales culture is critical to building a successful business. But it’s much easier said than done. Sales culture isn’t really about sales; it comes from a combination of leadership and teamwork. In this blog post, we’re exploring ‘what’s a sales culture and how can you build one in your business?’. Perhaps the…

Where does marketing stop and sales start?

This is one of the most important handover points to get right in any company. But the boundaries are really fuzzy. How many times have you heard comments like this? “We could improve performance if only Sales followed up on the leads we give them” “We could grow sales if only Marketing gave us decent…

5 steps to building a high-performing sales team

Have you ever baked a cake? A few people who are expert bakers can throw together a few ingredients and come up with something sweet and fluffy in a matter of minutes. Most of us, though, need to follow a recipe. That recipe tells us what the component parts are and in what order to…

Three ways to understand your ideal prospect

Knowing your ideal prospect is vital to be able to connect with them, and have a higher chance of turning them into a client. But how do we find out more about them?How do you get to know what they like?How do you understand where to find them? Imagine you’re happy to take money from…

How to attract the right customers for your business

Identifying and attracting the right customers for your business isn’t always an easy task and you’ll often need to make tough choices at both a strategic and operational level to optimise your sales. Remember those grammar tests you were set at school? The ones where you completely changed the meaning of a sentence by emphasising…

How do you give feedback to sales people?

Questions around giving feedback to sales people is something that’s come around a number of times just recently. It’s perhaps revealing that it rarely shows up as a question about “building a buzzing sales team” or “getting the very best out of” someone. When people pose this challenge it’s much more likely to be presented…

Client success story – Care Homes

Our client ran a group of care homes in the midlands and southeast. The business was well-established, but Covid had impacted occupancy rates and staff patterns had been disrupted. They had completed some mystery sales calls and had concerns about how their homes were represented to potential clients: Enquiries were handled in an inconsistent way,…