As I work with clients, over and over I hear their difficulty finding new customers and their desire for assistance with lead generation. As I have worked through this, I have had a realization. What if I gave them 20 new accounts? What if it is 50 new accounts? How about 100 new accounts? How…

This is a period of unprecedented disruption for all of us. There is disruption in our business lives.  There is also disruption and perhaps hardship in our personal lives. Some businesses are finding themselves quite busy while others have had the rug pulled out from under them. I offer a few thoughts for those that…

We are facing an unprecedented level of disruption in our personal and business lives.  It is easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the event and it is easy to feel like it might never end. How do you keep going?  It may not feel like it right now but this will end.  Life…

It is great to have a hobby.  It gives you the opportunity to disconnect from your working life as well as opening up the possibility of creating new avenues of learning and inspiration.  I am rather involved in the world of War of 1812 re-enacting.  For myself, it has proven to be the ultimate escape…

Have you been considering a social selling initiative? Why should this be a consideration?  In short, traditional means of outreach, marketing and advertising are quickly losing relevance.  This is not where your potential buyers are looking for insights and options. In a previous blog post I shared information on the changing B2B buyer and how…

I was recently reading an article on the cost of customer acquisition as compared to customer retention. (You can see the article here: retention).  Some quick fun facts:  It costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current customer! 44% of companies are more focused on acquiring new customers as…

What does the sidewalk in front of my home have in common with a pub in London, England? Answer:  both are places where I recently had enlightening conversations around business to business sales. Sidewalk: This seems a strange place to discuss sales strategies.  Perhaps not so strange when you consider that my neighbour has worked…

I have spent a lot of time looking at sales processes and sales methodologies in the Business to Business (B2B) space. In a previous blog post I shared information on the changing B2B buyer and how they preferred not to interact with a sales representative and how they would rather do research on their own.…

Sales Process vs. Sales Methodology. Both are extremely important. Both are critical to setting your sales strategy.​Both are often misunderstood, miscategorized or missing!Sales Process Every company engaged in selling should define a sales process.  Most do not have one, do not recall all the steps/stages or it is the knowledge of very few in their…

In my corporate life I had managed a Canadian business.  I had three sales teams, a national account team and a national distribution account team. The business environment was fast paced, intense and very consuming.Where was most of my time spent?  It feels like (and I believe it to be the case) in internal meetings,…