If I tell you cholesterol, what do you think? What if I tell you Pareto? Do you follow me? Not really? Let me explain: the 80/20 rule is very useful in sales and customer segmentation. This principle reminds us that 80% of the results can often be attributed to 20% of the efforts made. And that not all customers are the same… some are more like bad cholesterol… Invisible, painless at the time but formidable over time. Measuring regularly and separating the good from the bad is therefore highly recommended for your health. Would your company escape this law? If so, then congratulations! You are officially the exception that proves […]
Cross-selling among key accounts? Easier said than done… ! 3 practical tips for progress. And with this, Sir, Madam …. ? Which customer has never heard this famous open question at the baker’s or the market? If it is well put, it is often successful. However, this cross-selling approach, which consists of marketing the part of the company’s offer that is not purchased by the customer, is far from being as natural in B2C as in B2B in complex environments. Indeed, studies on the subject show that up to two thirds of initiatives aimed at developing cross-selling fail, this being largely due to the sales function. This theme is a […]
In his long professional career, a salesperson will go through different cycles and experience various economic environments. Sometimes, the conjuncture plays in their favour; other times, it won’t, making their work much harder (the business is slow, volumes are not up to par… And then, back to good times again. But every 20 to 30 years, something “strange” happens: a change resulting from the gradual piling up of several events that had not occurred for a very long time, as if by miracle. This is called the historical alignment of the planets for the sales force. And this could be the new cycle coming. A sustained global activity First of […]
We hear that selling is an art, that it is innate, that it is a science. In short, selling is convincing someone of something: a meeting, a test, a presentation, a bid, a pilot project, a sale, a contract. Behind all this, we talk about skills, and in 2022, skills are what we need more. The skills you need to master will depend not only on the reality of the market but also on your strategy. Here are the points that most influence the skills needed to keep selling to new customers, sell more and retain paying customers. The first point: the relationship between demand and supply. When demand outweighs […]
When I talk about data and artificial intelligence with sales managers, they often look at me with wide eyes. Is this really for me? What does that mean? It’s all too abstract for most of them. Yet, like Sir Shakespeare with words, salespeople have been using data for a long time. I’ve always seen good salespeople taking some time analyzing their statistics and customer lists; actually, this is how they get ready for the hunt. Today technology (i.e. digital tools, big data, artificial intelligence) allows going “faster, higher, stronger”. 1) Data & artificial intelligence are incredible boosters of sales performance Customer loyalty, customer conquest, data and artificial intelligence can boost […]
Today, exports of goods and services represent between 25 and 30% of the world’s GDP. When a company decides to expand internationally, 2 strategies, which can be complementary, are available: to establish itself locally in the target countries through a subsidiary and/or to market its offer via a network of local distributors, then led by an Area Manager. A role as an indirect sales facilitator It is this posture of animator that best defines that which the Area Manager must adopt in his daily relationship with his network of partners. A commercial relationship based on trust, of course, but above all on a distribution contract whose conditions will have been […]
In behavioral training such as sales and management training, “blended learning” has already become an accepted idea, a convention, not to say sometimes “a pie in the sky”. Sequencing learning, learning in bite-sized chunks, alternating distance and face-to-face, individual and group, tutored and untutored. At the beginning of the pandemic, many still thought that nothing would replace face-to-face training, especially for “soft skills” training. After two years of almost forced distance learning, it’s almost the opposite, judging by the explosion of offers and uses of online coaching solutions (and even coaches). A bit like the sales managers surveyed by Mac Kinsey in several countries have shifted in their opinion in […]