19 Posts Found

To understand where to focus on your sales operations transformation journey, start by asking yourself and your organization a few simple questions:

• How much of your sales resources are in sales-support roles versus front-line sellers and sales managers?
• To what degree is your sales-operations function centralized or dispersed by customer segment, business unit, or region?
• What are the metrics and reports you use for sales-performance management activities?

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Bertil Chappuis, Brian Selby | Source: Looking Beyond Technology to Drive Sales Operations | Subject: Sales Questions

1. How urgent?
2. How frequent?
3. How complex?
4. How mobile-driven?
5. How profitable?

Author: Willy Braun | Source: The (Ultimate) Guide for Marketplace Analytics | Subjects: Customer Questions, Sales Questions

Are you asking your prospects the wrong questions?  When most sales reps are developing a B2B sale, they limit questioning to generic issues like which products the prospect is currently using.  Here’s a better idea: ask questions that reveal if the prospect is truly qualified to buy and how the buying decision will be made.

Here are ten sample questions, adapted from material provided by Keith … [ Read more ]

Authors: Geoffrey James, Keith Rosen | Source: 10 Tough Questions to Ask Prospects | Subject: Sales Questions

1. Do you offer a clear message and value?
2. Have you established Trust & Credibility?
3. Have you answered all the main objections?
4. Have you addressed the emotional “ownership” of the sale?
5. Have you substantiated your claims?
6. Have you made the next steps clear?
7. Could you have said the same thing in a 1/3 of the words?

Author: Bryan Eisenberg | Source: Optimizing Website & Landing Page Copy – A 10 Step Process | Subjects: Marketing Questions, Sales Questions

Look at the customer requirement and ask searching questions about why the customer will buy from a business point of view. Here is a checklist.

• What is the customer’s business objective for this campaign?
• What critical success factors declared by the customer does this campaign address?
• What benefits both tangible and intangible will the customer derive form a successful implementation?
• What are the rough costs of all the

… [ Read more ]

Author: Ken Langdon | Source: Step-by-Step – Sales Campaigning | Subjects: Customer Questions, Sales Questions

1. How many different sales forces should we have?
2. How should they be structured and staffed?
3. What degree of specialization is needed?
4. What is the appropriate mix of in-house and outsourced activities?
5. What resource levels should be dedicated to each sales force?
6. What determines the boundaries between the sales forces?

Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, Benson P. Shapiro, Stephen X. Doyle | Source: Strategic Sales Management: A boardroom issue | Subject: Sales Questions

1. How does this individual perceive the problem I intend to solve?
2. What is the pithy summary of my idea that will appeal to this person?
3. What roles does this person play in the decision-making process?
4. What is my goal for this encounter?
5. What is the basis for my credibility

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Marketing Questions, Sales Questions

• What can you tell me about your organization… and yourself?
• What do you like about what you’re currently doing?
• What don’t you like about your current situation?
• What would you like to be enhanced or improved?
• What can you tell me about your priorities?
• What prompted you to start this project now?
• What can you tell me about your decision-making process?
• How do you

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• What percentage of your sales presentation/proposal is devoted to describing your company and your solution?
• What percentage of your sales presentation/proposal is devoted to describing your customer’s business, their problems and objectives?
• How well do customers understand their own problems?
• How much of your presentation is focused on persuading and convincing?
• How well can your customers connect your solutions to their business situation?

Source:
The Presentation … [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• Do you know who your most profitable customers are and why? Or who the most valuable prospects are? Does your sales team spend the majority of their time focused on the highest value targets?
• Is your value proposition compelling and relevant for the highest-value segments?
• Do you tailor your selling approach and offering only by customer size and geography, or also by customer value?
• Is your sales

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

Who?
A few excellent “who” questions you might consider using in order to convert “suspects” into highly qualified prospects are:

• Who has the most obvious need for your products or services?
• Who are the ideal prospects? Don’t limit yourself to existing customers.
• Who has the money to buy your products or services immediately?
• Who has the most urgent need to buy your products?
• Who has influence on

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• What types of mistakes do customers tend to make while making this kind of decision? Make sure the decision process avoids these mistakes.
• What do customers most frequently overlook or not consider? Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.
• What are the most difficult things for a customer to understand? Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.
• What must a customer understand to reach

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

Here are six of the most important criteria you can use to evaluate your sales effectiveness.
Does my sales team

1. Consistently meet or exceed revenue and margin goals?
2. Focus on selling the company’s existing products and services and minimize one-offs?
3. Enter accurate and timely sales data into the company’s SFA/CRM systems?
4. Know the competition in-depth and how to differentiate our company and its products and/or services from

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

Defining the Opportunity

1. How do you determine acquisition cost objectives for your sales and marketing activities?
• We have a clear understanding of the lifetime value of our customers derived from historical data. Based on the LTV, we use financial models to create an acquisition cost target that will generate acceptable profit.
• We have an intuitive idea of the acceptable acquisition cost range.
• We do not

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• Who am I selling to today?
• Why are they buying anything?
• What do I have to sell them?
• Why should they buy from me?

Source:
A New Marketing Bill of Materials
by Tim Riesterer
MarketingProfs.com, September 9, 2003

Subject: Sales Questions

• Have you established a program that will recruit the people you want rather than carbon copies of the people you have?
• Do you have experienced reps on the frontline and change agents at the top?
• Is your sales compensation system congruent with your enterprise´s economics?
• Do you review sales force size regularly, particularly with regard to whether the force is flexible enough to handle channel shifts, market changes,

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• What’s the nature of a customer’s need for my service or product? Under what circumstances will customers require my service or product? How often will they need me?
• How many ways is it possible for my customers to perceive risk? Is this risk confined to the service or product? Does it apply to the transaction process?
• What do potential customers already know about my service or product?

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

• What types of mistakes do customers tend to make while making this kind of decision? Make sure the decision process avoids these mistakes.
• What do customers most frequently overlook or not consider? Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.
• What are the most difficult things for a customer to understand? Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.
• What must a customer understand to reach a

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions

Even the most seasoned sales veterans sometimes struggle to get more than a few questions into the process of general discovery before quickly trying to push products. To improve your success in this area, break those discovery questions down into four subcategories:

• Marketing questions: How do you go to market? How do you distinguish yourself from your competitors? What are your biggest competitive challenges?
• Operational questions:

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Sales Questions