When your shareholders have decided that it is the right time to put your business up for sale, it is very easy to say, "Great, let's sell it to the buyer with the highest valuation." But that would be a mistake. There are several other factors that go into finding the "right" buyer for your business and your specific situation. This article will help you think through those various consideration points and provide some warnings

Do you understand your customer?
If you’re running a sales organization worth its salt, we know you do. And are you well-informed on the challenges your buyers are facing? We bet you’re doing your best to keep up.
But is your sales organization equipped to keep up with these client changes—which we know are making the sales cycle longer, more complicated, and more transactional for most businesses?

Even if you don’t follow politics, you probably know that there is a Presidential Debate this Thursday evening.  Both candidates are preparing for the debate – albeit it differently – and you could say that because the debate will not have a live audience, there are similarities between the debate preparation and the preparation for an important sales presentation to land a big client.

Differentiation often starts with marketing, but it truly comes alive in the selling process. Even if your company’s products and services are superior to all others, this means nothing if you can’t convey that to your buyers. Differentiating in sales is more than a good pitch—you need to differentiate in the right areas, adapt to your buyer’s needs, and build value.

Salesloft is trying to make salespeople's jobs easier with the help of AI. The sales engagement platform is incorporating IBM's Watsonx artificial intelligence into its interface to enhance seller capabilities, the Atlanta-based Inc. 5000 company shared in a press release. IBM's technology offers a "prompt lab" that can summarize meetings or reports, generate insights and takeaways from content like product reviews, and create a customer assistant through a chatbot template.

As buyers, we know how much the digital-first world has transformed buying behavior. It isn’t just the volume of choice. It’s unrestricted access to seller information, without actually having to rely on the seller for it. This has put B2B sellers in quite a tough spot. Now, sellers have an even smaller window and shorter opportunity to make an impact on their prospects.

Succeeding in sales isn’t just about learning how to get someone to buy what you’re selling. Success also requires a strong sense of resilience. Specifically, resilience in the face of frequent rejection. But how? Most non-sales folks avoid rejection at all costs. The best sellers, meanwhile, must embrace rejection, as a stepping stone to their goals.

Whether you’re going into a job interview or trying to strike a deal with a new client, negotiating better terms can feel intimidating. While some people are good at asking for more, many are not. For example, recent data from the Pew Research Center found that 60% of U.S. adults don’t ask for higher pay when offered a position.

Some of my long-term problems had such simple solutions. If only I had thought of the obvious solutions first. For example: For decades, I could not drive for much longer than two to two and a half hours before my eyes would get so heavy that I risked falling asleep at the wheel. Day or night, year after year, all of our trips were based on how far I might have to drive. And then I discovered the solution. Sunglasses.

Persuasion is not a speech, it’s a process — a process of learning about your audience, earning their trust, and building a case that takes into account their interests. These skills are important in any situation, and essential in times of limited resources

This is a real question and answer from Teaching Startup, where members (startup leaders) ask questions about building and growing their business, and the answers are published in a members-only newsletter so that all members can benefit.

We’re all familiar with the aphorism that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But just because the economy ticks down, doesn’t mean your business has to do the same. Plenty of organizations increase revenue, expand margins, and launch new products successfully in challenging economic times. In this piece, the author offers three strategies to help your sales organization succeed during a downturn

A survey by Bain and Google of 1,208 people at U.S. companies who are involved in buying software, cloud hosting, hardware, telecommunications, logistics, marketing, and industrial equipment revealed a set of misconceptions among sellers about how buyers behave. Sellers don’t realize that 90% of buyers choose a vendor that was on a short list at the beginning of the sales process; they focus too much on high-level decision-makers, underestimating the number of people inside the buying company who have influence; they rely too much on digital channels, neglecting physical selling; and they don’t realize how much the product demonstration factors into buyers’ decisions

Big changes are happening with B2B buyers. They are acting like B2C buyers. They want an Amazon-like buying experience, and they aren’t afraid to walk away from a purchase if they don’t get it. Traditional B2B selling practices are no longer effective with today’s digital buyers. If companies in that space want to compete, their sales teams need to take a hard look at their systems and processes.

Compared with other business functions, sales has a tendency to be less adaptable. At many companies, sales process remain the same for long periods of time. Now, as digitization changes the way many customers buy, sales teams need to evolve continuously. Four practices can help with this shift: Anticipate where customers are going, redeploy resources to match customer behavior, shift emphasis from closing sales to helping customers realize value, and embracing agile decision-making.

The past two years haven’t been easy—they’ve shown that true disruption is forced on businesses, not chosen. While every industry, company, and team has been disrupted in some way, no other aspect of the business world has been more affected by disruption than sales teams. Whether it’s growing customer expectations, labor shortages, digital transformations, or market uncertainty, sales professionals are facing more pressure than ever. But there is a solution: creating a connected sales organization.

OK, your sales process isn't working. Now what? Change it. Change anything and everything. There are a billion reasons why you don't sell a product, and when it's a new product, it's a baby-step-and-learn process. There's just no other way.

But there is a list of potential weak points that you, as a leader, can focus on, so you're not wasting time running down dead-ends.

Power Boats? The 10 fastest in the world reach speeds of up to 317 MPH.

Salespeople tend to be in a rush to present - before an opportunity is even qualified. Most salespeople are in such a hurry that they completely skip things like qualifying and discovery. And when salespeople do perform discovery they accept the very first indicator they hear and rush to explain how their product or service addresses that indicator,

A sales process is consultative when the stages and actions align with the customer’s buying experience and are defined in terms of the customer relationship. It's only successful when sales leadership and the sales force execute with dedication and competence. That's why a true consultative sales framework has both a process component and a human component. Let's dig into each.

Every business has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in one way or another. Employees getting sick, a rapid shift to remote work, labor shortages, and supply chain issues are just a few of the challenges companies have dealt with these last two years.

Just as businesses have changed, so must sales. If you're not making changes in your sales processes, you're probably leaving money on the table.