Enter 2022 and we will have B2B marketers witnessing a range of technology trends. The overarching principle driving these changes is that the customer demands a lot more. The growing competition and race for profitability amidst the pandemic have put the customer in the driving seat. The old paradigm of leading the customer is gradually being phased out, favoring a new one — follow the customers and cater to their requirements.

Whether you call them New Year’s resolutions or goals, many of us are setting action items to help us improve in 2022. Scrolling through LinkedIn recently, I saw several sales leaders sharing their goals. One common theme: They want to empower their sales teams to succeed.

My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed?

Games take longer, there is role specialization, starting pitchers rarely complete games, hitters are stronger, pitchers routinely throw in the mid 90's and there is a trend towards either hitting a home run or striking out. But it's still baseball. It is still played the same way. The changes are superficial.

It seems after four decades of talk about the “consultative” or “solution” sales approach, companies would be adept at selling this way by now. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: Many sales professionals struggle to move beyond pitching their products or services to providing solutions that are connected to customer business outcomes.

In business, longevity matters. Overnight success stories aside, starting and building a business that lasts takes time. Time to develop a great team of outstanding employees. Time to make lasting connections, forge lasting partnerships, and build long-term relationships with loyal customers.

Uncovering motivation in the workplace is something all organizations should strive for. If you truly understand what drives your employees, you can help them engage more fully in their work and make their work environment as positive and productive as it can be.

Do this using The 12 Driving Forces. This assessment measures why a person does what they do. It measures the motivation (and strength) behind behaviors, using 6 different motivators.

‘Just in time’ manufacturing has become next to impossible in a period of supply chain disruption and material shortages. In the same way, organisations can no longer take a ‘just in time’ approach to talent acquisition during a period of talent scarcity. It’s time to get creative about how you recruit, retain and reskill your people.

In my experience as a consultant who has transformed 16 companies, and as an entrepreneur who has built or bought almost as many of my own enterprises, I’ve learned that managers and leaders often miss one crucial point about emotional intelligence (“EQ”): EQ requires intolerance for the intolerable just as much as it requires empathy.

As many of us continue to work from home, it’s natural to form new habits and mindsets to navigate a new way of working. While some of these behaviors may feel helpful in the moment, they may not serve you well as we consider life post-pandemic.

The amount of product and service information available to B2B customers—reports, blogs, display ads, email marketing, and more—has become overwhelming, leading to indecision and a sharply reduced likelihood of making a substantive purchase.

The best reps have turned this conundrum into a prime selling opportunity. Above all else, they help buyers make sense of the information they’ve encountered. Their approach is a form of sensemaking, and it encompasses three broad activities.

Your sales team is the backbone of your business. I can imagine that you’d like to increase their sales revenue consistently month by month. With sales coaching you can tangibly improve your sales team’s output with focused goals you’d like to achieve. At Predictable Revenue, we believe it’s one of the most valuable investments you can make in your business.

"Embrace customer complaints" is probably a cringe-worthy idea to some of you. The thought of negative feedback may trigger something inside of you that frankly, makes you want to crumble up all the papers on your desk or just throw your laptop against the wall. Wait, please, help is on the way.

At my company, we LOVE to get negative feedback. It's rare and candidly, if there was a lot, maybe my team wouldn't embrace it as much. My company is able to do well even though we don't have a gold standard service method like The Ritz-Carlton hotel or follow ten core values like Zappos.

Receiving a request for proposal (RFP) can be a great opportunity to grow your business.

But, for a lot of business owners, RFPs are complicated, overwhelming, and downright terrifying.

In this article, we’ll give you 11 practical tips to improve your business proposal writing skills and show you exactly what to do the next time an RFP lands in your inbox.

When they say that "the customer is always right", they might just have a point.

In Singapore, a survey conducted by U.S.-based experience management company has revealed that offering poor customer service experiences can lose businesses a crazy amount of revenue – to the tune of US$11 billion per year, in fact.

I surveyed 53 sales managers, asking them (among other things) what essential skills their top-performing salespeople possess. Okay, it wasn’t an actual survey.

However, our team at Sales Readiness Group (SRG) recently completed rolling out a sales training program from a large sales organization, and I was reviewing my notes from interviews with frontline sales managers as part of the customization process.

Virtual work—with its benefits and drawbacks—is not new. But its pace accelerated at a dizzying rate in 2020. Now, people don’t want to return to the office. That doesn’t mean they can’t be committed and productive through astute virtual leadership. Ensuring such leadership should become a key priority for organizations.

The business world has arguably seen more disruption in the last nine months than in the last nine years, bringing new and urgent demand for change. Initiatives are being launched by the dozen, adoption can’t happen fast enough, and the stakes are higher than ever. In the midst of a Covid-induced recession, and with some industries on the brink of extinction, change isn’t about fine-tuning — it’s existential.

Microsoft’s chief executive officer, Satya Nadella, often speaks of how his career — and his company — have been shaped by empathy. Nadella views empathy as a quality to be consciously cultivated, practiced and applied — “not just as something nice to have but (it) is core to (the) innovation agenda in the company,” according to a Quartz India article. In addition, he believes empathy can be a differentiator when working with clients.

There is no doubt that coaching is an effective tool for developing people and teams. Research shows that training and coaching can lead to an 88% increase in productivity, versus 23% from training alone, and an organization’s return on investment (ROI) in training increases from 22% to 88% when supported with coaching. The question is, how do you use coaching in your organization to really make a difference?

From time to time, I help clients recruit for key roles. Unlike recruiters, I don't work on a contingency because I take responsibility for the entire recruiting process from soup to nuts and then the client makes the decisions on who to hire. They pay a fee for services. I specify the requirements, write the job postings, attract and source candidates, take the initial application, get them through Objective Management Group's (OMG) accurate and predictive candidate assessments, review resumes, conduct the first interview and then recommend candidates who are perfect fits for the roles.