We have started a ELAvate Sales Success Podcast with our senior consultant Abhilash Sivaramam and the podcast we recorded today discussed the evolution of the Asian B2B customer and the impact it has on your salespeople’s productivity. This discussion with Abhi motivated me to scour the web and AI platforms to garner significant research on how B2B sales environment is changing across the globe. Let’s look at what I found and a solutions for each to improve your sales team success

How well you inspire trust with your B2B customers can be your competitive advantage or kill the sale. Effectively building trust leads to healthy long term customer relationships that is a win for both you and your customer. With customers limiting their “exposure” to salespeople, quickly establishing trust is a must to move the sales process forward.  Dale Carnegie research states 81% of customers are more likely to buy again from a salesperson they trust.

ELAvate has partnered with Senior Consultant Abhilash Sivaraman and CEO Michael Griffin to launch a bi-weekly podcast series, "Selling in Asia." This lively visual and audio discussion will focus on sales success for salespeople and managers, drawing on Abhilash's 20+ years of global sales experience and Michael's 30+ years in sales productivity consulting in Asia. This series complements our existing Sales e-zines and blogs.

Most sales training focuses on skill and process and glosses over attitude and motivation. I have experienced the power of Jeffrey Gitomer sales books and sales training by the unique way he creates sales success by synergizing selling skills, process, attitude and will power to succeed. Jeffrey has inspired me for over 15 years to excel in selling and sales training to exceed my client expectations in delivering world class sales that gets real ROI.

In my previous blog on “Sales Plasticity” I highlighted how ability & adaptability lead to agility. The “high octane” fuel for having super sales agility is “resilience.” I learned this in the mid-80s in Malaysia as a road race cyclist under the guidance of the National Cycling Coach Ng Joo Ngan. He is a master coach who motivates his cyclists to win races with agility & resilience. Over the past 40 years as National Coach, he has coached Malaysian cyclists to 59 gold medals in international events.

Plasticity in sales involves the Four A’s of attitude, ability, adapting, and agility. How might you increase your plasticity in selling to be more successful and create win-win solutions for you and your customers? I believe it first begins with consistency of attitude to learn and grow in the ability to practice and refine your core selling skills and processes that you master to sell and exceed customer expectations.

Mike’s Note: Rain Group has produced some very interesting research on the perception gaps found between salespeople and their customers. The research should cause every sales manager to investigate how big are the perception gaps between their customers and salespeople! I have summarized the key findings here and I make suggestions on how you can close these sales competency gaps with your sales people.

Over my 30 plus years of consulting on sales productivity and training sales teams, I have observed over and over that the top performing sales managers have positive attitudes that motivate sales teams to meet and exceed revenue or customer retention goals. Gone are the days where sales managers can just “sit in their chairs.” Today’s younger salespeople require a sales manager that is active in supporting their achievement of exceeding their sales KPI’s.

Mike’s Holiday Note: An interesting comparison of three Gen AI answers to the prompt from ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. I have added two other Gen AI prompts called “Perplexity” and, “Gemini”: from Google. As you read these prompts, choose which strategies you find useful to keep your sales organization competitive. 7 minutes read.

Over the past 30 years I have observed and coached very successful B2B salespeople. Here are my observations on what characteristics, or competence, a world class B2B salesperson has to have to consistently win and exceed sales revenue targets.

Mike’s Note: I am on holiday through May and will reduce my workload by giving you sales blogs from authors that I have found to provide good solid sales productivity research. This blog by Rain Group is a comprehensive checklist to prepare you for advancing your key accounts. I have added my input to make this checklist more effective. Use this menu of questions to drive your strategy and planning around growing key accounts.

Mike’s note: With all the hype around AI, it can be difficult to discern how to move forward to employ it for greater sales team productivity. This blog from Insight clearly outlines the strategy and actions to take if you are using MS Dynamics 365 sales. I also believe Copilot can be linked to the competing Salesforce platform. I salute Anna and Joe for their blog clarity! May it help you to create your company’s path to becoming more efficient using AI and Copilot.

Who is your “Revenue Team?” It is the alignment and collaboration of your Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service teams who unified to enhance customer loyalty and drive revenue. Sadly, these three departments many times act as independent silos. Marketing many times thinks they are above and superior to the sales team, and customer service teams avoid any activity that may label them as connected to sales.

We are all a bit overwhelmed by the hype of AI and this seminar may be a good opportunity for you to sift through the hype and gain insights on how you can use AI in sales and business productivity. This seminar is on March 14th 2024 in Singapore. The value to you as an attendee.

Mike’s Intro Note: Recently, I consulted with a Japanese multinational to help them set up a Win – Loss report and process. Transparent win–loss reporting can assist marketing to analyze wins and losses to better formulate effective marketing support for sales managers to coach their salespeople to win more deals. This recent article from Tim Riesterer is very informative on how to coach your salespeople win more deals. Read on!

This week’s ELAvate sales blog is a departure from normal. I thought I would share with you two overviews on the spread and impact of AI across the world. You have probably garnered that you as a sales manager or salesperson need to upskill yourself on using AI to up your personal productivity and for sales and marketing research purposes. The first infographic I want to share is the usage of different AI platforms across the world.

Mike’s Note: A good article to set your 2024 on a solid, positive foundation. We salespeople tend to be a bit unbalanced always focusing on our need to achieve our sales targets. This can lead to a stressful life and less than ideal relationships with family, friends and community. This year try getting back to basics as Dr. Mark Berin outlines in this refreshing blog from “Greater Good Magazine.” I have added some of my insights to this blog.

B2B Sales managers across Asia have one of the toughest jobs in any organization. You and I need to motivate, coach and manage the performance of very valuable individualistic self-starting people who can make or break your organization’s revenue goals in 2024. Let me give you some simple yet practical ideas to boost your own leadership and sales coaching to inspire your salespeople to new levels of performance.

How was your life in 2023? What did you achieve? Did you grow and nurture healthy relationships? How was your stress and enjoyment levels in your daily life? Were you leading a balanced life? Any failing forward? I have found most salespeople try to balance their lives by placing their sales target on one end of life see saw and on the other end family, health, hobbies, and what appear to be less important aspects of life.

Jeffrey Gitomer says “If you can’t ask good questions, you will never be successful in sales!” Salespeople need not be just good talkers, but good communicators. This means their ability to ask good insightful, relevant questions to listen to the customer is crucial. Most companies train salespeople in product knowledge and basic selling skills but brush over their ability to ask questions/ probes in a structured way to fully understand customer problems, and needs that link to your solutions.