Within sales strategies, the use of BANT—an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need and Timing—has been around for decades. Salespeople throughout the world memorize this acronym and mentally run through it whenever qualifying an opportunity, and sales management routinely preach it so that salespeople will remember it. Within each of these four elements, however, there is ... Read Post

As we have discussed in recent blog posts, there are numerous levels to qualifying a sale. There is the basic fundamental of a buyer or other person at a company interested in your product or service. There is the fact of the budget being available or not. Moving up a bit further, there is gathering ... Read Post

Sales Pipeline management is best conducted with heavy emphasis on fully qualifying opportunities. The better an opportunity is qualified early on in the sales process, the easier the sale is going to go and the less risky it’s going to be. An important part of qualifying opportunities is the understanding and tracking of buyer patterns. ... Read Post

When a raw lead is passed to a sales rep or an inside sales rep, there is often much information missing from it. It usually only has the company name, contact, the contact’s job title, and a phone number and/or email address. A sales rep’s time is valuable, and such sketchy information doesn’t describe the ... Read Post

Christmas is the one time of the year when sales managers and reps can down tools and relax and recuperate. After all, Christmas should be a time for friends and family. But, if 2013 has been a busy year for you, you may want to take the opportunity to catch-up and get ahead. After all, ... Read Post

Within sales strategies, qualifying opportunities is often not given the total attention it deserves. In the past, “qualifying” usually went about as far as, “Do they have the budget?” It has been found over time, however, that the more qualification is done of an opportunity, the better the control the salesperson will have of it. ... Read Post

With Christmas approaching, sales can become a little slow as prospects and customers turn their attention to the festivities and celebrations. But if you’re keen to get a kick-start in 2014, this downtime could prove invaluable to getting ahead. To help, here are five valuable sales-based activities that will give you a key advantage. Which ... Read Post

Forward-thinking companies are realizing that their sales force is actually an entrepreneurship: it is composed of people who act and think as entrepreneurs. If there is a single factor that separates entrepreneurs from the rest of society, it would be that they make their own games. Salespeople may be (and usually are) employed by others, ... Read Post