We hope you’ll read this and share this.

It’s a unique occasion when we get to step back from the day-to-day of supporting our members’ decisions and reflect on where we believe the world of sales is headed. In 2011, the SEC had thousands of interactions with sales executives around the globe, held dozens of conferences and intimate roundtable discussions with leading CSOs, and examined hundreds of thousands data points.

Given this, we’d like to share the fundamental shifts we expect to play out in increasingly significant ways in 2012.

Granted, it’s not a MECE list – there is overlap and implications shared throughout these trends, but we hope you’ll take a minute and reflect on how these trends are manifesting in your own organization, disagree if appropriate, and highlight trends you expect to see that we missed. It’s meant to be a reflective, but fun list. We look forward to your input! Read More »

For fourteen years the SEC has carefully tracked what distinguishes best-in-class sales excellence. In all those years and across all the various research we’ve conducted, a relatively precise set of standards has risen to the top.

Chief among these many standards is the degree to which sales teams effectively challenge their customers to think about their business in fundamentally new ways. That, we believe (and our extensive data tell us),  is the best predictor of sales success.

To help our members assess just how well they truly challenge their customers, we’ve built a new tool: The Anatomy of a World-Class Challenger Selling Model. This tool helps management teams assess their current state of practice against what we have come to understand as best practice.

Here’s a glimpse into some of the criteria… see how your organizations stacks up: Read More »

By Andrew Kent

It’s been a long time coming, but a moment of truth for Sales is finally here—it’s Trend #7 from our Ten Trends Every Sales Exec Must Know in 2011.  Simply put, a mass extinction of sales reps who sell on features and benefits is about to take place in 2011.  Every seller who wants to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs must make one New Year’s resolution his top priority in 2011: to stop selling on product features, and start challenging customers.

Every day, more and more members tell us that their number one priority is “commercial teaching through Challenger sales reps.”   And it’s easy to see why: features and benefits selling—that is, a pitch that leads with the supplier’s product rather than with the customer’s business—no longer works.  Indeed, customers tell us loud and clear that insight delivered during the sales experience is 40% more important than product, company, brand, and service delivery combined.

It’s a lesson most of us know deep down is true, but it’s still a hard one to swallow: Customers believe your brand and products are good… but they believe your competitors’ brand and products are pretty good too.  In a world where most companies’ product features look pretty much the same, reps who sell on those features will be left competing on the one feature that is different and easy to quantify: price.

Moreover, the availability of information on the Internet means most customers have already researched our products, as well as competitors’, before we knock on the door.  And we don’t win many sales by educating customers about products on which they’ve already educated themselves.  Only reps who can reframe customers’ assumptions about what they need will succeed. Read More »

By Andrew Kent

Take a close look at your standard pitch deck, the “about us” section on your corporate home page, or your PR material.  Highlight every instance of the words “leading,” “unique,” “solution,” or “innovative.”  And especially find all instances of the phrase “we work to understand our customers’ unique needs and then build custom solutions to meet those needs.”  Then hit the delete key.  Because every time you use one of those buzzwords, you are telling your customers, “we are exactly the same as everyone else.”

See, unlike Journey, you and your competitors aren’t “worlds apart.”

The more we try to play up our differences, the more things sound the same.  PR expert Adam Sherk recently analyzed the 98 most common sales, marketing, and PR buzzwords used in company communications, and the results are hilarious and devastating.  Here are the top 10:

It’s eye-opening, really.  By definition, there can be only one leader in any industry—and 205,900 companies all think they’re it.  75,500 companies think they’re the “best” or the “top.”  30,400 think they’re “unique.”  “Solution” also makes an appearance at #7—so if you think that calling your offering a “solution” differentiates you, think again.

So if everyone’s saying they’re the leading solution, what does the customer think?  “Great—give me 10% off.”  Read More »

No matter who I talk to around the world, I hear the same thing:  2010 is about a return to growth.

For many of us, the dark days of 2009, frankly, were a world where flat was the new up, and survival was success.  Heading into the next 12-18 months, however, no one is likely to get a second round of forgiveness for turning in a flat performance. 

I often quote the head of sales at a global manufacturing company who simply told his sales force this year, “In 2010, it’s not OK, not to grow.” Period.

But for many sales organizations, that emphatic message isn’t backed by clear direction.  Sure, we want to grow, but how do we do it?  And what I’m finding is, this year, more than most, sales leaders are “placing the customer first.”

The term “customer centricity” is back this year in a dramatic fashion.  The idea being, if we want to grow in 2010, we’re going to have to ensure that everything we do delivers maximum customer value.

But what exactly does it mean?  What should we actually do?  And more importantly, how do we do it in a way that drives growth?

After all, there are several ways to be customer centric that are actually bad for business—discounts, terms, and conditions which undermine profitability in exchange for little long-term gain.

To answer those questions, we surveyed over 5,000 individuals across Council members’ customer organizations—c-suite executives, end users, procurement officers, key influences, you name it—and we found one conclusion in particular to be consistently true regarding what customers value most in a supplier.    Read More »