Professional Services Journal

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6 Questions You Absolutely Need Answers to for Sales Success

Ever know anyone who you knew could do something but still didn’t do it?

We know a lot of people who could succeed in sales – they have the knowledge, they have the skills, and they know the process, but they don’t actually succeed because something else is holding them back.

Our most recent book is Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation. If you think the book is about how to succeed in sales conversations with prospects and buyers, you’re right. (Did the title give it away?) But it’s not only about conversations with prospects.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

People connect with people. So why would anyone want to follow a company in Facebook? Many companies use Facebook as an opportunity to interact with customers and prospects. Companies with a lot of interactions on their Facebook pages do more than just talk about company news and latest blog posts.

Previous Dilemma: How do you get around the ‘bad economy’ excuse?

Belt-tightening. Scaling-down. Cutbacks. Prospects often use the economy as an excuse not to buy, but in reality, there’s always a need for our services, no matter the economic condition.

Planning for Success in 2012

As you approach the end of 2011, you’re probably beginning to focus some of your attention on 2012.

Current Dilemma: How do I boost a lazy employee’s work ethic?

Since I have only six employees, just one who isn’t productive can create a problem. I hired Chris right out of college. He lacks commitment, shows up late, misses days and falls behind in his work. None of this fazes him; he thinks it’s OK. On top of that, he takes shortcuts and misses details, [...]

Social Media B2B in Action: IBM

At InternetViZ, we’ve been collaborating with each other for over a decade. And we do this without being in the same room. InternetViZ employees live all over the U.S., including Minnesota, California, Texas and New York. We rely on a variety of online technologies to create, innovate and educate.

Current Dilemma: The gross side of service commissions: sales or profit?

Our star salesman is the best closer I’ve ever seen. We pay him a salary plus commission on gross product sales. He has some pricing latitude. I’ve noticed a fairly stable gross profit percentage on products, but it’s different for services. He’s practically giving away services to get more product sales.

Previous Dilemma: I can’t get no satisfaction

We have a client satisfaction survey to help us ensure we keep our clients happy. It’s been a struggle to get responses, even though the survey asks just a few open- and closed-ended questions. How do we increase response rates? Should we make all of our questions close-ended? Or are there certain questions that yield better responses?

Get Ready for the 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark

As we begin the initial research into our fifth-annual Professional Services (PS) Maturity™ benchmark, the world is at a critical juncture. Many of the political leaders who were in place in 2007 when we first began the PS Maturity™ survey are no longer around.

Building Rapport – The Life of a Salesman

“The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.” — Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

A Tale of Two Family Reunions

I’m a freak of nature. I descend from two very large mid-western farm families. On my mother’s side, the Morse family, there were 11 children. On my father’s side, the Shattuck family, there were 18 children. There were no divorces and remarriages. Both sets of grandparents stayed together for life and their unions produced these 29 children. Family reunions were one of the more interesting parts of my childhood. Both reunions were full of laughter, reminiscing about lost loved ones, softball and horseshoes and hugs. Then … something changed.

The Tenth Commandment:
Continually Learn and Grow

For top performing organizations and top performing services sellers, continually learning and growing is not a nice-to-have, but a mandatory requirement for success. Read to learn about the responsibilities of leadership, services sales managers and individual services sellers to see how they should approach to learning and growing.

Bridge the Sales to Service Gap through the Cloud

Professional services executives understand that accurate, current information about all aspects of your business is critical for decision-making that affects key metrics like utilization, backlog, cash flow and win rate. But if you’re like many professional services organizations, that information lives in four or five — or 10! — different systems (or spreadsheets). Every operational question requires a time-consuming scavenger hunt for answers.