Sales Myth: #5 – Trade Shows Are Lead Generators

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Feb 182012
 

Many people, sometimes even experienced sales guys think that trade shows are a great place to generate new leads and sometimes even to win customers. This myth is fed by the media headlines, in which big deals at trade shows are announced (as this certainly makes better news than just announcing there was a show with some exhibiting companies and some visitors). Also, long time ago back in history, trade shows (they weren’t called like that then) used to be indeed the only market place where buyers and sellers could come together. And, especially smaller companies sometimes seem to think, trade shows are the only way of making themselves visible to the outside world. All … Read more

Sales Myth: #4 – Customer Loyalty Is Important

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Jul 242011
 

Especially service providers invest a lot of money in customer loyalty programs, assuming that long-term customers are good for the company. Because of that myth, customer churn and customer retention have become key performance indicators with service providers; budgets and resources are allocated based on those figures and most marketing campaigns are set with the goal to keep customers as long as possible with the company’s services. This paradigm is so strong and unchallenged, it seems worthwhile to have a look at how well all this loyalty money is really spent. While it is certainly important to keep paying customers that contribute revenues to your company, this post focuses on the profitability that long-term customers … Read more

Sales Myth: #3 – Customer Acquisition Is More Expensive Than Retention

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Feb 132011
 

Everyone in Sales (and probably everyone in business) has heard the truism that customer acquisition is three times more expensive than customer retention. That is such a high-level statement, it is hard to say what it relates to and what to take out of it (by the way, if any of you readers knows the origin of this myth, please let us know and comment on this article). Costs for customer-related expenses in such a comparison can only be accounted in total, meaning for the entire customer lifecycle, or per customer transaction or purchase. 1.       Total Customer Lifecycle Let’s first look at this from the high-tech sales perspective: Presales time in high-tech sales is usually … Read more

Sales Myth: #2 – Sales Should Always Be With The Customer

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Jul 032010
 

We all heard it many times, “sales people should mainly be out there, on the road, with the customer”. Well, this might be true if you sell insurances for consumers or ice-cream in a little kiosk or so. If you are in large ticket, project-based high-tech Sales, it is a little different. Face-to-face meetings are only one way of communicating with the customer, besides telephone and email. Meeting the customer face-to-face is only required if: You need to add a social or emotional component. That is usually required in the beginning of the sales cycle in order to build trust and a personal relationship with the prospect. It can also be necessary later in convincing … Read more

Sales Myth: #1 – Contacts Are Key

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May 222010
 

The stupidest question I ever got in a job interview came from a CEO (who is not CEO anymore but that might be for other reasons) asking me: “So, who do you know, who can you call tomorrow and sell my product to?” Yeah, right… all what Sales is about, is knowing people, the rest is easy. Well, everyone in high-tech Sales knows that this not true. It’s a myth for anyone with no sales experience and especially in start-ups that one of the key challenges in Sales is to know the right people in the targeted customer organization. To understand the meaning of contacts, let’s again have a look at the sales process, for … Read more