With all the advances in sales technology and analytics, you would expect sales teams to have all the data they need about each sales opportunity to accurately forecast sales.  However, that isn’t the case.  Research by Bohanec, Kljajic Borstnar and Robnik-Sikonja in the study “Integration of machine learning insights into organizational learning, A case of B2B sales forecasting” found that: ...

See why Gartner recognized TopOPPS in the Gartner CRM Vendor Guide, 2016! ...

I’d have to say I agree with 99.9% of the insights in Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson’s book, “The Challenger”, but not all of it. ...

As an experienced sales person you can always spot a rookie rep on a bad sales call. They have a lack of confidence in their voice, unprepared answers to the most common objections and then there is the epic meltdown: a 15 minute uninterrupted sales monologue. The client will try to interject, but there is no stopping this locomotive. The rookie will continue to spew out unnecessary information until they run out of breath. This is what we call “word vomit”. ...

The search for the perfect balance between what your sales people say and what the data in your CRM reflects reminds me of reading about Ponce de Leon’s 16th century search for the Fountain of Youth. Expeditions were provisioned and  ships set sail for the new world, but despite great effort and expense, the fountain remained elusive and ultimately undiscovered. ...

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July 3, 2014 ...