Technology Business Expert from Intellect and ChangeBEAT

Sales Enablement - It's the Value, Stupid!

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Mon, 5 Jul 2010 16:40:45 +0100

In the last episode we asked "Who murdered sales enablement?" and today we reveal whodunit. Along the way we take a hard look at why it is that so much of the time and money spent on sales tools and marketing collateral actually worsens sales productivity.

As Bill Clinton nearly said "It’s the value, stupid". Or rather, for most technology companies it isn't, because value is like a genie and hard to put in a bottle.

In our war story we tell how a wise sales guru helps an aspiring high flier to learn what value really is.

Sales enablement - Who murdered sales enablement?

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 08:28:30 +0000

A most heinous crime is draining the bank balances of many technology companies and impoverishing their employees. It is the cause of much ill feeling, aggravation and frustration within these companies and of cold indifference from their customers. The crime is that someone has murdered sales enablement and in this episode we ask you to consider the suspects, review case notes and be the judge.

Support - Harvesting Your Oyster Bed

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Mon, 2 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0100

There is so much to like about a well-run support business: positive cash flow, steady profits and happy, loyal customers. But executives sometimes underestimate the potential of the support team also to be a valuable source of new revenue streams, if they are provided with the leadership to work effectively both with colleagues and the customer.

We hear a war story from our own Nick Durrant, that illustrates the hurdles that need to be overcome before the support organisation will achieve its potential, and we provide four hot tips for maximising new business.

So, our questions for you today are: "Are you using your support organisation most effectively to identify and convert new opportunities? Are you efficiently harvesting your oyster bed and gathering up the pearls that lie within?"

Consultative Selling - Convincing and Persuading Executives

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:59:27 +0100

Why is it that some sales professionals are born lucky? Not only do their customers more often make big investments, but for some reason their competitors seem to fade away when the supplier selection is made.

But this is not luck. It is achieved, not with smoke and mirrors, but through expert consultative selling technique: adding value, articulating benefits, and genuinely helping the customer to achieve the rewards at minimum risk.

In this, the third episode on consultative selling, we show how Proud Oscar ensures you help the customer to make beneficial decisions, and sell them without them ever knowing they have been sold.

Account Planning - Wake Up and Smell the Roses!

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:39:53 +0100

Why is it that, according to sales leaders in our top technology companies, over half their sales teams struggle to create a good account plan? In this episode we compare the lot of the humble gardener to the high flying account manager and explore why quick fixes based on tools, such as "ologies" and templates seldom work.

We also tell a war story about Jay, a senior executive, who needed to address this problem, but whose approach fell on stony ground.

"Wake Up and Smell the Roses" gives you a new approach to improving account planning and management to ensure your garden grows.

Support - The pearl in your oyster

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:18:11 +0100

SAP’s 1st quarter results, "licence sales down 33% but support revenues up 18%", show just how support business can be the pearl in your oyster, particularly when new capital is scarce. In this episode we look at how to ensure the fundamentals of the support business are in place, to provide the platform for increased revenues, without the need to sell big capital projects.

We also tell the story of how our own Nick Durrant managed to avoid a hand bagging by a famous prime minister, but still learned a hard lesson about customer support, even as he single handedly saved the Bank of England!

Business Planning - A Business Plan in a Week with a Cherry on Top!

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:24:41 +0100

Sometimes the most important thing about your business plan is that, for whatever reason, you need a brand new one, fast! In this episode we provide you with a way to produce a business plan that will pass muster in a week and still have time to put a cherry on top!

Sales Leadership - Visionaries and Taskmasters

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:17:54 +0000

In this episode we look at the unique pressures and challenges facing perhaps the most important person in any technology organisation, the leader of the sales team. We look at how this special person must balance very conflicting, even contradictory, pressures, and we tell the story of how one sales leader managed to cut sales costs but still grow both the top and bottom line.

Consultative Selling - Unlocking Your Value

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:05:32 +0000

In today’s episode we build on the "The Magic of Proud Oscar" (episode 2) and discuss how the successful sales professional engineers the environment where the customer is willing to allow him or her to add value.

Our question for today is:

* "How well are your sales teams working with your customers to understand their real business issues and to add value in helping them to succeed, overcoming the barriers that customers frequently erect?"

We also tell the sad, sad story of how a very experienced consultative seller paid the price for departing from the Proud Oscar model, and so blew away a fantastic opportunity.

Marketing Strategy - The Right Sized Fish for the Rock Pool

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:45:53 +0000

Any marketing text book will tell you that good marketing strategy is based on clear market focus, and so it is! But in the technology business things are never quite so simple. In this episode we ask you to consider if you have chosen your target market well, or if you should diversify or retrench. We hear the story of one marketeer who, despite following the rules, still cost his company a million bucks. So our questions today are:

* Are you the right sized fish for your rock pool?
* Are you big enough to starve, or small enough to be a tasty snack?

Proposal Production - The Knockout Punch

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 14:00:00 +0000

A proposal document is the shop window of a technology company’s capability, where you encapsulate how you can bring business benefit to the customer better than anyone else. Often what you write isn’t that critical, but there are other times when the quality of the proposal makes all the difference between winning and losing. In today’s episode we ask:

* Can your sales team clearly recognise when you need to pull out the stops and produce a winning proposal document?
* Are you convinced that, when the chips are down, you are fully equipped to produce excellent, knockout proposals?

Qualification - Only Play to Win

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 13:30:00 +0000

When markets are tough there is always a danger that sales professionals pursue "anything that breathes" rather than spending their time developing new prospects and good business you know they can win. So our questions for you today are:

* Are you sure your sales team is spending its valuable time on the right "opportunities"?
* Are you balancing your head and your heart in decisions about where to spend your precious selling time?

In this episode we take a hard look at qualification, how to decide if your sales team should engage, and the decisions you need to take at this critical moment in the sales cycle.

Sales Leadership - A Five-Point Plan for Surviving the Perfect Storm

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

The perfect storm is on us and the R word is all about, but in this episode we give our listeners a five-point leadership plan to keep sales going. We show you how to respond, when the customer’s first instinct is to hoard their cash, and we provide you with a plan for rallying the sales team, giving them the confidence, the tools and the techniques to fight back and grab market share.

We look in particular at Benefits Mapping, a powerful new sales tool to enable you to close your wavering pipeline, generate new opportunities and get back to business!

Change Management - The Four Horsemen of the Technology Business

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Every technology business has its own culture "the way we do things around here" and each is distinctive and notoriously hard to change. But deep in their souls, all technology businesses are shaped by what they sell and who they sell it to. Our questions for you today are:

* Have you really considered how your company culture should change, and the ramifications?
* If you want to climb the value chain, introduce new products or new services, or forge new alliances, how will you overcome the inevitable cultural barriers?

Meet the four horsemen of the technology business, the Fighters, Innovators, Engineers and Partners, and be both forewarned and forearmed.

Risk Assessment - The Cinderella of Team Selling Skills

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Effective and rigorous risk assessment and proposal review is perhaps the single biggest differentiator between well-run, mature and professional technology businesses and, well, let’s just say the rest.

In this episode we ask if you are confident that your sales and delivery teams are working effectively to eliminate rigorously the possibility of customer dissatisfaction and project overruns, or whether they are happier fighting fires and upsetting the customer.

Sales Forecasting - How Not to Annoy the Snake

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:30:00 +0000

Good sales forecasting is the hallmark of a management team who are in control of their business, but nothing is more corrosive to confidence in that team than poor forecasting or nasty surprises.

In this episode we tell two war stories about senior executives who fell foul of the sales forecasting snake in different ways and look at some of the reasons why it is so easy to go wrong.

Business Planning - The Right Plan for the Job and Don't Forget the Pizza

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Have you have really got the right business plan for your purpose? Are you using the business planning process to build a team with a single sense of purpose and a common goal? Nothing is more critical for the leadership of a technology organisation than the vital activity of business planning, building a clear vision with concrete goals and a realistic way of achieving them.

We also tell you the story of how a high flying accountant with a first in maths and an MBA came up with a business plan that would have made his fortune, had he not been bested by an Italian cook.

Project Management - Putting Wizards and Princes to Work

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:30:00 +0000

In this episode we ask you whether you are convinced that you are getting the best possible performance from your delivery organisation and its project management wizards, or if you are having a little pixie dust thrown in your eye.

Technology organisations usually need to deliver projects and so the effectiveness of their delivery organisation can either be a source of great competitive advantage from efficiency and customer satisfaction if all goes well, or of cost and endless aggravation when it does not.

In particular, we address the importance and usefulness of the PM Body of Knowledge and methodologies like PRINCE2. Both are often invoked by the wizards as a panacea but in reality, if not well understood, they can be a big part of the problem.

Sales Campaign Planning - The Battlefield

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:00:00 +0000

How does your sales team compete? Do they fight like veteran generals, with cunning, vigour and ruthless precision? Or do they pose and preen like models on the cat-walk, and pout if not adjudged the most attractive?

In this episode we survey the battlefield where competitive sales campaigns are won and lost, plan how to engage the enemy, select your weapons, acquire vital intelligence and force battle on the ground of your choosing.

Change Management - Don't Provoke The Change Beast

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 09:30:00 +0000

No technology organisation is ever in a position to rest on its laurels for long, so if you are a leader or aspiring professional in the technology business and need to improve your planning, sales, delivery or systems, you are in the business of change, whether you like it or not!

In today’s episode we introduce our favourite subject, change management, and tell a couple of war stories, where executives collided nastily with the Change Beast who gorged himself royally as a result of their inattention and naivety!

Consultative Selling - The Magic of Proud Oscar

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Is your sales team being fully effective, where it matters, in the offices of your customer’s executives? Are they demonstrating the full value and capabilities that your organisation provides, making what they offer highly personal and very relevant?

In this episode of Technology Business Expert we look at consultative, solution or "pull" selling and say what it really is, and what it is not. We also introduce you to PROUD OSCAR, a magical way of selling value to executives that ensures they only go where they want to, but still end up at your door, with their cheque book out!

Introducing - Technology Business Expert

PodcastSupport@ChangeBEAT.com (Podcast support) — Tue, 2 Dec 2008 13:01:48 +0000

Technology Business Expert from Intellect, the industry body for the UK technology sector, and ChangeBEAT, technology business experts and change management specialists is a podcast for leaders, executives, managers and ambitious professionals working in technology businesses that sell hardware, software, consulting, outsourcing or deploy technology solutions. In this first episode we describe the breadth of the material we will cover.

Our angle is the business view. How do you best make use of your technology and expertise to make more money for your customers and so for yourselves? How do you grow and change your technology business to make it grow faster, be more efficient and more effective?

We will also tell you our first "war story", about a tense negotiation to build a computer factory and how it miraculously disappeared into the Russian steppes!

Whet your appetite for an avalanche of tips, analysis, advice, ideas, experiences, and practical approaches to improve your technology business.