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Are You a Sales Athlete?

Perseverance is essential in sales, and my recent blog about the way in which we can learn from the dedication and commitment of Olympic athletes chimed with many people who work in sales today. There’s a lot to be gained from listening to those who’ve achieved sporting success, and there’s a reason why many former Olympians such as Kriss Akabusi and Roger Black now charge big sums for…

Extending analytics to the web: moving from in-store to online

In a time when we all struggle to have more time to ourselves, having the option of doing your weekly shopping without the need to travel to a store, is priceless. However, many retailers are not using analytics effectively to enhance the shopper’s experience throughout their online channels; missing a great opportunity that could enable them to provide a more personalised service. In fact,…

Top Five Important Facts About ERP in 2017

(In the digital age, companies need to make sure that all the different parts of their business can share information and create strategic plans from their data. This is where enterprise resource planning software(ERP) comes into play. Whether in a small firm that is looking to grow or a huge corporation that needs to take control of its resources, ERP is a way of making sure that people at every…

How is Artificial Intelligence Shaking Up Retail?

Buying experiences, both in offline and online channels, can vary dramatically between retailers as vendors approach the customer journey in different ways. However, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming a common tool used across the retail sector; being incorporated both into online and offline channels with the goal of enhancing customer experience or increasing conversion…

Are shipping fees costing you customers?

Online retailers are becoming incredibly sophisticated in their ability to impact conversion rates based on hundreds of different variables.  New technologies allow purchase screens to be customised based on user data (i.e. where a customer is purchasing from, time on site, location, previously browsed items, etc.), meaning that e-retailers can be super-specific in their targeting to increase…

Are you in the 20% of retailers with no mobile offering?

In the UK, mobile now accounts for 40% of online retail sales – and that’s a figure which is growing rapidly quarter on quarter (1). Yet for many consumers, the mobile shopping experience is still poor, and retailers are not delivering a good enough experience to convert would-be customers. Many customers are struggling to make it beyond their shopping carts when buying on a mobile device – with…

Removing tech from the discussion

A recent customer situation which resulted in the renewal of an existing customer’s ERP contract, made me think about why customers come to us. We signed a huge tech deal with a client but we hardly spoke about technology. In short, it got me thinking about how we work with clients. We are a technology company, but people come to us for more than just tech. Understanding our clients The first…

Virtual Reality: The Next Step for Business Intelligence

Everything is being virtual realit-ified – from product development through to buying clothes.  And it’s now being seen as the next step for Business Intelligence and Data Analytics. Even simple data visualisation tools are now enabling businesses to make sense of their data – which often runs to thousands of lines of spreadsheet data.  It’s impossible to get a handle on trends and patterns when…

Are you a non-conformist?

Sometimes, going against the crowd or even just having a different way of thinking to your colleagues around you can lead you to become the “black sheep” of your business. In the past, being a black sheep had a negative connotation; it was perceived as something not to be proud of. But today, could the term have lost its stigma? Has it actually become something positive? We’re all familiar with…

Persistence: Choosing our battles carefully

It’s a familiar story that we’ve been told since childhood: to persist and we will achieve whatever we set out to do. No matter the difficulty, no matter the challenge – if we persist, then anything is possible.  But is persistence always the answer? Can it sometimes do more harm than good? What happens when we persist against adversity, time after time, and still do not see our dreams come true?…

Cybersecurity and Law Firms

Handling activities with large associated financial values such as property sales, or mergers and acquisitions, is making targeting law firms a highly attractive target for cyber criminals. Once hacked, law firms lose their most prestigious asset: their reputation. Clients will switch firms even if they just sense there is the potential risk of having personal data leaked.   Data is money, and…

Winning the deal but losing the customer

I have a strong belief that the real selling starts after the sale. But so many sales teams are incentivised to focus relentlessly on pre-sale activity, ignoring the fact that a customer becomes more valuable to you once a sale is completed.  The first sale is just the first step in the process – now you have to make sure the customer is committed to you, and remains committed to you, throughout…

Do you like me? Will you buy?

To win in sales, you need to get a great territory plan in place, then carefully research each individual customer, run your analytics to see which customers are best placed to buy at that time, then develop your value proposition, prospect your customers, get them knowledgeable about your product roadmap, ensure their heatmap is filled out and finally, boom! They purchase. Or maybe not? These…

‘I’m not bothered if you buy or not – here are the cakes’

We have a Sales Rep working for us, whose preferred way of handling customer meetings is to take a batch of cakes in.  No super science sales skills, no clever tactics.  And honestly no hidden agenda.  Just cakes.  He usually eats most of them too, with a cup of tea (2 sugars) and a lengthy chat. This is how he’s always done it. Customers love him, and trust him.  I’m always fascinated by the…

Why Sales Deserves a Seat on the Board

A company’s sales team is crucial to its success. That’s because Marketing initiatives can whet an individual’s appetite for a product or service, but it’s the sales rep that makes sure the potential customer’s initial ‘want’ becomes that all-important ‘need.’ In doing so he or she manages to bridge that all-important gap between customer and company. So, with such a crucial role to play, why…