During my long career, it’s been my privilege and pleasure to work for, and with, many great and very successful leaders (and a few not-so-great or successful ones as well). Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m very analytical; I need to answer the ‘why’ question, and if I can’t, it drives…
I recently attended an APS Fellows event led by Robert Racine of Wipro entitled The Impact of Digital Technologies on future B2B, which I found incredibly well researched and very informative. Robert said many things that resonated with me, but the most profound was that ‘the only competitive advantage (left) is to learn faster than the…
I was watching MOTD this morning, and marveled at Burnley beating Liverpool 2 nil. At face value, Liverpool lost because Burnley scored more goals. But looking at the stats, Burnley had only 19% of the possession, the lowest ever percentage for a winning team in the Premier League. Burnley won because they had a plan…
In sales, we call this the bid process. It should be straightforward, but many in the profession recognise this is often the weakest link in the selling chain. Why? This is your opportunity to tell us… The Association of Professional Sales is launching a very short, anonymous survey and we would like your input. Click…
We hear a lot about unconscious bias, largely in the context of people’s attitudes to people from minorities. For clarity, “unconscious bias refers to a bias that we are unaware of, and which happens outside of our control. It is a bias that happens automatically and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people…
Many successful organisations have grown through exploring new routes to market, for instance, expanding into new geographies, selling through third parties, or creating strategic alliances. New business models, in particular, doing business on-line, have also proved to be very beneficial when seeking growth. The technology sector, like many other sectors before it, often sells through…
In the 15 years that we’ve enabled organisations to benchmark their bid capability, this subject (standard style and content) has pretty much always come out bottom of the list of things that need fixing. The question we ask people to answer is simple… How consistent is the ‘house style’ and standard content (capability statements and…
It is essential that any organisation, and its various components, plan ahead, and the function of bidding is no different. Planning ahead enables the bid function (or any function for that matter) to ensure it has the appropriate skills and resources available as and when needed, so that they are optimised, and deliver the best…
Selling more of what you already sell works to a degree, but it’s important to listen to customer feedback, and refine the product or service to ensure its continued relevance. At the same time, it’s important to listen to the market, look at what the competition are doing, and develop new value propositions to address…
Some organisations who have achieved their growth targets have done it with the same people they started the journey with, but many more have not, changing people at every level throughout the journey. Whatever the case, growth is achieved by having the right people in the right place at the right time, achieved through a…