Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

  Negotiations - Influence to Win The business-to-business (B2B) sales negotiation is a conversation between a seller and a buyer to reach an agreement beneficial to both. To achieve a zone of potential agreement (ZOPA), both engage in multiple rounds of discussion. The back-and-forth nature of these discussions is driven to gain the upper hand over the other side by finding their reservation point (breaking point), BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement), and any helpful information that will assist in bargaining. In sales, to influence and win negotiations, a lot of preparation is required. This includes collecting information about the other side's negotiation style, motivation, risks, BATNA, concession, reservation, and timing. Without preparation and gathering of this information, the chances of winning negotiations are minimal. Sometimes, even after gathering information and practice, negotiations can still be lost or suspended indefinitely because of changes in th...

Negotiations - Influence to Win The business-to-business (B2B) sales negotiation is a conversation between a seller and a buyer to reach an agreement beneficial to both. To achieve a zone of potential agreement (ZOPA), both engage in multiple rounds of discussion. The back-and-forth nature of these discussions is driven to gain the upper hand over the other side by finding their reservation point (breaking point), BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement), and any helpful information that will assist in bargaining. In sales, to influence and win negotiations, a lot of preparation is required. This includes collecting information about the other side's negotiation style, motivation, risks, BATNA, concession, reservation, and timing. Without preparation and gathering of this information, the chances of winning negotiations are minimal. Sometimes, even after gathering information and practice, negotiations can still be lost or suspended indefinitely because of changes in the ...

  Persona Mapping with Elements - Buyer and Seller  In the world of business-to-business (B2B) sales, the buyer and seller relationship plays a significant role in winning or losing a transaction. Creating and nurturing these relationships across multiple stakeholders is a challenging, lengthy, and time-consuming process. One of the critical activities and constituents of a sales plan is to build the buyer's stakeholder persona that will assist in the relationship-building process. Mapping of these stakeholder personas reveals the type of levers that can be used to develop and nurture long-term relationships with the intent of winning and expanding the sales pipeline. Without the intelligence of the buyer's persona, the sales execution effort will be challenging and profoundly inefficient and ineffective.   Besides, it addresses the risk of losing a sales representative because by capturing and documenting the buyers' persona, you can ensure that gathered intelligence and...

Weekend Reading:  How to kickstart and scale a consumer business:    Here’s what’s in store: Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea ← This post Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine   Marc Andersen on Technology and Web3, Crypto   I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.   How Companies can build In-House Consulting   “Management ...

Persona Mapping with Elements - Buyer and Seller  In the world of business-to-business (B2B) sales, the buyer and seller relationship plays a significant role in winning or losing a transaction. Creating and nurturing these relationships across multiple stakeholders is a challenging, lengthy, and time-consuming process. One of the critical activities and constituents of a sales plan is to build the buyer's stakeholder persona that will assist in the relationship-building process. Mapping of these stakeholder personas reveals the type of levers that can be used to develop and nurture long-term relationships with the intent of winning and expanding the sales pipeline. Without the intelligence of the buyer's persona, the sales execution effort will be challenging and profoundly inefficient and ineffective.   Besides, it addresses the risk of losing a sales representative because by capturing and documenting the buyers' persona, you can ensure that gathered intelligence a...

 

How to Influence your Buyers for Cloud Application Modernisation Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation Buyers Persona Mapping with Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation to execute the Sales Strategy  Persona Mapping from - Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus

  Key to Building a Great Company Do the hard things . To build a great startup, you have to move fast. But you shouldn’t let urgency distract you from tackling big, thorny problems. Doing the hard things is one of the most effective ways to build true defensibility.  Protect your principles. Having clear company principles helps your team make faster, better decisions. It’s easier to act autonomously when you have a clear framework to follow. Failing to protect these values can shift your company towards an “exception-based” culture.  Pay your debts. Every time you make a sub-optimal corporate decision, you create a “debt” that must be paid. This is true across engineering, product, and marketing teams. To avoid debts spiraling, keep track of them and proactively pay them down.  Build a brand. If you’re building a good business, you’ll inevitably attract competition. For consumer companies, it’s essential to create an impactful, differentiated brand. If you do it ...

CIO Priority for OPEX Relief by Reducing Spend on  Collaboration software  Data centre build-out  Consulting  Infrastructure hardware  ERP applications CIO Priority for driving Growth by Increasing Spend on  Digital transformation  Cloud, AI, ML, RPA Cost Arbitrage levers like Outsourcing and Offshoring Data warehouse, Business intelligence, Analytics Security software 

Excerpt from my upcoming book at amazon.com  - "Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales"  How a Marketing Manager will engage with others  -- B2B Sales Stakeholders and Their Activities The sales team or a sales representative, engages various internal and external stakeholders, with the intent of growing the business underpinned by positioning a compelling product or a service. The following list gives a good view of various stakeholders engaged by the sales team or a representative. ● the internal marketing and corporate strategy team for research, positioning, and pricing  ● internal product engineering or service design team  ● internal legal service team for defining contractual agreements, terms, and conditions ● procurement at the buyer’s end ● sponsoring C-level executives like CEO, CFO, CIO, CDO and their team members at buyer’s end ● internal HR, legal, quality, security and sales team   ● and...

  B2B Suppliers need to upgrade their Channels for Ease of Sales  Leadership Mantra The salesperson who drives you crazy How to be professional in Virtual meetings Aligning Sales and Marketing

Crossing the Chasm Marketers are still a challenge Content drives the Customer Journey  How leaders build the trust Aligning Customer Sales and Customer Service 

  Low Closing vs High Closing Habits of Sales Manager CMOs Own CX  Core Competency of Sellers Strategic Debt of Startups  Image Credit : Rain Group

Will DAOs Replace Corporations Story of Indian Economy 86% of B2B Content Consumption Takes Place Outside the C-Suite Best Continuous Discovery Teams How to move faster in marketing Build your insight capabilities to leapfrog the competition Russia and Ukraine - Security Service Providers Must Be Ready  

Big techs ambition - (FB, AMZN, APL, MSFT, Google)  Three things you can not buy Mobile Sector has lessons for Indias Economy Why Customers don't like Sales Rep How to establish Leadership presense Making changes is not a matter of willpower

 Tomorrows Tech Giants Tips for Social Selling AI for Product Management    Scaling SAAS Companies What Buyers need to do influence Sellers (src: Marketingcharts)

Get it done CIOs sound off how vendors can measure up The role specialisation in B2B Define and measure the ROI of content marketing Strategy for startups Productivity isn't about management

Sourced from HBR April 2021   --  Rethink Customer Segmentation Among large B2B companies, the most common way to organize a sales force is by the size and potential of the customers. Enterprise accounts are typically the customers with the highest headcount (and the largest number of seat licenses); as such, they are the highest priority and are handled by the best salespeople.  Restructure the Sales Organization Rethinking customer segmentation focuses on the question: Who are the company’s target customers? Once they are identified, the sales organization must focus on how to sell to them. The traditional sales process typically involves generating leads, qualifying prospects, demonstrating products, and closing sales. Many salespeople have spent decades learning and implementing- ing that routine. A consumption-based model requires a different process.  Use SalesForce Management Instruments to Drive the Right Behavior Setting a strategy, segmenting the custome...