Critical Pathways Articles
We're always thinking about how best to build and manage a successful selling organization. That's our job. Often, when a few thoughts come together into a new approach or insight, we write them up as articles and share them with our clients and friends. Here are some of our most popular articles, filled with sound advice, valuable strategies, and fresh perspectives on all things sales.
Given the ebbs and flows of economic cycles and business dynamics, sometimes—for reasons beyond your control—something will change to threaten your relationship with a customer. In what ways can you demonstrate your value?
In our experience, teams with the highest performance and results share these five common behaviors, which we consider to be true best practices.
These best practices will help you professionally and collaboratively lead your customer through the selling process so that closing the sale becomes a very natural part of selling.
We asked sales and marketing VPs and directors the question, "What are the most common mistakes today's sales leaders make?" This article captures their representative responses and what we can learn from them.
Through collaboration, companies, their customers, and their suppliers learn far more about each other—and themselves. Information flows freely, companies have a clearer picture of what customers need, and the resulting products are more successful in the marketplace.
Read how the simple process of planning your sales calls will keep you and your sales team on track during customer encounters.
Excuse us for bragging. The results our clients achieve from engaging Critical Path Strategies speak persuasively about our work.
Learn one of the most powerful ways to keep momentum in the sales organization and drive consistent results.
This software company had a trust problem—they didn’t trust their sales pipeline. They spent too much time trying to address forecasting reliability, resource allocation, and deal qualification. The bottom line? They were not effectively managing and coaching the valuable asset of their people and pipeline. There was so much data that they didn’t know what was meaningful. This article examines how simple data analytics helped increase the effectiveness of the company’s sales deployment strategy.
Team members typically work in the customer’s environment and experience first-hand the industry and competitive issues. The team members have the insight to proactively develop and propose creative, out-of-the-box solutions that deliver high value to the customer. So, why not let them lead the sales team?
Are you doing enough to make a direct impact on your customers' business beyond being visible as a sales leader? This list of "difference-maker" attributes will serve you well as you build for future opportunities and rewards while consistently delivering near-term wins.
Maximizing your investment in sales training maximizes results. Technology-enabled e-learning provides an effective way to reinforce skills, processes, and methodology and embed them into your organization. Read how Critical Path Strategies’ efficient e-Learning curricula support and leverage your learning dollars for optimum business results.
The values and lessons learned from good sales coaching can have a significant and long-lasting impact. Seizing coachable moments that surface through normal activities in a sales process gives sales managers their chance to provide effective coaching. Read how these four critical coaching habits can produce breakthrough results for selling teams.
How can you create a sense of urgency within your clients or prospects to close potential deals? How can you uncover their individual motivations to create motion and closure?
Successful sales teams do not self-form. Read this article for suggestions that will help your sales teams operate successfully.
It takes two people actively engaged in the act of sales coaching for it to have an impact. These 10 best practices will help "coach-ees" ensure that their coaching sessions are productive.
No other productivity investment comes closer to improving salespeople's performance than coaching does. This article offers how-to best practices for a hands-on coaching approach that stimulates sales teams and accelerates their performance and results.
In today's economy, executives are frantically trying to respond to a blitzkrieg of bad news from their markets, customers, bankers, suppliers, owners, and staff. So what's the best way to prepare for and execute successful sales calls that move opportunities and relationships forward? The must-do's in this article will help you make an extraordinary impression, accomplish multiple key objectives, and keep the door open for future contacts.
Who are your best customers and, more importantly, how do you keep them? This article examines how to effectively and efficiently develop relationships with these most important people so that you become a critical link in their value chain.
Taking shelter is a natural response when times get tough. But there are glimmers of improvement in the most recent economic indicators. How do you convince your customers that the worst is behind them and it’s time to loosen their purse strings?
“Is that your best price?” After working flawlessly on a transaction for months, the last thing you want to hear is this question. Yet most salespeople hear questions like this one every day. How best to respond? These strategies will help you sharpen your negotiation skills, increase your close rate, and improve your bottom line results.
When evaluating the feasibility or effectiveness of sales playbooks in their organizations, sales leaders frequently ask us what makes a good playbook. Our response? A good playbook is one that your salespeople will use.
This article will help you determine the most important initiatives to undertake to improve the effectiveness of your sales organization.
When our strategy is to grow, won’t profit follow? Growing profitably requires a different mindset and, certainly, more rigor. In this article, Critical Path Strategies’ colleague, Anna Marie Cwieka of Optimum Results, Inc., shows why it’s better to be squarely aligned with a favorite few customers than to be painfully wed to those costing you money.
We asked some successful sales veterans to imagine that they are new account executives assigned to five key accounts. What are the top three things they would do to learn to think like their customers?
The top one percent of salespeople love to hear objections. They are a welcome part of any sales process. This article provides how-to suggestions to help you prevent and defuse common sales objections. The secret?
Always, always listen, empathize, and question for clarity before attempting to handle any perceived objection you hear.
The structure of most organizations has significantly changed during the last 20 years, introducing new complexity for sales teams trying to determine who has authority, responsibility, and accountability for buying decisions. Learn how to map your customer’s organization in four easy steps.
We often fail to realize the true importance of spending little, but critical time, to actually plan our sales call. The CPS Call Plan is part of the Critical Path Strategies methodology that enables you to get the most out of your sales calls. Learn about effective call planning in this article.
The quality of your company's product or service in response to an RFP is vitally important. Planning your strategy can enhance the value perceived and realized by the client. Read Pre-RFP Selling to learn how to optimize your success in RFP decision-making.
Top sales professionals proactively and deliberately create individualized messages for their most important clients. CPS calls it "role-based messaging." The result? Consistently higher success rates in identifying and closing major transactions. This article will help you learn how to fine-tune your messages so that clients immediately grasp the relevancy to them—increasing not only the probability that your messages will be heard, but that your client's confidence in you will be reinforced.
In the face of chaotic markets and relentless change, your company’s selling organization is the key to competitive advantage. That is why sales leaders deliver sales training that improves sales operations and product knowledge, enhances sales skills, and increases industry awareness. But enlightened sales leaders are taking training one step further—to sales certification. The results show that certification drives more consistent performance in all businesses throughout the sales process.
The most successful salespeople are serial entrepreneurs. Thinking more like business people, they develop territory strategies that enable them to spend their time with customers who recognize and reward value. This article looks at the fundamentals of a business plan that will help you migrate your thinking to a territory plan. And it shares required content in a territory plan that will help you manage your own business better.
These best practices in pipeline management process can be a cornerstone for directing company resources to generate revenue growth and increase profitability.
There are some very specific best practices that can greatly enhance successful selling to the CSO of any enterprise.
In selling to the CXO of any company, it is important to remember where your focus must be in order to get in the door and to make the most of it once you are there. Read these best practices for scheduling appointments with key executives and getting the most value from the call, both
for your company and your customer.
Different mandates result in different approaches by procurement and line-of-business operations groups, but each have the same ultimate goal—getting the best deal for their company.
Do you know the rules for bear hugging a customer? Read this article by Critical Path Strategies’ Founder Art Wilson to learn how to use the business equivalent of a bear hug to differentiate your company and create loyalty.
To ensure that customers perceive value and benefit from each interaction, it is imperative that conversations with customers are oriented toward their business issues. Only then can sales teams align with them to deliver on the customers’ value propositions.
Cooperation is one of the fuels that drive a sales team to success. Cooperative team members harness their collective experience, talents, and skills with one goal in mind: to create value for their customer.
Understanding why customers didn't buy from you is as important as why they did. Reviewing your wins and losses presents a unique opportunity to improve your sales performance. These must-do's for conducting a successful win/loss review will help you diagnose sales cycle performance, verify competitive differentiation, and ensure your sales process is aligned to your customers.
Glimmers of improvement in the economic landscape are increasingly apparent. So how do you reshift your thinking from the recent head-down, in-the-bunker survival mode to gear up for the new reality?
Successful salespeople focus on their “other customers,” too—those being the other functional areas within their own company. They persuade their non-selling colleagues that cooperating with them on key sales initiatives is in their own best interests. Read how this persuasion gains salespeople a valuable coalition of stakeholders, and ensures that what they sell is delivered with excellence.
Tactical wins play a major role in major account selling. While visualizing the major steps and experience of your major sales success, be sure to sell select tactical projects along the way. Here's how.
You’ve done everything you know to do to remedy the situation, but there’s just no pleasing some customers. They waste your time, energy, and resources. Do you dare “fire” them?
A client sensed he needed to focus on growing existing customers rather than dilute resources in new market expansion. Data analysis gave him the segment ammunition he need to focus his organization, market messaging and client strategies.
Florian Gruber is the Global Sales Director at Caterpillar Marine Power Systems. In an interview with Critical Path Strategies’ principal, Elaine Schmitt, he describes how he uses a key account management program to manage complex global accounts and grow market share.
An interesting thing happens when sales teams are engaged in conversations that focus on value. It's simple really. Borrowing from "Streetcorner Strategy," the game is value. The judge is the customer. The winner is the one who delivers the greatest value to the customer. So how do you ensure that what you are delivering is of value to the customer? This artcile helps you learn how to improve your productivity and increase your odds of success with a disciplined, proactive approach to value validation.
We know that strong customer relationships are critical to be successful in sales. But what qualities do customers really want from salespeople?
As much as you would like to cover your market consistently year to year, market dynamics dictate that you revisit your coverage much more often, and be willing to try new approaches to organizing and deploying your selling resources. Rethinking your sales coverage strategy and ensuring that it is a customer-focused approach ensures the best outcomes with your customers and is a powerful differentiator for you.
Account Management is the process of continually providing value and always being aware of your client’s changing business environment and needs. It's an effective way to set your organization apart from the competition and keep competition away.