For those of you unfamiliar with the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross", Alec Bladwin's character, Blake’s philosophy of salepersonship is that, if sales people do nothing else, then they should at least Always Be Closing. ABC. That may strike you as a neat acronym - but it’s at the heart of a lot of sales problems.

What sets top sales people apart? What is it that they do better than the rest? There are, of course, a number of factors, but one that we frequently observe is that top sellers are great story-tellers. They put their points across not by pitching their products, but by sharing relevant, situation-specific anecdotes and stories that their prospects can relate to.

On the face of it, the strongest solution should always win the new business, regardless of how much the client likes you. However, it’s commonly accepted that personality factors can influence decisions in awarding new business. So to what degree does this happen - if you have the strongest solution, is that enough to get you over the line? Or are decision-makers swayed by how much they like the person behind the solution?

How often have we heard sales managers complain that they are generating lots of selling opportunities, but the Sales team just doesn’t seem to be able to close them fast enough? Certainly not fast enough to achieve sales budgets.

Calculating the number of leads needed for a campaign seems simple. You can do it on the back of an envelope: Firstly, work out the real target: Consider your revenue target, reduce this by any annuity revenue to get your “sales target”.

The “funnel” is one of the most powerful metaphors in B2B sales and marketing. It describes the passage of prospects through a buying decision process that hopefully will (but often does not) result in your successfully selling something to them.

In sales and marketing, we celebrate winners – the salesperson who returns with the signed contract is a hero, as is the marketer who exceeds their quota of qualified leads. But what about recycling?

Most sales teams have an inherent awareness of how many customers they need to see in order to make a sale – in other words, the key ratios that affect their business. But how do you drill back into your statistics to determine the total number of activity steps needed to achieve a result?

Yes, you can speed up the time it takes for a potential buyer to make the purchase of your product or service. But not by skipping steps along the buyer’s journey.

In case you didn’t notice your customers are buying differently today than they did last year. The differences could be subtle or obvious, but if you observe closely you’ll see that the process they follow to make a buying decision –the buyer's journey– has changed.