Salespeople have a reputation for avoiding paperwork and administration. They are also traditionally resistant to the idea of working to a meeting quota. But getting busy and recording the results is precisely the path to sales success.

Nothing is more frustrating for a salesperson than a potential buyer who, after acknowledging they need your product or service, decides not to buy. Why do they do this, and what can you do about it? Remember that businesses buy products and services, in essence, to solve problems. They may have too much of something that is undesirable, or too little of something that is good.

I’ve been called in by a number of clients who believe that they have a bottom-of-funnel sales problem. Their sales opportunities just seem to be piling up and getting stuck in the later stages of the sales pipeline. They imagine that their sales people need help with their closing techniques. But when you dig into it, the problem is almost always somewhere else...

Mature marketplaces provide clear targets for new growth – the firm demographics have already been mapped. But how can you segment or target for growth in the virgin territories where little is known of who's buying what and why?

Your company is facing an increasingly strong competitor - yet you won’t find them listed in any Google search of the key players in your marketplace. But this competitor is playing a powerful and often-undefined role in almost every significant B2B buying decision. And it’s the reason why a growing number of your apparently well-qualified opportunities are ending up with the prospect deciding to “do nothing”. Have you recognised the competitor yet?

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.

Winning complex new business requires a disciplined strategy. By using a systematic approach, business developers can increase the flow of opportunities and identify which specific actions will close the deal.

What would happen if you were able to double your sales and marketing resources overnight? Potentially, not a lot. Without a well-defined, scalable sales and marketing process you’ll inevitably struggle to attract, engage, qualify and convert enough of the right sort of prospects to increase revenue.

According to Marketing Sherpa data just released, average B2B deal sizes are shrinking. What does this mean for the B2B Marketer? Its implications are highly significant.