Adam is the Buyer Enablement Director for The Access Group, a role which combines Pre-Sales, Sales Enablement, Bid Management and their internal Sales Academy.

How often do you see business titles including buyer enablement? Not often, because sales is still a very seller centric industry.

Thankfully, Adam is working with his team and colleagues to drive more buyer-centric engagements and a better buying experience for their customers.

And it's working by contributing towards their aggressive scale and growth plans.

Adam talks us through why and how they've made some changes and the importance of a buyer first strategy.

Matt Dixon is a Founding Partner at DCM Insights, if his name rings a bell it’s because Matt co-authored The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.

Both books are globally renown and have had a big impact and influence on the sales industry for the past decade.

And now for the good news, Matt has got together with Ted McKenna to write a new one - The JOLT Effect.

It focuses on one the biggest obstacles that sales teams need to overcome, the dreaded do-nothing customer, the no-decision retain the status quo outcome.

They researched over 2.5 million sales calls to uncover the reasons for customer inaction and indecision, and the results are different to conventional thinking.

You'll have to be patient as the book isn't out until September, but thankfully Matt shares some tasty snippets that you'll want to hear.

David Brock is the Founder and CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE (a global business consulting company), an author, renown expert in complex and enterprise sales, and writer of one of the best sales blogs.

In this episode David gives us the heads up on the how tables have turned and that because of the way that companies now decide and buy the interactions must be optimised for a digitally led and sales supported experience.

But, there's much more to it than that. David shares his thoughts on what sellers need to do to support online buyer research, including some specialisations  to support your customers buying journey.

Jerich is a Chief Information Security Officer in what he calls a 6,000 person start-up, two years ago he was working for a 100,000 employee Fortune 500 company.

In his exec decision making roles he chooses to engage with salespeople on a weekly basis.

Listen and learn why he does this, what he hopes to get from these conversations and what frustrtes him about some salespeople.

The best way to learn how to improve in sales is to understand the buyers we try to sell to.

Enjoy.

David is my new favourite Canadian and we hit it off immediately, but you don’t care about a couple of sales geeks having fun chewing the fat, you want to know why you should listen.

The simple answer is I read his book ‘Sell the way you buy’ that came out a few months back, and I loved it. It takes a lot for a book to get that level of praise from me, so fab job David.

David is the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist for Cerebral Selling, he’s an expert sales trainer and compelling keynote speaker.

So what you say! The world is full of sales trainers.

I know, but David’s different.

He’s an engineer and scientist turned sales professional and he’s used his background and experience (including nearly 5 years with tech giant Salesforce) to write a sales book with a difference, it puts you in the buyer’s shoes.

The science of selling is now as important as the art and the book is about learning how to ask questions, how to listen, how to tell a compelling brand story, and how to talk to customers in a human way that truly connects.

This will be 41 minutes of time well spent, and then you’ll go and buy the book.

Ask a B2B salesperson what they think about buyer personas and in most cases, they'll be dismissive of their relevance.

How does a semi-fictional profile of their ideal customer based on predictable demographics help them? Well, they don't.

The typical buyer personas created or used by many marketing teams are too generic and don't focus on how and why customers decide and buy.

Fear not my friends,  Adele Revella is on hand to help us.

Adele is the Founder and CEO of The Buyer Persona Institute, and these guys sure do know how to do it properly.

Adele and her team have created thousands of buyer personas over the past 10 years, many for some of the world's largest tech companies.

Their approach results in buyer personas that help sales teams and Adele shares her 5 Rings of Buying Insights with us in the podcast.

Before recording with Adele, I read her book which is aptly named Buyer Personas. This was written to help marketing teams and includes all of the necessary templates and techniques to enable them to capture more insightful information.

So why are we covering this on a sales podcast? 

Because sales teams need to understand how different functions within their customers/prospects decide and buy and they need to work hand in hand with marketing to develop an effective persona creation strategy.

Listen to the podcast, we're sure it will be a good use of your time.

More salespeople than ever before are failing to achieve quota.

More opportunities than ever before are ending in a no-decision outcome.

Why do we win or lose deals, or why do prospects end up doing nothing and retain the status quo?

Important questions, so why don't we really know the answers? 

Sellers state they see the value in win-loss analysis, they know they should do more, but somehow they just don't get done.

Wayne Cerullo gives us expert insight from working with hundreds of companies and tells us that buyers hire companies, they don't buy their products or services anymore. 

In most cases companies instigate loss analysis after a big and disappointing loss. 

But this only offers a limited perspective, every opportunity to learn why should be taken.

That should not only be about why you win or lose but also about why your competitors won or why the buyers failed to make a decision.

It's incredibly difficult to differentiate on a product and service level. The buying experience is now a key differentiator for buyers.

Don't assume what that experience should be, learn from the buyers.

Following the success of their first book, 'The Sellers Challenge' the authors  Tom Williams & Tom Saine of Strategic Dynamics Inc. have teamed up once again to pen 'Buyer Centered Selling' . Their timing is perfect as sales teams are struggling to differentiate through product or service and the buyer experience is now highly influential in the decision process.

The book is not about  a methodology or process, it's a philosophy of the sellers responsibility and foundational elements. Put simply how can you manage your sales engagements with the buyers front and centre, how can you become more buyer-centric to win more deals.

The Eight Core Elements of Buyer-Centered selling are:

Insights that Educate

Map & Align Buy-Sell

Prescriptive Guidance

Discovery Process

Dynamic Value Messaging

Consensus Building

Risk Mitigation

Social Presence

Check out the podcast, then go buy the book 👍

Don't think of procurement as the 'dark side', Procurement expert Jens Hentschel tells us we should think of them as the 'bright side'.

Salespeople avoid engaging with anyone in procurement as they see them as a threat or someone that could scupper a deal. They'd rather make a cold prospect call than a call to someone in procurement with an existing prospect.

But times are changing and engaging with them early in the sales process could be more positive than negative.

Jens talks us through the procurement process, new directives and how cost saving above all else is no longer the number one priority.

Our first ever podcast is with Joe McFadden who was CTO at the Royal Opera House in London. Joe shares his thoughts and experiences as a senior decision maker within the buyer committee.

We discuss a bunch of important areas for the buyer/seller engagement including how projects start, who’s involved, how they research before engaging with sales, what information sales can provide that really helps, discovery questions, what decision makers need from salespeople, how decisions are made, plus his own experience with no-decision outcomes.

All too often salespeople look to sales experts and trainers for guidance and advice on how to improve, understanding the buyers perspective is some of the best feedback you’ll ever get.