Beacon Worldwide Sales Research
Unlike other research companies who look into sales trends and buying habits, Beacon Worldwide looks deeply into the sales knowledge and behaviors of people with a variety of sales responsibilities. Our extensively researched information is highly customizable for your company in order to create an incredible awakening within the selling team for understanding what works, what does not work, and most importantly, why.
Thorough research has led us to the conclusion that the sales cycle can be broken down into six specific skill sets with regards to effectively selling complex products or services. We have further investigated the information from a practical point of view to understand what people do well within the sales skill sets and where people underperform. Specifically, we have found that in each level of the sales cycle, people tend to make similar mistakes. What we dubbed as Level 0, the Targeting stage, reveals that most clients quite often do not initially understand how to approach the clients, markets or segments in an effective way. They often look through the eyes of the company as a whole when finding their pain (key business issues) rather than closely examining the pain through the eyes of a specific job title. Level 1, categorized as when sales individuals are speaking with the potential buyer, is where we have found that people make the mistake of trying to sell their services instead of forming a plan that encompasses the issues the potential buyer is actually facing.
Beacon’s further research into the other 4 levels of skill sets touches upon where in the cycle the majority of deals are won and loss, how and when to bring in technical resources and how to build and maintain client relationships around best practices. Interestingly, very seldom do people with sales responsibility excel in more than two of these six sales skill sets. This naturally creates an over reliance on behaviors that might be good, but when taken to an extreme can be harmful to not only the person with sales responsibility, but the entire company as well.
In fact, in large partner led organizations, a lack of the full range of skills in an individual or team can actually cause a decline in revenue performance for other partners due to high levels of sales inefficiency and over reliance on relationships.
Our research in the complex account arena has also led us to the conclusion that considerable time needs to be spent cultivating and appropriately using client relationships in an efficient and highly targeted strategic and tactical manner to be most effective long term. We have proven approaches that have resulted in a long-term track record of amazing revenue growth in global accounts.
Although this information is extremely valuable when customized to your company, clients tell us the best way to easily understand what we bring is a sales research overview. These are ideal for Board Meetings, Relationship Manager Sessions or Global Account Leaders. If you are interested in having a Beacon Sales Research expert speak at one of your key meetings, or just learning more, contact us and will be back to you immediately.