Outside In Thinking

‘out–sahyd – in – thing-king’

Thinking about your problems from a new, fresh external perspective.
Thinking about your business through a lens of customer value.

Top Sales Tools 2018 – Double award!

We are delighted that DealSheet has again been recognised in the 2018 Top Sales Tools Guide by Smart Selling Tools. And this year is a double header, with AccountPlan making it into the guide in the first year after launch. We are very excited and humbled by the...

Sales technology of the week award!

We are delighted that leading sales analyst firm Smart Selling Tools, and global top 25 sales blogger Nancy Nardin, has named DealSheet and AccountPlan Sales technology of the week.

6 Fundamentals of B2B Sales Planning

There are 6 fundamental activities needed for effective sales planning. Find out more about these here and see how 6 simple tools could help you manage these more efficiently.

Pledge 1%

Outside In are excited to join Pledge 1%’s network of founders, entrepreneurs and companies around the globe that have committed to giving back.

ISM published article – BluePrint for growth

The Institute of Sales Management (ISM) published a feature article from our founder.

2017 BESMA Awards Judging

Garry Mansfield, Founder of Outside In, has been asked to judge at this year’s BESMA Awards – run by the Institute of Sales Management (ISM). Read more

If you’re not ADVANCING you’re a busy fool

It is important to make progress not just tread water. Advancement is THE most important thing for motivation and productivity. Read why here.

The world has moved on … have you?

Let's consider opportunity management for a moment. The old world had a few things that were seen to be good practice 20 years ago. At the time they were used by the most forward thinking companies to outperform the rest. Today, things have moved on and for companies...

DealSheet : Top Sales Tool Award 2017

We are delighted that DealSheet, Pre-call Plan and +motivate have again been recognised in 2017 as a Top Sales Tool by Smart Selling Tools. DealSheet is an simple-to-use application that extends the capability of your CRM system (Salesforce and Microsoft CRM/365),...

Structured account planning

Are you considering your next step for account planning on one of your key accounts? Maybe you have been asked for your 'latest account plan' and don't quite know where to start. This short 4 minute video will help you. It explains the key steps in b2b account...

Webinar recording : Spring clean your pipeline to win more with less effort

We held a great webinar recently – focused on helping sales people and sales managers to deliver a more successful 2017. I lay out a simple 5 point plan to spring clean your pipeline to set yourself up for success this year.

Our value proposition – built on customer feedback.

Over the past months we have been reflecting on our own value proposition at Outside In, here’s our story.

“love the BluePrint….but where should I start?”

A customer asked – “love the BluePrint….but where should I start?” . Read the response here and see your three steps to focused improvement.

What ducks have to do with sales culture

Do you have too many ducks to have an amazing sales culture? Watch this and see what we mean. Enjoy.

Growth in 2017 – where to start

A new year brings new starts and for some a real hope that this year something will change. Something will drive greater success, greater growth, a step change in the way “they’ve always done it”. However for some 2017 won’t be any different.

Press release: Outside In Sales & Marketing partners with Awards International at the Professional Sales Awards 2017

Outside In are excited to partner with Awards International this year at the Professional Sales Awards 2017 and have Garry Mansfield, MD, on the judging panel.

The 7 habits of motivational B2B sales managers

A review of our latest webinar which discussed motivating sales people in order to improve engagement and inevitably performance and sales.

Motivation and Me

Blog: It’s been almost a week since I attempted to host my first webinar at Outside In Sales & Marketing.

Press release: DealSheet recognised as a Top Sales Tool of 2016 by Smart Selling Tools

Nancy Nardin, Founder and President of Smart Selling Tools says, “Congratulations to Outside In Sales & Marketing. The market needs a solution like DealSheet. It provides immense value at a more affordable price than what’s available by others in the market.”

How to define your sales performance equation in :60

How can you think about sales performance in B2B. Our sales performance equation provides you with a simple approach to capture the very definition of performance.

Adopting a coaching approach to B2B marketing

Malcolm Nicholson from International Coaching News speaks to Garry Mansfield, Outside In Sales & Marketing about the impact and benefits of coaching.

iNspiring sales performance

How sales managers can build an inspiring sales culture, one that will develop sales performance, encourage, guide and motivate.

How YOU CAN GROW sales performance in :60

See how a simple model can revolutionise your coaching conversations with your team, use it and YOU CAN GROW individual and team performance

Press release: The challenge of the game – using competition to motivate better B2B opportunity management

Outside In Sales & Marketing (OISM) are excited to announce a partnership with CloudApps.

How to ‘coach the middle’ in :60

Where do sales managers invest coaching time? This post shows that if you coach the middle you get a better return

Why you don’t need a ‘Moussa Sissoko’ : in 60 seconds

The story of Moussa Sissoko is a great lesson for sales managers looking to build a winning culture and high performing sales team.

Avoid deal slippage and loss by focusing on the “Cost of No Decision”

To get a deal over the line you MUST convince the prospect that there is a "Cost of No Decision", that the risk and costs associated with not buying your solution (or one of your competitors in fact) are too great to ignore. In all cases buying a 'new solution' for...

How to ‘move the middle’ in :60

Why do you need to focus on uplifting average performers? Because this is where your results will improve significantly.

How to help managers influence results in :60

How can you help front line sales managers to influence results in their team? A simple rule will help you prioritise in the right areas today.

How to focus a sales review discussion in :60

To focus a sales review, focus on things that can be done, achieved or progressed. If you improve the things you can control this will improve results.

How to handle “just find more X” in :60

How often does your review turn into a “just find X debate (more sales, more customers, more profit). Here’s why it’s the wrong conversation to be having

How to engage a final stage buyer in :60

Read this article to find out about the one overriding concern of a final stage buyer at the end of a typical b2b buying process.

How to engage a stage 2 buyer in :60

Read this article for ideas on key sales tools you can use at the mid point of the buying process, to help buyers progress their procurement process.

How to engage a stage 1 buyer in :60

Read this article the key sales tools you can use at the very first stages of the buying process, to help buyers progress their procurement process.

How to navigate the b2b buying process in :60

B2B buyers follow a three stage process for buying. A recent research study confirmed these steps, see here how to navigate this.

Two skills salespeople need ‘in the bag’ in :60

B2B buyers really want two core things from sales people. A recent research study highlighted what makes the best better.

How to appreciate emotional and rational buyer behaviour in :60

B2B buyers are influenced by the emotional and rational brain. See more about what the research tells us.

Two things buyers want from your sales team in :60

Two things buyers want from your sales team has been highlighted in a recent research study. Are you ready to engage in the right way?

How to assess your customer’s buying team in :60

There are on average 5.8 people are involved in a b2b customer’s buying process, and over 10 for complex procurements. You face complexity, read this to improve your chances of success.

3 things to know about complex procurements in :60

How can you increase the pace of a complex procurement with a new approach to engaging customers.

How to make better commit decisions in :60

Are you confident when you commit your forecast? Hear a simple way to think about your deals and make more confident commitments.

When opportunity knocks

Garry Mansfield, MD Outside In Sales & Marketing talks to the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management about opportunity management.

Do you have the insight to manage sales?

Do you have enough information to give you confidence in your opportunity pipeline and forecast? For many of our customers this is a significant challenge and research has found that less than a third of leaders are happy with the quality of pipeline data. Inspection...

Commit or not commit, that is the question.

The ability to make ‘commit or not commit’ decisions and then to forecast accurately is a key measure of a sales manager’s effectiveness.

Making winning moves

Garry Mansfield, MD Outside In Sales & Marketing talks to the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management about opportunity management.

Hiring and onboarding can lift sales performance

Garry Mansfield, MD Outside In Sales & Marketing talks to mycustomer.com about sales performance management.

Top performers focus on Winnables

Top performing sales people better control of where they invest their effort. A disciplined approach to qualification helps them to focus on winnable deals.

10 areas for Marginal Gains in Sales

I completed my first 100 mile ride recently and it got me on to thinking about what I had learned in the process. Of course training was key, mental strength important and nutrition critical amongst many other things. It made me reflect again about the aggregation...

To improve sales get a leader not a manager

Do you need to improve sales performance? If the answer to this is YES you will need to successfully deliver and sustain change. To make change stick you need more than a sales manager to lead the team. Sales management is great but is it enough? Sales management is...

5 Steps to Sales Performance Management success

An effective approach to Sales Performance Management is a fundamental requirement for success. Effective performance management should be a positive forward looking experience that adds value to an individual, when this is done right it will raise the performance bar...

Controlling pipeline slippage and the bow wave.

Are you controlling slippage and the bow wave in your pipeline and forecast? A 'bow wave' happens when deals that are forecast to close in a particular month then at the time you were expecting them to close they slip, when they reach the forecast close date again...

Is your partner a good bet on this deal?

Right out of the box, let's acknowledge that selling via partners is different to selling direct. Direct selling is often less complex than channel/partner/alliance sales. It's you against a competitor to secure the contract from a...

Sales Playbooks alone are not enough to improve performance.

I am hugely excited about the new Sales Path capability in Salesforce, this brings sales playbooks as standard to Salesforce mobile and soon afterwards we hear to the desktop platform. Sales Playbooks in the form of customised processes exist already in Microsoft...

You must decouple Sales stages and probability. Today.

Let me get something off my chest. I fundamentally do not agree that the further you are through a set of sales stages increases your chance of winning. It just doesn’t. The value of Sales Stages Sales stages are a useful, STAND ALONE, indicator of where in the...

Big companies can’t innovate

See the original article here Maxwell Wessel makes some great points in this article and the subsequent two parts of the series. We have experienced similar issues when working with clients of ours on offer/proposition development projects. Expectations The sales...

High performance DNA

In a recent engagement with a client the question was asked - "what does high performance mean for our sales team?" I am sure they are not alone in seeking an answer to this question. If you are building a sales organisation that delivers complex solutions to...

Challenger Selling & OISM Discussions Framework

According to the authors of the Challenger Sale the one thing you can do to smash your quota and crush the competition is to turn your organisation into a teaching organisation (more here) New buyers are much better informed and they seek more than product...

Challenger Selling. A View.

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in their book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (2011) outline their findings from a study of over 6,000 sales reps across 45 dimensions of sales performance. In essence they fly in the face of long...

Sales Training alone is pointless

Sales Training alone is pointless. We have all done sales training. Some of you will have done many different flavours of sales training during their long career as a sales professional. We have for sure. Most courses take a similar format with two or three days in a...

OUTSOLD!

An old boss of mine in the mid 90's had a great point of view when one of the team lost a deal. His rationale was this - either you shouldn't have gone after the deal in the first place or you were just outsold! Harsh but true, one of your competitors played the game...

Customer focused sales or pitching?

How many times have you seen a salesperson leave a sales appointment knowing little more about the customers situation relative to when they went in? Failure to really understand the situation drastically reduces win chances. This is quite common for those sales...

5 barriers to understanding customer needs

We have written previously about the value of time invested early in the sales cycle to truly understand customer needs. This helps you as the salesperson to make your conversations relevant to the buyer and it helps them be confident that your solution will deliver...

Why you need to manage opportunities better?

The top achievers understand that all deals are not equal. A disciplined approach to opportunity management will help you to win more and win bigger. There are not enough hours in the day to chase and win every deal. Chasing deals you won’t win will increase your cost...

Why bother with Sales Stages?

Getting deals to move through the pipeline towards final [successful] close is THE role of sales people. In our experience the more you align the sales stages [your sales process] with those in the clients buying process the better will be the velocity of your...

New Research: Buyers priorities

Recently the Aberdeen Group published some research titled “Sales Intelligence: What B2B Sellers Need to Know Before the Call,”. They spoke to buyers in 215 companies (b2b) and captured from them the key requirements they have when engaging with a sales team. It...

“My-Solution My-opia”

In taking your offer to a client try to avoid "my-solution my-opia" (Where you as the seller are short sighted in relation to the clients true perspective). This can leave you looking through rose tinted glasses. There are reasons why the buyer doesn’t always agree...

Sales Discipline : Twice as Good?

We did some research into Sales performance in 2010. Particularly into what the best performers did that the rest did not. It was clear that high performing sales organisations outperform the rest in a number of aspects in the sales process. Not least the ability to...

What does Value mean in B2B Sales?

When thinking about your value proposition consider some of the following: Value is determined by what is means to the customer not what marketing literature says it is. This means the customer will have a business case outlining the benefits minus costs elements of...

Why B2B Sales Cycles are getting longer?

For B2B sales organisations the challenge associated with lengthening sales cycles is not going away, infact it is getting worse for many. The value of shortened sales cycles comes from faster revenue and profit realisation but also a lower cost of sale. Sales cycles...

B2B Buying cycles – How long?

When a contact engages with you by agreeing to a meeting you now have a prospect in your sales funnel. You are now committing to a number of meetings, phone calls, actions and activities that will last some time. But, how long is typical for B2B Sales and therefore...

Do you have a commodity, solution or value offer?

Where you engage in a buying process will determine the scope you have to succeed. The optimal point for prospect engagement differs for each of our clients, they will have a different place in the buying process where they target direct engagement. Commodity...

Deal Qualification Best Practice

We know instinctively that we need to qualify our pipeline for best results. After all you cannot chase every deal with the same level of rigour and discipline. A systematic way to choose where to invest time and energy has been shown to be a key differentiator of...

Discover performance in 10 conversations

Our Discovery process covers ten core 'conversations'. When we say conversations they are more fundamental topics that are explored in detail rather than 10 short, singular conversations. In the diagram below you can see the key elements. Why these areas? We focus on...

Managing Sales Performance Reviews

How do you manage performance in sales and marketing? Specifically, how to approach and plan for success? Effective and disciplined sales management (based on a consistently applied performance framework) is absolutely essential for those seeking to raise the bar on...

What differentiates high performers?

What do high Performance sales & marketing organisations do that others don't? We asked ourself the same and set about researching this questions. Recently we undertook a benchmark study, contacting over 100 people in B2B sales organisations. What they said confirmed...

Relevant conversations will extend your Contact base

Meeting a senior executive once is easy. Demonstrate value and it is possible to meet them again and again. Getting “higher and wider” in target customer accounts often helps to unlock new budgets and opportunities, although achieving this is not always...

Do you have sales discipline?

Sales process discipline provides one of the foundations of great performance. How effectively are you delivering the expectations of the executive team in regard to sales performance? Is the sales process you have helping or hindering you in the quest for growth? A...

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