Insight & Foresight

I recently launched a series of conversations with business leaders from across multiple verticals called "The Business Insights Series" and as I reviewed the first five interviews I tried to see if there are some consistent themes emerging. What I found is that although there is great diversity in terms of business focus, there is great consistency when it comes to outlooks and observations.

Some of the key insights provided by these business leades include:

1. Knowing your customer's individual business and their vertical on a much deeper level than before is critical to establishing credibility and persuading them that they should even enteratin listening to you.
2. You need to discover where your customer is "hanging out" (e.g. what professional or industry networking groups they frequent) and engage with them there - often providing input and insights without the prospect of immediate return.
3. Given the ever decreasing amount of face time a sales rep is getting with a prospect, the ability to add value during those interactions is an increasingly key differentiator.
4. Moving with speed is vital but you must first be able to select the targets you have the greatest chance of winning and over-resource them.

These are just a few of the wonderful insights from Neil Rackham, Ed Boswell of Forum, Donal Daly of the TAS Group, Chuck Lennon of Teamlogic IT and Dave Stein of ES Research. I encourage you to listen to more of what they have to say by visiting our Business Insights Series. We will be adding more in the coming weeks.