The sales force conundrum
How B2B information companies can hit their sales targets
Wednesday 16 October 2019Report
Getting sales right is a strategic priority for B2B information companies. Their unique combination of high fixed costs and extremely low truly variable costs means that every new customer win, and every further sale to an existing customer, flows straight to the bottom line.
Yet despite the significance of sales force to B2B information companies, too many businesses underperform in this area. Sometimes there exists too little focus on how best to sell products, driven, in part, by the naïve belief that if the product is good enough it will sell itself.
To help companies address this, OC&C joined forces with Outsell to survey the sales leadership of 54 information businesses across EMEA and North America.
The objective of this study was to:
- Explore how well these executives believe sales force ‘works’ in their companies today
- Identify which dimensions of sales force have the biggest impact on
business performance - Reveal areas for improvement of which executives might not be aware.
Read Publication
Suggested Reading
Journey to the centre
Some international media businesses are shifting senior management and front-office roles away from London and back to their central HQs – and Brexit is accelerating this trend
Vertical software
Many of the best vertical software businesses make money with a well-established playbook: pick leading market positions and must-have products, drive pricing, up-sell and cross-sell; make the right bolt-on acquisitions to fill out the vertical
Organising for value
'Telematics' - capturing and transmitting real-time operational data from business operations - includes everything from basic vehicle tracking solutions to complex fleet management systems (FMS), including insurance, optimisation and driver/operator performance management