{"id":2020,"date":"2009-05-11T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/05\/preparation-vs-execution\/"},"modified":"2009-05-11T15:25:26","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:25:26","slug":"preparation-vs-execution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/05\/preparation-vs-execution\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparation vs. Execution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SellingPower.com\u2019s article &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sellingpower.com\/html_newsletter\/article.asp?usr=SP9477331254&amp;NLid=1&amp;Layout_ID=888&amp;ARTid=3950&amp;nDate=May+4%2C+2009\" target=\"_blank\">Help for Your Pre-Call Prep<\/a> \u2013 makes a bold statement in the opening sentence:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When you get right down to it, sales are won or lost on preparation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would argue that sales are won or lost on execution.\u00a0 Give me a salesperson who executes flawlessly any day over one who prepares flawlessly.\u00a0 Again, the context is in terms of where deals are lost.\u00a0 Be that as it may, the article has an interesting statistic found in one of the later graphs.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At a time when relatively few initial discussions with a client are progressing further into the sales cycle (40 percent of organizations say only 25 \u2013 50 percent of initial discussions progress to a presentation; 30 percent say 51\u2013 75 percent of discussions do so, according to CSO Insights), the issue of pre-call preparation deserves some attention. After all, it&#8217;s the quality of your preparation that largely determines whether or not the client agrees to a second meeting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ok, I take umbrage with the over-emphasis on pre-call prep.\u00a0 Salespeople who show up and throw up are the main reason suspects do not move into prospects.\u00a0 I thought this number was shocking \u2013 up to 50% of initial discussions progress to a presentation.\u00a0 This fact could be that salespeople are better qualifiers in lean economies.\u00a0 Perhaps they are qualifying suspects more thoroughly to eliminate the tirekickers from their pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, a lower number moving into the pipeline could be construed as better qualifying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SellingPower.com\u2019s article &#8211; Help for Your Pre-Call Prep \u2013 makes a bold statement in the opening sentence: When you get right down to it, sales are won or lost on preparation. I would argue that sales are won or lost on execution.\u00a0 Give me a salesperson who executes flawlessly any day over one who prepares flawlessly.\u00a0 Again, the context is in terms of where deals are lost.\u00a0 Be that as it may, the article has an interesting statistic found in one of the later graphs. At a time when relatively few initial discussions with a client are progressing further into the sales cycle (40 percent of organizations say only 25&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/05\/preparation-vs-execution\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[1322,184,267,1321,1320,211],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-wA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2021,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->