Bob Apollo
Business 2 Community
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Bob:
Why a Generic “Unique Selling Proposition” Isn’t Enough…
Marketers are keen to create what they refer to as “unique selling propositions”. According to Wikipedia, a unique selling proposition (USP) - also → Read More
What should B2B sales leaders be prioritising in 2022?
Bob Apollo of Inflexion-Point, the outcome-centric selling experts, offers his suggestions about what B2B sales leaders should be prioritising in 2022 → Read More
Identifying, Engaging, and Assessing Our Stakeholders
How many stakeholders are involved in the typical complex high-value B2B buying journey? It’s fair to say that the number is often larger than the average → Read More
Why Your Customers Want to Buy Is as Important as What They Want to Buy
You’d hope, wouldn’t you, that most salespeople understand what their prospective customers want to buy. You’d expect, wouldn’t you, that your salespeople → Read More
The Future of B2B Selling is Collaborative
I recently participated in a fascinating panel discussion facilitated by Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World on “Identifying the New Post-Covid → Read More
The Law of Averages Does Not Apply to Complex B2B Sales
Soon after “The Challenger Sale” was published, you could see a stream of lazy commentators homing in on one percentage prominently quoted in the book – → Read More
The law of averages does not apply to complex B2B sales
Bob Apollo of Inflexion-Point - the outcome-centric selling experts - on why we always need to engage potential customers early in their decision journey → Read More
Exploding the 3* Sales Pipeline Coverage Myth
One of the most unhelpful “rules of thumb” in B2B selling is the long-standing and widely quoted myth that the benchmark standard when it comes to sales → Read More
Ditching the ‘Itch to Pitch’
Whether proactively reaching out to potential future customers or responding to inbound enquiries, salespeople and business development reps in complex → Read More
Refining Our Customer’s Value Story
Regular readers will know that I have been evangelising the critical importance of customer-specific value stories for a long time. I’d like to take this → Read More
Profit Derives From Usage – Not Initial Purchase
Business customers have become increasingly used to as-a-service models, rather than outright purchase - and many of them have come to prefer it. It’s → Read More
The Secrets of Sales Innovators [Podcast]
I recently had the pleasure of speaking at length with Jan Ropponen, author of “Secrets of Sales Innovators - how World-Class sellers win Million-Dollar → Read More
“Why Are You Still Working That Deal?”
In a recent article (Advance or disqualify!), I proposed that salespeople - rather than clinging on to lifeless sales opportunities in the hope of a → Read More
Advance or Disqualify
In his best-selling sales guidebook “SPIN® Selling”, Neil Rackham identified four potential outcomes from every significant conversation with a → Read More
Why Being Liked Should Never Be Your Primary Motivation
It might seem strange - in a season when we traditionally wish goodwill to all men and women - to take the position that salespeople and sales leaders → Read More
Has Role Specialization in B2B Selling Gone Too Far?
Largely inspired by the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and made real by Henry Ford and others, the age of mass production introduced the concept of → Read More
A New Year Resolution: Eliminating Wasteful Sales Behaviours
This is the time of year when most of us would benefit from some quiet reflection on what we’ve learned during 2020, and how we intend to apply that → Read More
Why Do So Many Trials End Up As Tribulations?
I want to give Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group the credit for stimulating this article. I’ve added a link to his original piece below. Whilst → Read More
A Brief History of Sales Opportunity Qualification
The quality and accuracy of opportunity qualification is widely acknowledged to be a key predictor of future sales success - and a critical differentiator → Read More
Why It’s Time to Focus on Outcomes
Complex B2B buying journeys are inevitably complicated. Your customer’s decision process is rarely straightforward or linear. Multiple stakeholders are → Read More