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Bob Apollo

Bob Apollo
Bob Apollo is the CEO of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the B2B sales performance improvement specialists. Following a varied corporate career, Bob now works with a rapidly expanding client base of B2B-focused growth-phase technology companies, helping them to implement systematic sales processes that drive predictable revenue growth.

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 Frontline Sales Professional” with…

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…

Supercharging our sales conversations

This article first appeared in the April 2021 "Supercharging Sales" issue of the International Journal of Sales Transformation.Given the overall theme of the magazine, I…

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…

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 B2B sales environments often find…

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…

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 hard to…

The Secrets of Sales Innovators

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 deals”.Jan’s…

Contrast is critical to B2B sales success

I was pleased to be asked to contribute an article to the latest edition of Top Sales Magazine - a regular source of insight for…

The key issues for B2B sales leaders in 2021

I was very pleased to be invited by the International Journal of Sales Transformation to contribute an article to their latest edition. The publication is…

“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…

Advance or disqualify!

In his best-selling sales guidebook “SPIN® Selling”, Neil Rackham identified four potential outcomes from every significant conversation with a prospective customer in a complex B2B…

Has role specialisation 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…

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…

Creating collective value through customised value

I recently made what I hope was a compelling case for creating a customer-specific unique value story for every significant customer opportunity.I now want to…

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…

What’s your customer’s unique value story?

Generic value propositions, although they might be of some use in persuading potential prospects to make initial contact with you as a potential vendor, aren’t…

Your customers don’t care about your so-called “solutions”

Everywhere you look, sales organisations of all descriptions are promoting their so-called “solutions”. It’s become such an overused term that for years the UK’s Private…

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 between…

Why it’s time to focus on outcomes

Note: This article has been adapted from the latest fully revised and updated version of my “Introduction to Outcome Centric Selling” - you can download…

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