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.
Today’s 3 Frontline Sales Management Priorities
Frontline sales managers - the people from whom individual members of the sales organisation take their day-to-day direction - have always played an absolutely pivotal…
Mutual Success Plans: A Collaborative Approach
I’ve written before about the persuasive power of a Mutual Success Plan in technology-based B2B sales, and I believe the concept is so important that…
The status quo isn’t what it used to be…
Whenever a purchase is inevitable (the customer must act) your competition tends to be predictable - and it will often be another vendor like you.…
Never let a good crisis go to waste
As Winston Churchill was working to establish the United Nations after World War Two, he observed that leaders should “never let a good crisis go…
Answering your customer’s three critical questions
In today's challenging and uncertain business climate, your customers have good reason to be cautious. They are unlikely to initiate new projects unless they see…
A New Normal – or a Better Normal?
It’s become common for commentators to refer to the fast-evolving reality of B2B selling as the “new normal”, and I’ve often used this phrase myself.…
Is your ‘coach’ a mobiliser or an immobiliser?
Most conventional sales methodologies encourage salespeople to find at least one coach inside the potential customer’s organisation who is willing and able to give them…
Should we be selling ‘solutions’ or outcomes?
Many sales methodologies claim to have a uniquely effective approach. Yet, and perhaps inevitably, each methodology has its strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots. None of…
This is why (some) B2B customers are still buying in the current climate…
There’s no doubt that the vast majority - if not all - of discretionary, could-put-it off until later B2B purchases are being deferred in the…
Reprioritising your target accounts
Having a clearly defined and actively worked new business target account list is a key strategy for anyone who is responsible for proactively developing their…
Keeping your sales pipeline flowing
I recently ran a webinar with Paul Everett of The Marketing Practice - one of the UK’s most respected B2B marketing agencies, and with a…
Establishing Value in Challenging Times
There’s no doubt that our customers and our own sales organisations are facing challenging - many would suggest unprecedented - times. Many purchases that would…
Do your customers have a ‘survive’ or a ‘come back stronger’ mindset?
There probably isn’t a single industry or organisation that isn’t being affected in some way by covid-19. A few sectors - healthcare and food retail…
‘Why do we have to spend this money now?’
Even before the current crisis, many opportunities that had been confidently forecast by salespeople were failing to close. This was and still is particularly true…
When the Status Quo isn’t the Status Quo Anymore
In most complex B2B sales environments, our most significant and consistent competition typically hasn’t come from another conventional “competitor”: it has come from the status…
Getting the right people on your sales bus
In his widely acclaimed Good to Great, Jim Collins shows that lastingly great organisations pay particular attention to not only getting the “right people on…
Discounting is a sure sign of sales failure
For many sales organisations, December is both the end of the sales quarter and the end of the sales year. Individual salespeople and entire sales…
Stretching your customer’s value gap
Whenever your customer sees little meaningful difference between their current situation and their future potential, they will be inclined to stick with the status quo.And…
Understanding your customer’s decision journey
It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although rigidly defined processes might be…
Understanding B2B Buying Behaviour
In any high-value complex B2B sales environments involving new projects with multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours and motivations that drive your customer’s decision-making journey are…