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.
Why sales forecasts go wrong – and what to do about it…
I hope that you enjoyed the holiday season, and are returning to work re-energised and determined to achieve some ambitious goals in 2016. But...
Why untested assumptions will kill your Q4 closes
It's the 22nd November, we're well into Q4 and for many organisations - and many B2B sales people - that haven't yet achieved their 2015 revenue...
Complex Sales: the #1 rule when responding to RFPs
DON'T RESPOND! Unless, of course, you have played a significant role in shaping the prospect’s requirements and the timing and contents of the RFP comes...
Never mind the Sharks – what about the Piranhas?
The most dangerous competition in B2B sales often comes from an unexpected quarter. I fondly remember working at SCO in early 1990’s, when we held...
Learn from the Best, Move the Middle, Accelerate the Inevitable
According to Sales Benchmark Index, across the industry as a whole, 83% of sales revenues are generated by only 13% of the sales population....
B2B sales: which opportunities are REALLY likely to close in 2015?
It’s coming up to the end of October, and if you’re in high-value, long-decision-cycle, multiple-stakeholder enterprise sales, it means that you effectively have a...
Never Mind the Sales Process – What About the Buyer’s Journey?
When organisations talk about their sales process, they are usually thinking in terms of a sequence of sales activities, typically encapsulated in a series...
The keys to fast, effective market entry into new geographies
There’s no doubt that for many North American based companies, expanding into Europe is an attractive option. Sections of the European market (and particularly...
The 3 Critical B2B Sales Pipeline Metrics
How healthy is your sales pipeline right now? And what steps are you taking to progressively improve its fitness? Just as your own doctor...
Sales Forecasting Essentials – get your definitions right
There’s nothing more frustrating for a sales leader, a CEO or a Board of Directors than a continued inability to come up with a...
The Keys to Successfully Implementing “The Challenger Sale”
I attended the UK launch event for “The Challenger Customer” yesterday (you can read my review of the book here). One of the authors,...
Why it’s time to STOP “Adding Value”
It’s probably the most commonly proposed response to price pressures and commoditisation: if we’re not prepared to cut our prices, we had better add...
Why “The Challenger Customer” is a must-read for CEOs and sales leaders
When the Challenger Sale was published in 2011, it rapidly became one of the "must read" handbooks for B2B CEOs and sales leaders, with...
Boldly Going in B2B Sales: Less Kirk, More Spock
The traditional profile of a successful sales person isn’t a million miles away from the personality of Captain James Tiberius Kirk - someone who...
What Sales could learn from Customer Experience
I’m very grateful to Bob Thompson of CustomerThink for hosting a very stimulating round table with a group of the UK’s leading customer experience...
Transforming your sales process to reflect modern buying behaviours
There’s no doubt that B2B buying behaviours have changed dramatically over the past few years. If you’re selling a complex, high-value solution, then you’ll...
The fundamental principles of value-based selling
It’s a sad fact that today’s average B2B sales person is still far more comfortable talking about their products than they are discussing business...
Competing against the status quo
Note: this article originally appeared in the International Journal of Sales Transformation under the title 'Competing against "do nothing"' If you’re involved in complex high-value...
The problem with assigning fixed percentages to pipeline stages
On average, fewer than 50% of forecasted opportunities close at the predicted value and time - and the figure is usually far worse in...
Forrester: 4 types of B2B buyer = 4 types of B2B seller
There’s a lot of attention been paid to Forrester’s recent projection that 1 million B2B sales people are going to lose their jobs to...