90 Minutes with Gerhard Geschwandtner

I spent 90+ minutes last week with Gerhard Gscwandtner, Founder and Publisher of www.sellingpower.com who stopped by our offices today and brought some great wisdom with him. Not only did we share thoughts about our passion of Photography, but we had some great conversation about the state of sales, and about his current views on Sales 2.0. He also had some great thoughts about WarpSales and understood how WarpSales is able to uniquely accelerate and enrich the sales funnel. Read On.

Gerhard helped me understand more about what Sales 2.0 is doing to assist in driving sales effectiveness and productivity and improving the sales landscape.

“WarpSales is Enriching and filling Sales Pipelines and Helping to Accelerate the Pipeline building process in WarpSpeeds” Gerhard Gscwandtner, November 2007

Gerhard surmised that while our value is at the heart of improving sales effectiveness and assisting in companies pipeline building among other current priorities, our current language in terms of increasing live connect rates to improve prospecting effectiveness is not articulating the value that we actually achieve. I believe he confirmed that we are demonstrating a direct improvement in the sales funnel by:

• Increasing the number of Qualified Sales Leads (QSL) entered into the Sales Pipeline (We use the term QSO… Qualified Sales Opportunity);
• Improving the quality of leads that sales people are qualifying in addition to increasing the quantity;
  Accelerating the speed in sales pipeline growth, especially at the top of the funnel; and
• Providing an early point of sales revenue predictability compared with waiting until a QSO is created.

Improving the Sales Funnel is one of the top 3 priorities of Sales Leaders across the board… based on research by CSO Insights*.

Gerhard and I had many other discussions in our time together. I expect that you will see the results of those discussions come out in Acrelic’s own marketing and product offerings in the near future. The current growth of both Acrelic Interactive (WarpSales) and Acrelic Group (Management Advisory Service) will both be showcasing those issues.

I have been a reader of Sales magazines and have been using CRM systems for 25+ years. I evaluated and deployed CRM systems for my sales teams and my personal use when they started being introduced for the PC in the mid 1980’s. I have been reading Selling Power magazine for 8 years (not sure why I didn’t read it sooner) and have attended their sales conferences. I have seen an ever-increasing level of value from Gerhard as he and his team has worked hard to help sales people and marketing and sales leaders innovate and improve sales practices. In my opinion, Gerhard is one of the top 5 gurus in the world helping Sales and his Publishing firm is leading the charge. I would encourage anyone involved in Sales or Marketing to learn more about SellingPower, join their readership and get involved in their related programs.