Business Value Shaped In Writing

A collection of the latest knowledge and methods applied today for business leaders looking for growth. It is the result of HEED internal work and proven approach used to help numerous businesses with their commercial excellence.

  • All
  • Client-Centric sales process
  • Commercial Excellence
  • Compensation & Drive
  • Digital
  • Feasibility and Business Plan
  • Growth Strategy
  • Organization Structure
  • People & Skills
  • Pricing
  • Sales Strategy

Yamama Cement Chooses HEED for its Customer-Centric Transformation

A transformative collaboration between Yamama Cement Company, a pioneer Saudi company in the cement industry, and HEED, a renowned boutique management consulting firm. The shared objective is to achieve substantial growth and redefine customer-centricity. Yamama Cement Company is a towering figure in the Saudi Arabian cement manufacturing landscape, a true leader in the industry. For […]

Effective salesforce design and size process

Are you experiencing Unhealthy Competition among sales teams, not being able to Track and Monitor Performance and hold people accountable, Difficulty in Scaling Up, Losing Client Relationships, or a High Cost of Sales

How land and expand model can grow your business

Ensuring your business’ survival, let alone its development, has been no easy feat. It’s likely that many businesses like yours have had to make some tough decisions to stay afloat. As you look to the future, you’ll have many decisions to make regarding your business development. There’s no doubt that some of the major economic changes we’ve seen are here to stay. But there are changes that you can implement that will improve your bottom line and make the going more worthy.

One of the major strategies that have proven records of success in many industries is the land-and-expand sales model which aims to increase conversion rate and boost sales numbers. Keep reading as we dive into what land-and-expand can do for your business and how to adapt your processes to this model.

Integrating technology without killing the human element in B2B sales

Companies are being forced to adjust their business models and adapt to the new market reality as a result of digital transformation. What’s remarkable about this is that the transformation isn’t driven by businesses, but rather it’s directed by the customer.

The internet gave customers access to relevant information at any time, anywhere, and in the format and device of their preference. Thus, the customer journey dictates different strategies for businesses to keep up with this new kind of “always-connected” customer. Businesses must embrace technology in order to provide an exceptional customer experience, that’s one perspective of the story.

Eliminate the Barrier – Reach Your Consumer Directly

Over the past decade, the evolution of customer purchasing behavior has significantly led to a growing preference for online shopping. Yet, most organizations could not complement their offline sales channels with the digital ones up until the pandemic hit in 2020, and organizations were left with no choice.

How to optimally segment clients in B2B companies

Account management-based companies have always valued the importance of client categorization and evaluation; however, determining the optimal way to do that remains evasive. Technology is overtaking the account management sales world; thus, more companies are relying on automating business processes. While the use of technology is no longer viewed as an accelerator, rather as a core component of business, it should not outweigh client centricity. Particularly in companies that rely on post-sales account managers to manage and nurture relationships with accounts – to retain and increase revenue from them. The objective then is to place client centricity at the center and create digital initiatives that facilitate this centricity.

The power of pricing

In an ever-increasingly competitive world, the majority of companies have been experiencing shrinking margins like never before; yet these same organizations firmly believe the solution to enhancing profits directly lies in the implementation of strategies either related to cost-cutting or volume growth. By shifting all their efforts, resources, and capabilities towards visioning these strategies, organizations tend to underestimate a key untapped profit lever, known as “PRICE”, resulting in a considerable amount of money left on the table.

Retail business isn’t dead – it’s entering a new era

With the introduction of the digital world to the retail business in the late 1990s, along with the entire digital revolution, customers and consumers had a massive shift in their purchasing behavior.

With the rise of the Covid19 pandemic and its implication and acceleration on every aspect within our way of living, the retail business became one of the most challenging industries, and thus a lot of studies have been conducted to understand what’s happening to approach the myth of the future of retail.

2023 STRATEGIC PLAN

Revenue Leaders, this is what you have to be thinking of for your 2023 Strategic Plan The fourth quarter of every year is to the majority of companies the time when executives & leaders settle down, analyze their current year performance, and prepare their strategic plans & initiatives to build their budgets for the following […]

The digital sales transformation

Digital Sales Transformation (DST) has been a hot subject for most companies for the past years, but mainly focusing on the front-end customer experience, e-commerce, digital marketing, and automation (e.g. search/SEO, social media, online shopping, etc.) as well as digitizing the back-end business processes by enabling some software tools.

[Publication] Insightful Business Sales Implications during COVID-19

Enclosed is a detailed paper that discusses the business environment of a Pandemic Crisis specifically on the Global and Middle East business situation. This investigation emphasizes how companies should react in relation to their Go-To-Market Strategy and Sales Approach, Pricing, and ways to handle Account Receivables..  Enjoy the Read and the Valuable Insights!

Transformational not transactional

I know that we live in a very fast pace moving world, where the TV that used to be something we plan for buying became a fast moving product that we can buy with a simple card swipe. Our brains have been shaped for instant gratification, we look for instant coffee, fast food, priority check in, express delivery, watch or listen on demand, etc.

Marketing Operations

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Bring out your sales challengers

The most powerful testing and evaluation to every business, executive and sales leader is when  economy strikes or the market goes to a nearly complete halt.

The entire cycle becomes critical and complicated. Every single purchase becomes complex, deeply thought of by the customer, well dissected to take the best (and maybe more) out of every penny.

[Case Study & Interview] How Hawkers Beer Achieved Higher Sales

From A Simple Need, To A Successful Journey, To Finally A Major Shift Of Integrating Science Into Sales. Hawkers Beer, founded in 2014 with a commitment to spread flavourful beer, is an unconventional brewing company based in Melbourne, Australia. Despite its steady growth, management needed to really understand and analyze the underlying sales and operations […]

Making Sales Training Harder

If all boats rise with the tide When John F. Kennedy, back in 1963, first used the phrase a rising tide lifts all boats, upon facing criticism that the new dam project he was inaugurating was a “pork barrel project”. From then on after, this phrase became famously associated with the idea, that improvements in […]

The World Cup & Sales – How are they related?

  Every 4 years, The World Cup brings football fans and those foreign to the game around the TV & giant screens. It is more than just a sporting event. With technology and advanced tools, World Cup predictions is a mini-industry now. Yet, forecasting the winner is still almost impossible and did not do any […]

The Big Ben of Salespeople

While I was watching the Discovery Channel few days ago, it caught my attention an interesting documentary that might seem historical or mechanical for some, but it showed me a different perspective. When Great Britain parliament commissioned this clock in 1854, they insisted Big Ben be the biggest, most powerful and accurate clock in the […]

Game Changing Sales Structure Questions Answered Scientifically

  “Sales Strategy”, “Sales Force Design”, “Customer Engagement” are some of the concepts that affect hundreds of decisions and end results in the sales organization. This is relatively easy to apply from Top to Bottom, from concept to action. Once the concept is clear, the process can be set, and the decisions can be planned […]

Sales Standardization

  Think of it like ISO for your Sales and Selling Like a factory, the more we can systemize, standardize, and document the easier we can scale things up. Such efforts has started long ago in the 1900s to make factories more efficient. In the 1980s the concept of ‘Lean’ – making processes to flow […]

Identify What Your Top Performers Do Differently

  “If only I could find good salespeople, I’m sure my sales would have grew significantly.” This is what I keep on hearing throughout my meetings with Owners, CEOs, General Managers, and HR Directors. They are always overwhelmed and clouded with many excuses such as: “we can’t afford to hire fresh graduates and train them […]

Eight Different Types of Salespeople

  CEOs are investing more than ever in their sales forces, but results aren’t improving. To understand this disconnect, we observed 1800 sales professionals in live sales meetings. We discovered eight sales types. The bad news is that only three of them—accounting for a mere 37% of salespeople—were consistently effective. What’s more, some of the […]

Thinking BIG

  What Best-in-Class Companies Did Differently In his interview on Bloomberg last Sunday, Tony Seba was talking about the future of energy and how countries are looking today to leverage on the free energy provided by the sun to transform it into renewable energy, and thus shifting from the traditional use of energy produced from […]

3 Tools to benefit from your intact data and drive your Sales

Sales data has revolutionized how sales leaders manage their sales force. Few years ago sales leaders used to strive in understanding their sales performance by analyzing their sales based on various criteria (product, area, category, salesperson, customer) in comparison to previous years and in best case trying to manage their sales pipelines. Technology Reveals More […]

The 1 common mistake companies are doing while considering a technical solution

  Based on a Solid Background of Experience I have spent about 7 years implementing business management solutions from ERP, CRM, to Data Analytics and Dashboards, in different industries, companies, and countries. In which I have been part in HR, Finance, Procurement, & Sales business and gap analysis, implementations, customizations, and customer service. Fortunately, I have […]

TABLEAU, a proven leader in the Magic Quadrant

  For the fourth year, Tableau is a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms Report     This year’s Magic Quadrant, which shows the relative position of each challenger in the business analytics space, again positions Tableau as a leader in an increasingly competitive market. For the fourth year in […]

HEED Data Visualization

Part of our mission “Putting Science into Sales” and aiding sales management make sense of data and turn it into actionable insights, Heed continues its successful journey to become the only Certified Alteryx Professional in the Middle East..read more

Use HEED Matrix to Optimize your Sales

Every time two business leaders, entrepreneurs or CEOs meet together, the subject of “what shall we do in such stagnant market, and the continuous underlying economical and political factors” take over their conversation. Some people follow the school which believes that, in such times, it is best to reduce cost, while others argue that it is best […]

It is Not Only About Sales Efficiency

Why It is Important to have a Dedicated Sales Ops Effectiveness Department When Xerox first established…read more

What is Sales Operations

The most important objective for Sales Operations is to focus on Sales effectiveness rather than efficiency…read more

[Case Study] A 17% Increase in Revenues

[Case Study] Based on a new holistic shift within the sales model Sales models for many large companies…read more

Building a Predictable Scalable Sales Organization

“Why did you start this business?”, a question that was posed to me during one entrepreneurship panel discussion…read more

Power of Enablement

In today’s time, the need for adopting the “Sales Enablement” methodology or “best practice” is highly…read more

Gain more Selling Time & Grow Your Business

While 92% of firms in 2015 are increasing their quotas, important metrics pivotal to sales success…read more

Preparing Organizations To Be Data-Driven

Not so long ago, when making decisions, sales leaders relied primarily on their own judgement, hunch…read more

Sales 2.0 : Evolution Starts from San Francisco

In conjunction with the above, HEED has recently participated in the Sales 2.0 Conference – San Francisco, CA…read more

Data Driven Sales Forecasts

I’m sure we all strive to live in a visible future. With the fast changing market, fierce competition…read more

Sales Governance

This has become a key in mature organizations where there is a need of more structure…read more

Building Sustainability with Performance

The cost of selling has increased significantly over the decade. Firms are trying to use many…read more

When it comes to sales evaluation / hiring

Business managers have an absolute unpleasant track record when it comes to evaluating sales talent…read more

Sales Data: Importance & Benefit

How to benefit from your sales data “Analysts spend much of their time preparing data for analysis…read more

CRM systems: Vision vs.Reality

CRM System Vision vs. Reality Organizations and management understand well the need and importance…read more

Lead Management System

Lead Management is a term used in a very different way to describe methodologies, systems…read more

Is Sales Strategy a Must?

“Strategy” has become a buzzword that consumes big portion of our daily sales conversation…read more

Sales Strategy: Nespresso case study

Nespresso is an espresso coffee-making machine consisting of a coffee capsule and a machine…read more

Sales Rarely To Get The Respect It Deserves

Even, it became among the discipline that makes up the field of management, up to a point where they forget…read more

How To Resolve Your Sales Challenges

HEED is integrating Science into SALES. A solution through which we had 100% success rate in our projects…read more

Sales Transformation

An integrated unique approach to improve sales performance With the beginning of 2013…read more

We Don’t Do Sales Training

I had this topic in mind to be published as HEED’s 1st article back in June 2011…read more

In memory of #1 Motivational Speaker -Zig Ziglar

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” Zig Ziglar died Wednesday at age 86, a deep-throated motivational speaker whose clever way with words inspired millions to stop looking for shortcuts to success — and instead earn it the old-fashioned way by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. He was born Hilary […]

Sales Optimization

How to Optimize Our 2013 Sales Performance December on the doors, a month that brings positive vibes, energy, and joy to most people. In business, it’s a different picture; sales managers are worried. They are busy motivating, supporting, and pushing their sales team to achieve their targets. In parallel savvy managers are not limiting themselves […]

Entrepreneur(s): A lesson to Remember

The old generation are true leaders ,our teachers, they don’t retire they might just miss their classes. That day was hard, different, I couldn’t even remember why I decided to take this entrepreneurial journey. All things conspired to remind me of my fears and weaknesses I put down while preparing the SWOT analysis, just to […]

The Role of a Sales Manager

How does an effective leader affect the sales performance During a recent auditing work and throughout a conversation held with a successful salesperson, he said “I’ve been working really hard for this day. But As much as I’m happy, as much as I feel overwhelmed with stress from ambiguity.” This man has made himself up […]

Leading in a non-ending crisis

We NEED a structured disciplined sales department 2007-2008 financial crisis raised concerns that the global financial and economic system might experience a truly substantial collapse. The media, publications and business cases were all circulated around “leading in such crisis”. Few in the Levant area especially in Lebanon cared to put the efforts and go through […]

Sales Organization: Problems, Challenges, and Potential

The science behind solving, developing and building a scalable predictable sales growth In such never ending situations, the civil war, Israeli bombardments, economic and financial crisis, and today the Arab Spring,  our friends would back us up saying “maintaining your sales numbers would be good enough.” But ask thousands of entrepreneurs, general managers, sales managers […]

Salespeople: The Lies and Truths

As Marlon Brando said in an interview for a rare show on June 12, 1973 after the height of his Godfather majesty, “There was no difference between what I do on-screen and what all of us do every day. The difference is I do it as a profession.” The same applies to sales. “Living life […]

It Needs Guts to be a Salesperson and Discipline to be a Successful One.

A Tribute to my Former Employers 2006 at 9:00 in the morning, we were all sitting in the weekly sales meeting but with different vibes this time. We were depressed, feeling insecure, Lebanon was under the Israeli bombardments, people leaving the country, others were dying but our General Manager, Mr. Marwan Chehlawi, was standing up […]

The Salesman

Selling is more than a profession; it is a way of life. As Mazen Farah, partner at HEED with might & main, mentioned in one of his public speeches, an Entrepreneur is simply a person who is not happy with the status quo and takes initiative to change it. He added that a salesman is […]

Sales Organization’s Performance – its Peaks and Valleys

What major factors could affect its trend and variation? Dr. Spencer Johnson in his book Peaks and Valleys described it very nicely “it is natural for everyone everywhere to have peaks and valleys at work and in life. A plateau can be a place of rest;but if you stay there, you can become bored, and […]

How to Assess Scientifically our Sales Performance

A scientific way to go the extra step in assessing our sales performance. It’s December, a month when sales managers rush into motivating, helping, and pushing their sales team to achieve their targets, with an eye towards the end of year bonus. I’m not saying this is wrong, this is what sales managers must do […]

2012 Sales Planning – Why Not a Sales Training

Why Not the Sales Training & how to properly prepare for our Sales Plan I’m not old, and still  throughout my experience as an IT solution provider, I have practiced the old traditional way of selling. We used to depart  the office in the morning, and hopefully return in the afternoon with a sort of set […]

Why to Map Our Sales Process

  What advantages does it  have on the macro and micro level? Jack Welch, GE CEO [1981-2006], in his book “WINNING”, structured and assessed employees as, 20% are top performers, 70% are the middle, and 10% are the bottom ones. Then he insisted on the “act” part asking managers to act according to this categorization. […]

Difficulties Behind Hiring Good Sales People

What are the root causes behind the difficulty in allocating good sales people and what capabilities organizations are left with? Seven years ago, with few humble years of experience in my pocket, I was suited and booted, sitting among thirty or forty other refined and well carried sales candidates with my heart beating fast. It […]

Science into the Art of Selling

What organizations face from following a non-scientific structured approach on strategic and tactical basis. In bicycle-racing, keen teams match their strategies to the phases of the race. In the time trials, a few team members maintain steady speeds over long distances to lower the team’s average finishing time, others might end up pedaling fast to […]