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Klaus Balzer im Gespräch

About Balzer & Partner

Balzer and Partner means:
New markets and customers without fear

Discipline, performance and control are almost exclusively associated with steep hierarchical structures. This is a shame, because these virtues are extremely valuable to a culture of communication without fear.

Time and time again, our development activities with various companies and sales teams shows that structures of command are only useful to a certain extent. They produce paranoia in the long run and prevent a real culture of conversation. Fear on the part of sales leads to rejection on the part of the customer. This cycle needs to be broken.

An anxiety-free sales and business development culture embraces mistakes. Why? Because even admitting a mistake takes much more courage than an aggressive style of communication that benefits only the sales representative. But it’s not about them; it’s about the customer and their benefits of buying a service.

In the fear-free sales environment, salespeople view discipline, willingness to perform and control in a positive light because they do not represent tools for punishment, but rather self-optimization and further develop the status quo.

Experience has shown that sales performance increases automatically and exponentially with the establishment of clear rules, objectives and fear-free corporate communication. We would be happy to show you how we can build a smart, successful and mutually beneficial customer communication together.

Balzer and Partner means:
Sales without dependency

Many companies hesitate to use external sales teams because of the fear of dependency. At the same time, they fail to develop enough dynamism with their own resources. A vicious circle?

Stop-and-go sales are one of the most common mistakes companies make. One reason for this is the notion that markets are classified as finite. So you start over again and again and lose momentum every time. Day-to-day business (e.g. customer appointments, preparation of proposals, internal meetings) reduces the capacity for the continuous acquisition of new customers. This creates the impression that the sales team has failed and that a new team should be tested. A vicious cycle, indeed.

In many cases, Balzer & Partner works with companies on a long-term basis. Typically, the collaboration begins with a specific problem. At this point, we listen very carefully to find out and identify the underlying, overt and hidden challenges of our customers. Then we build our cooperation with projects in which we advise, develop and coach teams.

The next step? At the moment, when the specific problems have been solved and a certain flow has started to settle in, it is extremely important to keep focus and the pedal to the floor. Because you are never done with sales. We act as a backup for companies, and provide teams for supervision purposes, to plan new sales campaigns, incorporate didactic units for personnel development and, of course, also offer operational support in sales and business development. With the right mix of momentum, structure and capacities, sales becomes a sustainable solution that does not require stop-and-go.

Balzer and Partner means:
Think of sales and business development as a community

Territorial thinking is coming to an end. In the future, the best companies will be those that behave cooperatively and work with others. Why is this so successful and effective? See for yourself.

Balzer & Partner works with a quality-enhancing strategy and sales concept in which business processes undergo continuous improvement. Sales and the customer-centric development and positioning of products and services play an outstanding role in this concept. It is the interface between market research, product development and marketing, and helps develop customer relationships on a high level of quality.

From this perspective, every single customer touchpoint is valuable because every contact plays an important role in the entire network of corporate relationships. Balzer & Partner works in such a cross-customer network in order to connect specific qualities with one another. Although it might not be obvious today, one specific stakeholder can prove useful sometime in the future.

Balzer & Partner takes the time to identify potential and trends in the markets and then connects the right people with each other so that organizations and all those involved in our community can benefit.

Balzer and Partner means:
Open your eyes and be inspired!

Sales work is a very creative mission, provided you are open to the ideas that are out there, all around us. We rediscovered the Cluetrain Manifesto.

The “Cluetrain Manifesto” appeared early in the Internet age, around the turn of the century. It comprised a list of 95 theses written by marketing pioneers; they called nearly all the traditional marketing ideas into question. The reason: The newly discovered medium of the Internet and the emerging Web 2.0 turned the old hierarchies upside down. That disruptive effect continues to this day.

And since these theses are also applicable to sales, the Cluetrain Manifesto has been a source of inspiration for us. We found so much truth about upright customer relationships in it that we wanted to make it usable for our work.

The ideas speak for themselves. Here are 5 of our favorite theses (with the original numbering):

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. The markets are made up of people, not demographic segments.
  3. Conversations between people sound human. They are conducted in a human voice, to exchange information or opinions, to take positions, to argue or to spread anecdotes – the human voice is open, natural and unpretentious.
  1. Speaking to people on a human level is not a fairground trick. You can’t just snap them up at a fancy conference; to speak in a human voice, companies need to share the concerns of their communities – the community of their market participants – but to do that, they first need to be part of a community.
  1. Today the organization chart consists of hyperlinks, not hierarchies. The value of practical knowledge takes the place of abstract authority; command structures arise from bureaucracy and reinforce it. The result is a paranoid corporate culture – and paranoia kills every conversation. That is its role. But the lack of open conversation kills companies.


Read the Cluetrain Manifesto on the Internet ›

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