Jeffrey Gitomer
JANUARY 15, 2019
Paula Kearney just spent the weekend selling door to door. She made more than 150 sales. Paula is 7. Paula's success has her so pumped to sell more, her parents have to dampen her enthusiasm with the reality of homework, school, household chores and bedtime. What kind of saleswoman will this kid be when she's 21? So, what does this 7–year old kid have to do with your sales success?
Bernadette McClelland
JANUARY 3, 2019
Strategy is one of those words that, to a right brain creative like me, every now and then sends ‘this does not compute’ messages through the brain. Not dissimilar to a strategist hearing words such as ‘creativity’, I guess. With the definition of science being: ‘a systematically organised body of knowledge on a particular subject’, and Michael Porter’s definition of strategy in the Harvard Business Review, ‘the creation of a unique position involving a distinct set of activities’. then th
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Sales and Marketing Management
JANUARY 11, 2019
Author: Warren Fowler Sales teams and marketers focus on digital communication so much that they seem to forget the power of offline promotion channels. While online tools are often more convenient and practical than traditional marketing techniques, the fact remains that the latter usually perform better. For instance, reports reveal that up to 90 percent of direct mails get opened, while emails average 25 percent at best.
No More Cold Calling
JANUARY 17, 2019
Don’t believe everything you hear about selling in a digital world. You’ve probably heard the often-quoted statistic that says 57 percent of the buying process is complete before a customer talks to a salesperson. Rubbish. Believe that, and you’ll look like everyone else to your buyers. You’ll get in way too late. Your prospects will be confused about how your solution is different from the next guy’s.
Advertisement
A dramatic shift has occurred in the B2B landscape. Buying has transformed radically in the last half-decade, causing growth rates to plummet, customer acquisition costs to skyrocket, and churn rates to surge. For SaaS companies relying on traditional sales strategies to grow revenue, these trends will only become worse, as they now falter in the face of modern purchasing paradigms.
Understanding the Sales Force
JANUARY 3, 2019
Like most people, this year I intend to make good on my New Year’s resolution. It’s actually more of a life resolution than it is a New Year’s resolution in much the same way that salespeople should make theirs a career resolution. If it’s important enough then it shouldn't be for only one year. I’ve compiled a list of resolutions that all salespeople should make and follow.
Sales Pro Central brings together the best content for sales professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Jeffrey Gitomer
JANUARY 13, 2019
YES! The success of a small business rests on the owner's ability to sell. Small business owners have about 50 different hats to wear, but sales is the biggest hat an entrepreneur wears. Actually without the sales hat, the other hats are useless. When I say sales, I'm not just talking, "Hey, please buy my stuff." Sales is not just selling your product or service.
Bernadette McClelland
JANUARY 31, 2019
I have always said to my kids, ‘behave yourself because you never know who’s watching’. Like all kids, without fail, they listen to their mum (she says tongue in cheek!). But the point I am making is you never know who is watching you. Not from a creepy, stalking way, but more an observational perspective. And today, our personal branding extends way past a name on a building, a copyright mark that we might put against our initials, or the bio we choose to add to any profile we put on the web.
Sales and Marketing Management
JANUARY 14, 2019
Author: Dean Kaplan As the head of a collections agency, I work with many different kinds of businesses. One thing many businesses with collection issues have in common is that they focus too strongly on making a sale, and not strongly enough on improving their sales process. Although it’s obvious that any business needs sales to survive, organizations that become too focused on sales at any cost tend to overlook warning signs that a client might not be creditworthy.
No More Cold Calling
JANUARY 3, 2019
What is 7427466391? Imagine if you saw this on a billboard along your commute route …. What would you do? Roll your eyes, think this is nonsense, tell others about it, or go to the site and find out what’s going on? The curious solved the equation (answer: 7427466391.com) and went to the site, where they found another equation. The few who solved it learned the secret to the strange billboard.
Speaker: Carlos Hidalgo, Co-Founder & CEO of Digital Exhaust, Author, International Keynote & TEDx Speaker
Recent research shows that only 50% of B2B organizations state that they have good alignment between their marketing and sales teams. This lack of alignment tremendously impacts the ability to meet business goals, and is a limiting factor for building and maintaining customer relationships. While many B2B organizations continue to struggle with aligning their marketing and sales teams, they can take practical steps to unify both teams and simplify their overall approach.
Understanding the Sales Force
JANUARY 14, 2019
If you're young enough, some of the questions in the first few paragraphs won't apply because you haven't experienced the world without the innovations mentioned below. Don't let that prevent you from reading this because after the milestones, we'll get to the good selling stuff. For those of you who are my age or older, do you remember the first time you saw color TV?
SBI Growth
JANUARY 15, 2019
Recently, my colleague Sid Nakappan wrote an article on How the CEO can jumpstart the Customer Experience Transformation. If your boss put this article on your desk, you are probably getting started. With the interest of beginning with the end.
The Pipeline
JANUARY 22, 2019
By Tibor Shanto. People will tell you that the number one reason sellers do not like to prospect, specifically telephone prospecting, is rejection. However, if we step back, there is no less rejection in other means of prospecting, say e-mail or LinkedIn prospecting; when you look at the numbers, the phone is more effective than e-mail, (better together), it’s just not in your face (ear), like the phone.
Jeffrey Gitomer
JANUARY 14, 2019
You will no longer dread the dreaded cold call after you read this column several hundred thousand times. There is a fear and dislike many salespeople have when it comes to cold calling. John Whittington at the Lake Norman SalesMasters ® club mentioned that he had a big fear of being thrown out of a company when making a cold call. It was suggested to him that his strategy should be to only cold call on one-story buildings.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Longer sales cycles. Increasingly discerning buyers. More meetings. Intensifying competition. Economic uncertainty. Go-to-market teams of every size, in every industry, are grappling with these challenges firsthand. Thankfully, there’s an answer. We’ve developed an entirely new way for GTM leaders to identify and execute proven, data-driven strategies that drive revenue.
Sales and Marketing Management
JANUARY 4, 2019
Author: Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling™ I was recently working with a new client. His mission is to set up appointments on behalf of his manager. My new client was stressed and frustrated and having no success. He told me that he was reaching and having brief conversations with some prospects but those conversations went nowhere. He said he was trying to be consultative, to elicit details and to drill down on prospect objections.
No More Cold Calling
JANUARY 24, 2019
. Have you ever met a salesperson who enjoyed cold calling? (Well, maybe one in 100.) How about a buyer who enjoyed receiving cold calls? (Yeah, me neither.) Not only is cold calling tortuous for everyone involved, it’s one of the reasons that only 54.3 percent of sales reps made quota last year. Cold calling doesn’t address the top two challenges that sales teams face.
Understanding the Sales Force
JANUARY 17, 2019
In my last article I shared the t op 8 requirements for becoming a great salesperson. Wow, did that resonate with people and there was a great discussion about it on LinkedIn. In addition to that, I received a number of emails asking, what are the requirements for becoming a great sales manager? I'll share those in a moment but first, since they were so popular, a few more "do you remember the first time" questions: Do you remember your first cell phone that didn't need to be plugged into a roof
SBI Growth
JANUARY 3, 2019
All businesses need to prove that their products are valuable; simply declaring it to customers will do little to grow the business. The window to prove your solution is worth the investment and is becoming increasingly brief. If there’s a.
Speaker: Joe Heather, Deliverect GM (UK&I) & Noah Hayes, Deliverect GM (US&CA)
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Quick Commerce (Q-commerce) are two vibrant sectors that have undergone significant transformations with the advancements in digital technology. With growing internet penetration and the proliferation of smartphones, consumers' purchasing habits have unsurprisingly evolved. They now demand quick, convenient, and seamless shopping experiences, which both FMCG and Q-commerce sectors strive to provide.
MTD Sales Training
JANUARY 8, 2019
What is a belief system? Wiki would have it described as a mental representation of an attitude oriented toward the likelihood of something being true. I like that concept, because it identifies a model that supports the way someone likes to behave, based on a system that supports those beliefs. That means it can’t always be supported by empirical formulae, but is determined by someone’s confidence in an opinion or belief.
Connect2Sell
JANUARY 23, 2019
Being memorable in sales translates into making more sales. This 12-part series on how to be a memorable salesperson includes specific ways you can make yourself stand out to buyers. Each post in this CONNECT2Sell series includes research from a study with 530 B2B buyers and in-field observations from a sales coach. This post describes how to be more memorable by doing more collaborating with buyers.
Sales and Marketing Management
JANUARY 9, 2019
Author: Ken Rutsky Albert Einstein thought about big things: space and time; the size, origin and destination of the Universe. Most of us business-to-business marketers are a bit more limited: Customers and competitors; the size and future of our market share. But one thing is pretty clear, it’s all relative. "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.". – Albert Einstein.
The Sales Heretic
JANUARY 29, 2019
Ask any sales expert, and they’ll tell you that the right attitude is essential for success. But it’s not just one attitude that’s necessary—there are several. I would suggest there are nine different—but related—attitudes you need to nurture in order to be successful in sales. 1. Optimism I have never met a successful salesperson or [.].
Advertisement
In this guide, discover 8 use cases for how a customer data platform can tackle common challenges faced by marketing, commerce, service, and sales teams. With helpful diagrams and simple explanations in each use case, see how Salesforce’s CDP, Data Cloud for Marketing, powers personalized, real-time experiences across marketing, with capabilities that include: Optimizing ad spend Powering dynamic website content Increasing upselling and cross-selling Resolving service cases with marketing data B
Understanding the Sales Force
JANUARY 22, 2019
Do the least informed among us have the loudest voices? This article is about salespeople but to set the stage, we'll start with the news. When I listen to and watch the news, it seems that those on the fringes and representing special interest groups get the most attention, benefit of the doubt, dictate how everyone else should think and act, and cause tremendous tension and stress.
SBI Growth
JANUARY 18, 2019
Advocacy is on fire! Why? Because harnessing passion from advocates is an authentic way to drive customer intimacy and revenue growth. Research from the Demand Gen Report shared that as much as 84% of buyers seek input from their peers.
The Pipeline
JANUARY 8, 2019
By Tibor Shanto. Professional who excel understand that there is more to that success than just core skills. Beyond how they execute their craft, other life skills can enhance the experience for participants and the outcome. One element many top performers employ is a touch of theatre. Whether you call it “bedside manner,” “courtroom presence,” or good old swagger, there is no question that little theatre art in high school can pay big dividends down the line.
No More Cold Calling
JANUARY 31, 2019
Here’s what you might have missed this month from No More Cold Calling. I hadn’t bought a car in 17 years. Yep, that’s how long my Acura 3.2 TL with 162,000 miles lasted—until the transmission went out. I dreaded buying another car because of the pushy, in-your-face car salespeople, who are just like B2B sales reps cold calling you. But I told myself that perhaps things had changed in the past 17 years.
Speaker: Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach®
Niche markets represent a huge opportunity for the financial services industry in America. From college students and women to communities of color and low-to-moderate-income households, niche populations have specialized financial needs – but they often underutilize many valuable financial products and services. How can you better connect with these consumers?
Sales and Marketing Management
JANUARY 7, 2019
Author: Rory Christian According to IDC , despite a "typical" $1 billion company spending a large amount of resources devoted to training for customer-facing people, poor sales enablement results in around $14 million of wasted sales and marketing expenses, and $100 million in lost sales opportunities. Where could they be going wrong? Imagine for a moment that you’re a sales manager evaluating how to deliver a sales enablement program that will benefit both new hires who need to hit the ground r
The Sales Heretic
JANUARY 8, 2019
I have weird feet. Seriously. My forefeet are wide, I have very long toes, and my right foot is nearly a half size larger than my left. Which makes shoe shopping a challenge. Roughly 98% of the shoes I try on don’t fit comfortably. So when I recently purchased several pairs of shoes online, I [.].
Understanding the Sales Force
JANUARY 30, 2019
One of the challenges that sales managers have is their trepidation around transitioning from very little coaching to daily coaching; and at the same time, moving from coaching light (ineffective coaching) to coaching pro (effective coaching). Why? They aren't masters of role-playing and role-playing is one of the primary tools to demonstrate best practices and how effective sales conversations should sound.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
222 
Let's personalize your content