The Sales Heretic
MAY 16, 2012
I registered to attend an upcoming trade show, so naturally I’ve been deluged with postcards and letters from exhibitors beseeching me to visit their booth. Most of the messages have been along the lines of “Come learn all about our super-cool, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, game-changing, mega-awesome product or service.” News Flash: I don’t care about your product or [.].
The Pipeline
MAY 14, 2012
One common objection sales people face when making prospecting calls, is when the potentially prospect says “now is not the right time” While timing is important, and understanding how specific triggers can help improve your timing, the fact remains that perfecting your timing will only help you in a very (very very) small way, in a very narrow part of you potential prospect segment.
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No More Cold Calling
MAY 14, 2012
Technology connects us to the outside world, but what about connecting to the world right in front of us? Take a look around you. How many people are on their mobile phones talking, walking, reading, surfing, emailing, or texting? How many people are multitasking on their phones as they walk down the street, across the street, or driving. (Read, “ The Multitasking Myth: Are You a Culprit?
MTD Sales Training
MAY 16, 2012
Every day, I hear from sales people who are confused, frustrated or defeated by facing what they feel is a nearly insurmountable objection: “I am sorry, but I am very happy with my current supplier/vendor. We have been doing business with them for many years and have no reason to change…” This position strikes terror [.
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
MAY 14, 2012
Issue Date: 2012-05-14. Author: Michael and Jonathan Hackett. Being a baseball pitcher is like being a salesperson. It is always, “what you have done for me lately?” The more important question a sales manager should ask his salespeople is, “what have I done to help you lately?” I have a son who is a pitcher on a Division I college baseball team.
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Understanding the Sales Force
MAY 14, 2012
Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan I heard former NBA all-star and current ESPN basketball analyst, Bruce Bowen , talking about Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics. He characterized Garnett as one of the toughest competitors on the court, unlike some younger, very talented players who aren't as competitive and don't know how to close out games.
MTD Sales Training
MAY 14, 2012
There are countless tips, tricks and gimmicks on how to begin a cold call. Of course, the majority of these ideas focus on how to get the call started or how to begin the call. Which makes sense, since if you do not get the call started correctly, it is over. However, what most people [.
Score More Sales
MAY 14, 2012
Before I got into professional selling, I was a preschool teacher who worked with two-year olds. We were licensed for 12 two-year olds in our room within a daycare center, and I had two assistants. For anyone who knows me now, it may be hard to believe that I did that for five years, utilizing my degree in education. I actually loved it, but unfortunately, it didn’t pay the bills.
The Pipeline
MAY 18, 2012
“The doer and the thinker, no allowances for the other” Strategy and planning are important to sales success, but nothing beats execution. Acting, with some forethought, will pay dividends almost every time, and every time, is infinitely better than not acting until “it’s just right” Too often we wait for the “perfect moment”, the “right opportunity” before we act, only to have some of the “almost right opportunities” slip away.
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Sales teams often lose precious time hunting for updated sales materials, while marketing struggles to keep these assets accessible and current. It's not just about managing; it's about seamlessly finding, presenting, and sharing critical sales content. All of this takes place within an intuitive, unified platform. Dive into Showell's groundbreaking content management realm.
Understanding the Sales Force
MAY 16, 2012
Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan When a room full of sales leaders arrive for two days of intensive training, there are many things that can and do happen. Here are ten of them: They can and do resist if they were sent there. If they chose to come, on their own, resistance never occurs! Fortunately, the resistance fades away by the end of the first day.
MTD Sales Training
MAY 18, 2012
Below are three clear and simple mistakes that sales people routinely make while prospecting. Prospecting mistakes are the most costly problems because most sales people and sales management never actually realise the full affect of prospecting errors. What You Can Not See CAN Hurt YOU The problem is that it is much easier to see [.
Score More Sales
MAY 16, 2012
Do You Have a Sales Funnel? Are you part of a B2B sales organization proactively looking each week at what deals are in your sales funnel (or sales pipeline)? You probably fall into one of three camps: A. You have a robust, helpful CRM tool that gives you several helpful reports which you can review each week, and lists you can easily pull up on a just-in-time basis.
No More Cold Calling
MAY 17, 2012
Surprise! Your success isn’t determined by the number of devices that connect you to the outside world. There’s nothing like getting the gang together. Salespeople have great power and energy when we gather in person and share successes, ideas, and information. At conferences, we learn as much through conversations with peers in the hallways as in the sessions.
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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
The Sales Hunter
MAY 14, 2012
Prospecting for sales is hard enough, but it’s made even harder when the strategy being used is either based on hope — or worse yet something like spraying and praying. I talk a lot about the need to have a very clear sales prospecting process. Just as important the need to be focused in following it. Too many salespeople at the first sign of something not going right get scared and change direction.
Pointclear
MAY 15, 2012
James Obermayer, Executive Director and CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association and President of Sales Leakage Consulting is a regular guest blogger with ViewPoint. Formula to Predict Inquiries Needed to Make Quota i. Marketing managers regularly ask me how to predict the number of leads (really raw inquiries) needed to achieve quota (I wish more sales managers would also ask).
Increase Sales
MAY 17, 2012
To discover the reason for weak sales may mean investigating the vocabulary being used within the sales team. By identifying specific weak words may help to reverse current results and increase sales. Weak words are those that fail to leverage emotional intelligence thereby these words whether spoken, written or just thoughts: Do not pull you as the salesperson closer to the potential customer.
Anthony Cole Training
MAY 16, 2012
I just finished reading an article in Psychology Today that discussed the "new" interviewing process of simulating the work situations that your potential new hire will be faced with IF you hire them. To determine if a sales person is going to be as successful as you hope, you should implement this type of process NOW. For years, as part of our recruiting program - STAR (Sales Talent Acquisition Routine)- we have strongly suggested that our clients create an environment that the sales person wou
Speaker: Andrew Regan, Managing Partner at BlueSeed Retail Ltd.
Did you know that 70% of new retail technology fails to deliver expected benefits and can often decrease customer value, service, and experience? With that in mind, how can we empower our store associates to leverage new technology to optimize the customer experience and boost productivity? This exclusive webinar with Andrew Regan will dive into strategies to empower retail associates for success with new technology.
The Sales Hunter
MAY 18, 2012
It’s not quite as thought provoking as the proverbial question — “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” But the question I pose in the headline does indeed have a lot of implications for those of us in sales. There are many who believe the key is to make your offering so clear that the customer will want to buy. There are just as many who say customers don’t buy anything until the salesperson makes the sales pitch.
A Sales Guy
MAY 14, 2012
Sales training, we’ve all been through it. In almost every case it’s about teaching us something new. I’m a fan of sales training because I’m a fan of learning. Anytime I or my teams can learn something new, I’m good with it. Despite my fondness of “good” sales training, sales training operates from an interesting premise.
Increase Sales
MAY 14, 2012
Both education based marketing and traditional product or sales based marketing engage in telling and selling. The difference is the approach and therein lies the confusion. Over at social media sites like LinkedIn , Twitter, Facebook or Focus.com, there is a lot of telling going on. However I am not sure how much of that translates into selling. Nowadays more people are telling (think self promoting) at every opportunity and forgetting the purpose of marketing is to attract attention and build
Anthony Cole Training
MAY 16, 2012
I just finished reading an article in Psychology Today that discussed the 'new' interviewing process of simulating the work situations that your prospective new hire will be faced with IF you hire them. When determining if a sales person is going to be a successful as you anticipate this would be a great idea for you to implement NOW. For years as part of our recruiting program - STAR (Sales Talent Acquisition Routine) we have strongly suggested that you create an environment that you sales pers
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Even in today’s data-driven sales world, cold calling remains a fact of life for many go-to-market professionals. Fortunately, today’s sales leaders have a crucial advantage over their predecessors: market intelligence and outreach platforms that can warm up virtually any introduction.
The Sales Hunter
MAY 17, 2012
My telephone rang the other day, and on the other end was a voice telling me how I was at risk for something. The problem is that what the person was claiming was a “risk” for me was something I couldn’t care less about. Just another stupid telephone sales tactic that has not worked in years. The number of old-school telephone sales tactics that people still try to use never ceases to amaze me.
Fill the Funnel
MAY 17, 2012
Somewhere along the line, with all the talk about Social Media, Social Selling, Sales 2.0 and web tools it seems that some have gotten the idea that Social Selling eliminates the hard work of selling. Axel Schultze , CEO of XeeMe and Chairman Social Media Academy shares his definition: “Social selling is a sales technique, leveraging social media, to get and maintain a 360 degree picture of the clients and their influencer on an ongoing basis.
Increase Sales
MAY 18, 2012
With all the buzz around social media and how the 21st century business marketplace has dramatically, there appears to be this very obvious disconnect: Selling is social. Duh! This for me is a blinding statement of the obvious and not anything new or revolutionary within the sales training coaching world. At this time in the evolutionary timeline of mankind, human beings (people) still lack the ability to personally materialize their basic needs and more so their emotional wants.
A Sales Guy
MAY 15, 2012
Seth Godin has a great post up today: Hard Work on the Right Things. Seth couldn’t be any more accurate. I’ve seen it over and over. The best sales people know EXACTLY what matters and the spend their time working on those things. They ignore the rest. The best sales leaders help sales people focus on what matters. They take the rest off their plate.
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?
The Sales Hunter
MAY 15, 2012
Every few months, it seems there is news of another failure of credibility by somebody in business. Most recently it has been the resignation of the Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson. What’s amazing is how and why it occurred. Call it hubris, or just plain stupidity — either way, it was a failure of individual responsibility. It’s easy to point fingers and talk about somebody who is at the top of the business food-chain taking a nosedive due to their own stupidity.
Fill the Funnel
MAY 16, 2012
It is always encouraging when a company listens to its customers and today Brainshark did just that with the release of a significant upgrade to their market-leading iPad presentation tool – SlideShark. By resolving the frustration of converting your PowerPoint masterpiece in all it’s glory to your iPad, SlideShark was already a big hit. Yet we still wanted more as we integrate iPad into every aspect of our sales activity.
Increase Sales
MAY 15, 2012
Being an entrepreneur for many small business start ups begins as a brain fart. What I mean is all of a sudden, an individual gets the idea, almost magically without warning, “Hey, I can do that better than company XYZ” to “I want to be my own boss.” Whatever prompted the thought to become a small business owner suddenly popped into the brain for many of these enterprising individuals and hence why I call it a brain fart moment similar to the old commercial “I coul
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