Igniting Sales Transformation

MARCH 20, 2019

Last week, I was making it rain opportunities through networking and education with over 1,000 sales professionals at SalesLoft’s Rainmaker 2019 conference. As I was putting this post together, I hopped into my time machine and zipped back to 2015 when I first attended Rainmaker and wrote about my experience that year.

Conference 101

Conference InsideView Cold Calling Scale 101

Hubspot Sales

AUGUST 21, 2023

When it comes to sales prospecting , it's more important than ever that you write concise, effective communication. Even if you do get your prospect’s attention, you can’t expect them to read your long, fluffy emails filled with the buzzwords of the day when they have many other emails to open. Spend some time on the subject line.

Case Study 98

Case Study Proposal Lead Rank Follow-up 98

Pointclear

JULY 7, 2015

My question to you and top industry experts is this: As we enter the second half of 2015, have companies made the adjustments necessary to utilize lead scoring or is the status quo killing results? That’s because they are not able to track the buying activity of 90% of their prospects. I am invisible to you. This is insanity.

Lead Rank 100

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Ideal Customer Profile Sales Qualified Lead 100

Pointclear

SEPTEMBER 24, 2015

This is the question I posed: According to a report by SiriusDecisions, 2015 State of Account-Based Marketing (ABM), more than 60 percent of companies plan to invest in technology for ABM to better align sales and marketing over the next twelve months. Marketing provides air cover by nurturing and educating their known universe of prospects.

Account Based Marketing 100

Account Based Marketing Lead Generation Cost per Lead Sales Qualified Lead 100

Score More Sales

JANUARY 19, 2015

I wrote a quick post last week from the Rainmaker 2015 Sales Development Summit – but didn’t give it the detail it deserved, so here is part 2. In addition to Prospector which has been improved greatly over time, they have a new tool called Cadence which helps SDRs to know how and when to attempt to connect with their prospects.

Ideal Customer Profile 120

Ideal Customer Profile Lead Rank Lead Scoring Nonprofit 120

Customer Centric Selling

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

In today’s environment, whom are sellers “educating?” Mid to lower levels self-educate via the Internet. Save your seat now for the FIRST public workshop of 2015 in Boston, Feb 3-6! The consensus was that IBM salespeople lost the ability to have conversations about business issues with non-IT executives.

Hiring 81

Hiring Buying Cycle Education Software 81

Janek Performance Group

MAY 9, 2022

Picking up the telephone and calling prospects is not physically demanding. One core element of a sales rep’s job is to prospect for new business opportunities. The very best sales reps are sitting successfully in their current sales role, with a pipeline full of prospects and deals they know they are going to close.

Hiring 62

Hiring Training Lead Rank Lead Scoring 62

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 23, 2018

2015: The Sales Stack Conference. In 2015 we ramped up. And in the Fall of 2015, we ran our first 1000 person Sales Stack conference. Brian Walton, Kyle Porter, Andrea Austin, and Armando Mann at Sales Stack 2015 delivering the SDR playbook for high performing sales teams. We kept pushing and knocking on doors.

Conference 92

Conference Webinar Metrics Hiring Vendor 92

The ROI Guy

MAY 7, 2015

As a result, your prospect is more apt to stick with the status quo – their legacy solution and processes - versus moving forward with your proposal. Have you diagnosed the challenges properly, showing the prospect that the issues are bigger than they imagined? So why did these deals fail to evolve to “Yes”? Three times was the charm.”

Lead Rank 77

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Proposal Decision Maker 77

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

This misunderstanding in growth can cause many misunderstandings in a world where no one is educated in sales. CASE IN POINT: In 2015 Randy had grown sales from $800k to $4M in ARR. In 2015 Randy had kept pace with the growth in the market. Growth rate depicted from traditional B2B sales teams vs. SaaS Sales teams.

Scale 86

Scale Lead Rank Sales Qualified Lead Hiring 86

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2015

Coincidentally, I read a research report on The State Of Email Marketing 2015. We read about content strategies designed to nurture, educate, build interest, start the customer in a buying journey. Vendors need to be educating their customers. Sales people and managers execute terrible prospecting and email marketing programs.

Marketing 48

Marketing Face-to-face Vendor Email Marketing 48

MarketJoy

JULY 10, 2018

By moving the leads effectively through the sales pipeline, SDRs are more towards lead generation, appointment setting and focus on prospecting. SDRs As the Educators . SDRs are the educators who offer insights to solve the problems of the customers and improve customer experience.

Decision Maker 45

Decision Maker Sales Qualified Lead Telemarketing Lead Rank 45

The ROI Guy

JANUARY 11, 2017

Build trust – Providing 3rd party insights and research, customer case studies and proof points helps validate potential results with prospects and drive credibility. Leveraging customer intelligence data gathered from each engagement to deliver new and unique insights, benchmarks and advice.

Lead Rank 45

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Quota Scale 45

Nutshell

AUGUST 15, 2018

A 2015 study of more than 350,000 salespeople from over 200 countries showed that the average consultative seller skill set was exhibited by only 48% of salespeople —a mere one percentage point higher than it was four years prior. Question bank: Success in consultative selling depends on the kind of questions you ask your prospects.

Customer 48

Customer Consultative Selling Hiring Face-to-face 48

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 24, 2015

Part of my reason is having just returned from Dreamforce 2015, as you would guess, a lot of the sessions talked about analytics. We try to use educated guesses, maybe some sort of scoring approach, to help refine our approaches, but largely, we tend to cast very wide nets, hoping enough people are interested in having a conversation.

Lead Rank 48

Lead Rank Analytics Marketing Qualified Lead Insurance 48

Sales Evangelist

AUGUST 30, 2019

I wanted to educate people who were in the same shoes and help elevate their performance. Eventually, that led to speaking opportunities and other things, so in 2015 I left my full-time job to do The Sales Evangelist full time. Most of the ones I meet with struggle with prospecting, and with prospecting effectively.

Hiring 45

Hiring Cold Calling Face-to-face Social Media 45

Artesian Solutions

MARCH 27, 2018

Perhaps most important of all for those in B2B sales, it launched Sales Navigator to establish itself as the primary source of new leads and tangible revenue by making mission critical prospecting activities faster and smoother. Back in 2015 Artesian published an e-book on how to get more value out of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn 40

LinkedIn Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face Guarantee 40

Sales Training Connection

APRIL 10, 2015

©2015 Sales Momentum, LLC. Fortunately, the salesperson had a sales manager who was helping in those areas. What the salesperson was interested in was: How can I do a better job managing my time? No salesperson can do this even with great technology unless they get help from marketing.

System 50

System CRM Account Training 50

CloserIQ

OCTOBER 10, 2018

Drift provides a conversational sales and marketing platform that allows businesses to better connect with prospects and customers. Panorama Education. Panorama Education is a data analytics provider for K-12 school districts, seeking to improve education through comprehensive surveys and analytics. Founded 2015.

Hiring 76

Hiring Company Policies Analytics 76

SBI

JUNE 3, 2015

Alinean, as a company, is a client of Smart Selling Tools and their solution is one of our Top Sales Tools of 2015. If you’re reading this Tom, which I suspect you will, it’s not you—it’s just that that has become the norm these days when it comes to “educating” our customers. I like and believe in what Alinean offers.

Lead Rank 50

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Discount ROI 50

The ROI Guy

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

The ability for your reps to “handle objections” is a key to achieving 2015 sales success, this according to a recent interview of Jim Ninivaggi, Sales Enablement Practice Director for SiriusDecisions. This objection typically occurs in the middle to later phases of the journey. You have to answer the question: “Why Change Now?”

Objections 87

Objections Real Estate Face-to-face Buyer 87

Tony Hughes

MARCH 4, 2018

Search engines like Wolfram Alpha become so smart they can fully educate the prospect so they go 100% of the way through the sales process before ever needing to talk to a human. It's unclear if ERP firms even understand ERP and it's 2015. Again, the case for 100% decision and buying cycle complete. No humans needed???!!!

Hiring 68

Hiring Top of Funnel Lead Rank Lead Scoring 68

OpenSymmetry

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

Forrester Research has published a great report that provides details on how HCM solutions , especially talent management applications, are paving the way for higher employee engagement and performance in 2015. Engage with an advocate so you can educate yourself on what’s available and best aligned to your organization.

Scale 40

Scale Compensation Report Twitter 40

Sales Hacker

APRIL 24, 2018

Based on Salesforce’s research in 2015, top sales teams are three times more likely to use analytics than under-performing teams. How many prospect phone numbers are actually usable? In fact, it’s the top indicator of a high-performing sales team. Why Is Building a Data Driven Sales Team so Hard? What percent of fields are filled?

Data 53

Data Hiring Margin Demand Generation Targets 53

Tenfold

AUGUST 30, 2017

But, consider too that in no part of their buyer’s journey are you able to influence and educate. According to a 2014 survey conducted by Google and research company Millward Brown Digital, millenials make up 46 percent of prospective B2B buyers. 76 percent of these say that they will include content marketing allocation by 2015.

Outsourcing Services 79

Outsourcing Services Buyer B2B Lead Rank 79

Sales Evangelist

JANUARY 3, 2019

After Donald jumped ship from his full-time job in 2015, this lifestyle business allowed him to travel and speak in different parts of the country, and it all stemmed from the training and consulting that has developed. Edutainment allowed him to educate and entertain at the same time. Your prospecting will never ever be the same.

Video 60

Video B2C Benefit Call-back 60

Close.io

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

Gartner analysts estimate that governments spent $424 billion on govtech in 2015. We've built our sales platform with integrated calling to help reach more prospects in less time, taking out all the manual busywork. By 2020, this rate will jump to 33%. Four stages of closing the government. You have to do your homework in B2G sales.

B2G 91

B2G Government Buyer Persona Cold Calling 91

SugarCRM

JANUARY 6, 2016

You don’t want to send customers the same email you send prospects or send managers the same email you send C-level executives. Do you want your prospects to download something, register for an event, reply to the email? That said, following these seven tips can help you craft an outstanding email. Consider Your Audience.

How To 20

How To Email Marketing SalesForce Campaigns 20

SugarCRM

JANUARY 6, 2016

You don’t want to send customers the same email you send prospects or send managers the same email you send C-level executives. Do you want your prospects to download something, register for an event, reply to the email? That said, following these seven tips can help you craft an outstanding email. Consider Your Audience.

How To 20

How To Email Marketing SalesForce Campaigns 20

Crunchbase

MAY 14, 2020

From SDR in 2015, to enterprise AE in 2020–and she’s gathered quite the following on LinkedIn. If you’re looking for insight from Trish on sales development, she recently chatted with Dan Hersch on the Engaged Prospect podcast. . Jamie (Crosbie) Bisson. Founder and CEO of ProActivate. Crunchbase , LinkedIn. Josh Braun.

Top of Funnel 101

Top of Funnel Hiring Twitter Lead Rank 101

Cience

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

Senior Vice President and General Manager, American Express Meetings & Events, Issa Jouaneh predicted a boom in the event industry for 2019 after a tremendous slowdown as recently as 2015. Past year’s shows, event apps, and even educated guesses are great sources of attendees. Tip : You’re using prospecting techniques.

Lead Generation 40

Lead Generation Ideal Customer Profile Lead Rank Lead Scoring 40

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Every industry needs sales so the education you receive working in this role can be immense. B2B is H2H – human to human – and most women can leverage these powerful skills to create lasting connections with prospects, personalize value, and create customers for life. Your sales career project has ups and downs.

Hiring 130

Hiring Ideal Customer Profile Top of Funnel Lead Rank 130

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

Leveraging the next generation of artificial intelligence, Outreach allows you to deliver consistent, relevant and responsible communication for each prospect every time, enabling personalization at scale that was previously unthinkable. From 2010 to 2015, we didn’t have traditional funding. Check them out at www.outreach.io.

Sports 63

Sports Lead Rank Scale Lead Scoring 63

Hubspot Sales

MAY 12, 2022

It helps you connect with customers, become more visible in your industry, shape your reputation, leave a lasting impression during online and in-person networking, and sell more to target prospects. No matter what they're buying, prospects know they can get a similar product or service from another vendor. What is personal branding?

Ideal Customer Profile 135

Ideal Customer Profile LinkedIn Hiring Hubspot 135

The ROI Guy

MAY 19, 2015

In fact, the highest level of engagement with sales reps occurred during the education phase of the buyer’s journey, the first decision gate in the purchasing decision process. Prospects and sales reps are all to easily lost in a sea of content. Half of the waste was attributable to sales reps not being able to find the content.

Marketing 73

Marketing B2B Proposal Call-back 73

The ROI Guy

JANUARY 28, 2016

Although 67% of your prospects rely on content to conduct research and guide purchasing decisions, 74% indicate they have less time to view content now than they did a year ago (DemandGen Report). Your prospects want content that is trustworthy and that keeps the sales pitch to a minimum.

Lead Rank 45

Lead Rank Lead Scoring ROI Lead Gen 45

SugarCRM

NOVEMBER 17, 2015

Legally, you need to offer an opt out option for your emails, but even if that wasn’t the case, doing so is simply a best practice in keeping your prospects happy and maintaining a positive brand image. If you email any prospects in Canada too, you should also note the anti-spam laws there, which were updated in January 2015.

Email Marketing 20

Email Marketing Marketing Campaigns Segment 20