Sat.May 26, 2012 - Fri.Jun 01, 2012

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140 or less: B2B Marketing In the Age of Social Media

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2012-05-01. Author: Paul Nolan. Teaser: "What's your social media strategy?" has been making the rounds in marketing circles for a few years now, but most of the attention and discussion has been focused on how consumer goods manufacturers and service providers are using social media to interact with customers and build brand.

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Your Most Important Sales Appointment

The Pipeline

I am a firm believer in scheduling important events, especially those activities that don’t directly involve clients; key is that they don’t involve clients directly, but have a direct impact on my success with clients. This includes time for voice mail, e-mails, planning, but top of the list is my appointment making time. The reason is simple, it is the most important thing you can do.

Pipeline 288
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Top Ten PowerPoint Mistakes Salespeople Make

The Sales Heretic

PowerPoint is a terrific sales tool. But like any tool, it can be dangerous if misused. Used poorly, a PowerPoint presentation can damage your credibility, undermine prospects’ confidence in you and hurt your sales efforts. To prevent death by PowerPoint, avoid these common mistakes: 1. Unreadable Slides If your prospects can’t read your slides, they’re worthless.

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How To Handle The Price FIRST Prospect

MTD Sales Training

Two minutes into the sales interaction, the prospect is demanding to know the price. You do what you can do avoid divulging the price too soon, but the prospect insists. If you sell a product or service were you must put together a quote, and it will take time to do so, that helps. However, when you have exhausted the usual options and answers and the prospect remains adamant on knowing the costs right away, here a few tips you might try.

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Sales & Marketing Alignment: How to Synergize for Success

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.

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Give Your Customers a Reason to Refer You

No More Cold Calling

Your customers will tell you why. Just ask. Referrals are built on trusted relationships. Who better to refer you to a qualified prospect than your current clients who have received a measurable ROI from your offering? My take: Your current clients are your #1 untapped source of referrals. No other business-development strategy delivers the high double-digit results that referrals provide.

Customer 258

More Trending

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Warning to Sales Focused Companies Wanting to Stay Relevant

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Mike Myatt wrote an article for Forbes ' online site called, To Increase Revenue Stop Selling. This article has been very heavily viewed and commented. I don't agree with most of Mike's suggestions but in his defense, he is not a sales expert, sales writer, sales manager, sales leader or salesperson. He simply doesn't like being pitched or sold to and urges salespeople (he doesn't want them to sell or be called that) to simply let him buy - when he wa

Company 215
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How To Manage Your Sales Manager

MTD Sales Training

One of the main questions I get from sales people is what to do when trapped under ineffective, negative, de-motivating or otherwise, bad sales management. Being a sales director myself, I hesitate to align myself with unfounded complaints about sales management. However, being, first and foremost, a sales person myself, I must address this issue. Let’s face it; there are some, unethical, under-trained sales people out there that often make things harder for all of us.

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Relationship Selling? Is There Such a Thing?

The Sales Hunter

I recently exchanged comments with a person who claimed they don’t do “relationship selling.” In fact, they claimed they don’t sell at all. The person’s perspective was he doesn’t need to sell because he works on building a relationship with the prospect and then they wind up buying. My response to the person was that what he was doing was selling by building a relationship with the other person.

Channels 201
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Which Sales ADD Do You Suffer?

The Pipeline

Let’s take it as a given that all good sales people suffer some form of ADD, if you want to debate that, feel free to give me a call, but there is no denying that we bounce around like so many balls on a pinball table. But Sales ADD, like cholesterol, come in two forms, good and bad, the question is which do you have, and how is it impacting you and your success.

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How to Improve Email Deliverability and Optimize Each Send

Learn how to optimize email deliverability and drive greater email ROI. What lands your email in the customer’s inbox? Understanding those factors, otherwise known as email deliverability, is critical to getting the most return on your campaign investments. But the “rules” around which factors land you in the spam folder aren’t always easy to keep up with.

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Turning Competition Into Industry Counterparts – Part 2

Score More Sales

It is a great sound bite to “change those in your industry from competitors to counterparts” but does it really work? A recent post of ours, 3 Sales Tips to Turn Competition into Industry Counterpart s received a long comment peppered with real-life questions from Steve, so this post serves as “Part 2″ Steve says he has tried to collaborate with others in his industry locally for several years and feels a number of issues come up.

Industry 183
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Contractual Obligation is a Missing Link of Sales Success

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan I borrow heavily from sports. With one of my books titled Baseline Selling , it's no surprise that out of the 900 or so articles on this Bog, I have used analogies from baseball 39 times, 5 times with football, 6 times with basketball, 17 times with golf, four references to tennis, and and not once to either Hockey (sorry Bob and Brent) or Soccer (sorry Ray, Chris and Marty).

Sports 180
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The Power of Saying “Thank You”

The Sales Hunter

We live in a society that is not thankful enough for everything we have. We especially don’t take the time often enough to say thanks to people who are making a difference. Saying thanks to someone is a beautiful way to develop a relationship with someone you don’t know. However, the thank you must be serious and genuine. Two to three years ago while walking through a restaurant, I saw a gentleman who I immediately recognized as being a person who has done a significant amount of w

Intent 194
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SiriusDecisions Summit 2012 Recap: Alignment Key to Revenue & Profit Growth

Pointclear

This year's SiriusDecisions Summit was attended by over 1,100 executives and had to be their most successful event yet. While there, I heard that they plan for 1,500 attendees next year. Wow! Rich Eldh kicked off the general sessions at 1:00 on Tuesday, May 22 stating that marketing and sales aligned companies enjoy 5.3 times more revenue and 6.2 times the profit of average firms.

Revenue 174
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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Wanting to Be Heard, Sales and Emotional Intelligence

Increase Sales

In sales so many potential customers or prospects are in the “wanting to be heard” behavior. Their desire to want someone to hear them probably exceeds their need of waiting to be heard. Credit www-sxc.hu. Wants are for the most part emotionally based and usually more important than needs when it comes to sales. As the old sales adage goes “everyone loves to buy.” However how many in sales fail to recognize those wanting to be heard?

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More Sales Assessment Imposters Exposed

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan When I call a sales assessment an imposter, I am usually referring to a personality or a behavioral styles assessment that has been adapted for sales. The adaption is usually quite spectacluar with their marketing as the assessments always sound like they were built for sales. When they rename some findings on their reports to appear more sales specific, the adaptation is complete.

B2C 175
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Your Sales Motivation and the Summer Selling Slump

The Sales Hunter

It’s here — summer! And with that comes far too many excuses as to why sales just simply won’t happen. The problem is people allow what is a perception to become a reality, thus impacting their sales motivation. I say the summer selling slump is a figment of one’s imagination. The weather is nice and it’s a time when many people are taking vacation or working fewer hours, and so the tendency is for you to do the same.

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PowerViews with Andrew Gaffney: Tipping Points & Differentiators

Pointclear

My PowerViews guest today is Andrew Gaffney. Andrew is currently Editorial Director at G3 Communications, as well as Editor and Publisher of DemandGen Report. He has served as an Editor and Publisher of This Week In Consumer Electronics, Sporting Goods Business, Consumer Goods Technology, Retail Info Systems, Hospitality Technology and Mobile Enterprise.

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1st, 2nd, and 3rd Party Intent Data: Which Is Right for You?

How do 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party intent data compare? 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data each have specific advantages and disadvantages. It comes down to four factors: accuracy, cost, control and quantity. This infographic explains the pros and cons of each and helps you understand which one is best for meeting your business objectives. Intent data can be a great way to fill your pipeline and close more deals.

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Memorial Day Is the Price We Pay To Be Entrepreneurs

Increase Sales

Today, here in America, we celebrate Memorial Day. This day is set aside to honor the dead service men and women who died serving and protecting this incredible country. As entrepreneurs, small business owners to even those in sales, honoring those men and women is the price we pay beyond the day to day grind, the taxes, the obstacles we encounter as we continue to strive to grow our businesses to increase sales to enjoy life in those precious free moments.

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Building respect in an age of truthiness

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2012-05-01. Author: SMM. Teaser: Most businesses today consider themselves to be trustworthy, and by yesterday’s standards they are. But by tomorrow’s standards, trustworthy won’t be nearly good enough. Not even close, say Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in their new book, “Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage.

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Are You Negotiating Blind?

The Sales Hunter

Too many people go into a negotiation essentially blind, and the worst thing of all is they don’t even realize it. They think because they know what they want, they’re going to be just fine. Sorry, negotiating is not just understanding what it is you want; it also is knowing what the other person wants. When you go into a negotiation not knowing where the other person is coming from with regard to their goals, what they’re willing to trade, what they see value in, and finally w

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Are You A Closer? TAKE THE TEST

HeavyHitter Sales

  Are You A Natural Born Closer? Take the following Test   to find out.   Harvard Business Review is arguably the most prestigious publication for business leaders and management thinkers. Here’s one of my recent Harvard Business Review articles titled “Are You A Closer? Take the Test”.   The drive to take command of a situation is instrumental to a salesperson’s success.  Salespeople with a weak dominance instinct are never quite in control of an account.

Groups 147
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Connect, Care, Convert: Secrets to Establishing Trust with Niche Markets and Turning Them Into Clients

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?

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Are You Willing to Pay The Dues to Increase Sales?

Increase Sales

The concept of pay the dues for many younger sales people or even small business owners is viewed negatively. However established entrepreneurs, small business owners, experienced sales professionals and even C Suite level executives sometimes balk at this business behavior. After all they believe they have paid their dues. Credit www.sxc.hu. In today’s crazy busy world, this concept or better yet capacity to be willing to pay the dues actually never ends.

Hiring 167
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A Short 10 Second Course On Selling

MTD Sales Training

Course 287
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Why I Don’t Agree with Seth Godin on Why Businesses Buy

The Sales Hunter

Seth Godin’s blog is good. No arguments from me on that. However, his May 29, 2012 entry is one I’m going to challenge him on. His post talks about B2B selling, and in it, he lists the 6 reasons why companies buy. Sorry, but I disagree that “making a profit” should be listed last as a reason a company buys anything. He even lists “having fun” and “gaining praise” as being more important than making a profit.

B2B 171
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How to Know it’s Time to Change Your Sales Strategy

A Sales Guy

When’s the last time you changed your sales strategy? Do you even have one? Do you build it once a year or is more dynamic than that? Is your sales strategy even still relevant? Most sales organizations don’t have specific sales strategies. Those that do, they normally aren’t very flexible and that’s a problem. Your sales strategy should be dynamic and keenly tied to capitalizing on market conditions.

Strategy 120
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Salesforce’s 8th State of Marketing Report

Discover today’s biggest marketing trends in the 8th edition of Salesforce’s “State of Marketing” report. Salesforce surveyed 6,000 marketing leaders worldwide to discover how marketers are: Embracing AI to operate more efficiently Removing silos and leveraging AI to enhance the customer experience Innovating to meet evolving customer needs Preparing for the retirement of third-party cookies By submitting this form, you agree to have your contact information, including email, passed on to the sp

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Pay The Dues Required to Increase Sales

Increase Sales

With the influx of many younger entrepreneurs who like their older and established counterparts are seeking ways to increase sales, one of the obstacles standing in the way of this business goal is: Pay the Dues. I was reminded of this during a conversation with another sage entrepreneur and small business owner, Miles Austin. We were discussing some of the blogs being published by younger small business owners and how their content is fresh and worth reading to gain another perspective.

Hiring 164
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Will Inside Sales Become Prominent in Your Industry?

SBI Growth

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Get these 3 Sales Fundamentals Wrong and it Will Eventually Kill Your Business

SBI

Tweet A few weeks back, I wrote about the sales lessons you can learn from the television show “Kitchen Nightmares.” The main gist of the post was that the problems each restaurant owner suffers from are always both fundamental, and fundamentally the same (bad food being the primary example), and that the problems go unresolved because the owners are in complete denial.