- September 20, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written more than 2,000 articles on my Understanding the Sales Force Blog and there are hundreds of other sales blogs. Some are written by sales experts. Some are written by marketing experts. Some are written by enablement experts. Some are experts at writing but without subject matter expertise. Some aren’t experts at anything but still they write. I am concerned about the subjects being curated for sales and sales leadership professionals.
For example, I receive a daily newsletter from SalesProCentral and this week they featured articles, podcasts, and books – for their sales audience – with these 10 titles:
The 5 Stages of Account-Based Marketing — and How to Win Them All
FMCG and Q-Commerce: A New Era of Seamless Shopping and Convenience
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Party Intent Data: Which Is Right for You?
5 Ways to Build (and Lose) Credibility in Your Sales Emails
Why is it Important to Align Your GTM Team?
The Role of Customer Experience in Driving B2B Sales Growth in Manufacturing
Top 5 Keys to Hire Ideal Sales Candidates at Your Company
Complimentary Sample of The Owner’s Manual To Life
Revolutionize Your Business: Digital Marketing and Brand Management Guide
The Art and Science of Complex Sales Podcast
Six of the ten titles are about some form of marketing. One or two are sales enablement topics. There is one topic on the customer experience, and just two for the professional sales and sales leadership audience, and one of the two was written by me.
There seems to be a blurring of the lines between sales and marketing and that’s not useful to anyone. Should marketing understand what salespeople really do? Of course. Should salespeople understand what marketing does? Yes. Should there be alignment around audience and messaging? Absolutely. But let’s be clear. While Go-To-Market strategy, Digital Marketing, Brand Management, Email Marketing, Data Privacy, Account-Based Marketing and Web Commerce are important, salespeople don’t need to be taught, lectured, or shown how to do Marketing’s tasks when more than half of all salespeople suck at their day job.
Speaking of marketing and emails, and in the “for what it’s worth category,” I counted the number of unsolicited emails from people and companies offering to provide the best lead generation program ever. Haha. Their own horrible emails prove that their services don’t and won’t work. I counted emails from only the last 24 hours, and only that one category, and there were nineteen of them! That’s 95 per week! Granted, some of them are repeats, with the same person emailing from workflows multiple times over the course of a week or two, but 95 per week – geez!
Salespeople need to be better at prospecting instead of hiding behind emails and LinkedIn messages or waiting for BDRs to schedule less than stellar meetings for them. They need to be better at the discovery call and qualifying. They need to improve their listening and questioning skills. They need to improve their ability to reach and build stronger relationships with decision makers. They need to improve their ability to sell value. They need to improve their ability to execute the company’s chosen sales process and sales methodology. They don’t need to be pulled in a different direction from being served off-topic reading.
I read that there are now 600 million blogs in the world. Between newsletters, blog article announcements, marketing and spam, we spend too much of our day deleting emails that we don’t consider MUST READ and unsubscribing from those we don’t want. As a result, views across most Blogs are down as people don’t have the time, there is too much noise, the quality of the writing and substance leave much to be desired, and the remaining clicks are spread across the ridiculous number of options.
If you want to achieve greater sales or sales leadership success, the very best thing you can do is to invest in training and coaching. Whether your company provides it for you, or you get it yourself doesn’t matter. Most professionals invested tens of thousands of dollars in their education and it blows my mind that salespeople don’t think they need to do the same thing. You can start here.
If your commitment to sales success isn’t unconditional, and you don’t want to make an investment in your career for training and/or coaching, my advice is to follow 3 Blogs whose authors resonate with you, watch 3 Podcasts whose format and shows you like, and read a sales book each month. It won’t be nearly as powerful as training and coaching but it won’t hurt either.
3 Other Sales Blogs I like:
The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarino –
The Art and Science of Complex Sales by George Bronten
3 Sales Podcasts I like:
Selling from the Heart Podcast with Larry Levine and Darrell Amy
The Art and Science of Complex Sales with Paul Fuller
In the Arena Podcast with Anthony Iannarino
3 Sales Books to Read:
Baseline Selling by Dave Kurlan
Selling from the Heart by Larry Levine
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