April, 2025

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Use a Custom Sales Process to Increase Sales by More Than 28%

Understanding the Sales Force

Despite writing about sales process quite frequently over the years, this article will take a very different approach. Let’s define a couple of terms: Sales Process – a series of 4-6 stages, each with 5-10 milestones, that provide salespeople with a repeatable framework for sales success. Sales Methodology – a repeatable approach that guides salespeople to have quality conversations that move the sales process forward from milestone to milestone and from stage to stage.

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Mixed Messages

Sales 2.0

Its darn tough to get through to anyone these days. People have become really good at ignoring what we want to tell them. I hear this all the time from all kinds of businesspeople and salespeople. Emails dont work. Calls dont work. Social media doesnt work. Nothing works! But I had an experience this week that reminded me that communication does work when its something people want, its a little different, and its from someone they know.

Fashion 195
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How AI is Changing Sales & What That Means for Salespeople

Anthony Cole Training

AI is a leading topic in almost every industry publication these days from Forbes to Insurance Journal to the American Bankers Association. As it should be, since it is revolutionizing most job functions, including sales and business development. AI is another tool that offers many benefits for salespeople, and staying informed as AI is evolving will be important.

Journal 193
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The Value of Building Strong Relationships and Rapport in Sales

SBI Growth

A foundational yet often overlooked element of successful selling is relationship building and rapport. In the latest episode of the Sales Readiness Podcast, Ray Makela, Managing Director of Talent at SBI, sits down with Ethan Radoff, Partner at SBI, to remind us that while modern sales teams invest heavily in technology, data, and automation, human connection is at the heart of every deal.

Data 156
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The Intersection of AI and Sales: Personalization Without Compromise

Speaker: Jesse Hunter and Brynn Chadwick

Today’s buyers expect more than generic outreach–they want relevant, personalized interactions that address their specific needs. For sales teams managing hundreds or thousands of prospects, however, delivering this level of personalization without automation is nearly impossible. The key is integrating AI in a way that enhances customer engagement rather than making it feel robotic.

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Your Referral Edge: Lock in Your Q2 Pipeline Before It’s Too Late [Q1 Referral Selling Insights]

No More Cold Calling

Top sales teams win with referrals. Are you keeping up? As Q1 comes to a close, CROs face a critical inflection point. The foundation you lay now will determine whether your teams spend the rest of the year scrambling to fill pipeline gaps or confidently closing high-value deals. Without a referral-first mindset, pipeline uncertainty loomsleading to missed targets, longer sales cycles, missed quotas, and end-of-year panic.

Referrals 177

More Trending

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My Key to Building a Strong, Sustainable, Sales Pipeline

Understanding the Sales Force

Although this article will provide a blueprint for building a strong, full, and sustainable pipeline, we begin with a hospital analogy. When I was in the hospital for surgery in February, and during the recovery that followed, I had specific KPIs assigned at discharge that I was required to meet. After a few weeks, I chose and added some personal milestones to demonstrate progress in my recovery.

Pipeline 188
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Shortcuts Salespeople Should Never Take, According to Experts

Hubspot Sales

Not all sales shortcuts are created equal. Some, like scheduling follow-up emails or creating a repeatable framework for researching prospects, streamline your day without harming the quality of your work. Others save you time but damage your results meaning youll ultimately be less productive for using them. As the expression goes, If you dont have time to do it right, you wont have time to do it again.

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How to Maintain Brand Authenticity While Using AI-Generated Visuals

Sales and Marketing Management

AI-generated content is here to stay, but authenticity remains non-negotiable. If AI-generated content doesnt align with a brands established aesthetic, tone and values, it risks looking generic, or worse, inauthentic. The post How to Maintain Brand Authenticity While Using AI-Generated Visuals appeared first on Sales & Marketing Management.

How To 266
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Selling to the Enterprise Customer vs. the SMB Market: 3 Key Skills

SBI Growth

One of the biggest challenges for a sales organization is moving upmarket. For example, if you target the small- and medium-sized business market (SMB) and now want to target enterprise customers thats where the money is you need to rethink how you sell. Enterprise and SMB selling are fundamentally different, and each requires its own sales process, metrics, and unique selling skills.

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Streamlining Complex Sales Processes: The Ultimate Guide for Industrial Companies

Are you struggling with slow quoting cycles, complex product configurations, and disconnected data in your manufacturing/distribution business? This article will help. Learn how industrial companies are revolutionizing sales processes with an integrated platform that includes quoting, inventory, and service, providing real-time data and offline access for field teams.

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Why the Basics Still Beat Fancy: The Unsexy Skills That Close Deals

Sales Gravy

Everybody wants the hacks. The quick fix. The shiny new tool. The LinkedIn post that magically draws leads like moths to a flame. But let me give it to you straight: Sales isnt won with hacks. Its won with habits. And the habits that win are the ones most reps abandon the minute things get uncomfortable or boring. If youre not hitting your number, its probably not because you need better leads, better tech, or better timing.

Closing 90
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How Sales Teams are Using AI in 2025: Survey & Statistics

Zoominfo

ZoomInfos State of AI in Sales and Marketing survey, which gathered insights from more than 1,000 GTM professionals, reveals just how quickly AI is transforming sales teams and the roadblocks for further AI innovation. Power users on sales teams are saving time, closing deals faster, and seeing real, measurable business results. But despite the momentum, many sales professionals risk falling behind because they havent fully embraced AI.

Survey 130
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Shania Twain’s Lesson for Sales Leaders Who Want to Hire Stronger Salespeople

Understanding the Sales Force

I was driving with the radio on when the Shania Twain song from the 90s, Dont Impress Me Much , began to play. I hadnt heard that song in at least a decade and as I listened to the words, I was reminded that Shania is not impressed with: Rocket Scientists Brad Pitt Guys Who Kiss Their Expensive Shiny Cars Elvis Most women would probably be impressed with that group of men but Shania is much more discerning.

Hiring 173
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Why We Need Real Sales Classes in Schools (video)

Pipeliner

In a talk with John Golden, sales expert Geoffrey M. Reid talked about something importantwhy schools should teach real sales skills. Reid wrote a book called The Revenue Catalyst: Mastering the Art of Sales. In this talk, he explains why sales should be taught like other school subjects, such as math or marketing. Schools Teach MarketingNot Sales John Golden started the talk by saying many schools teach marketing, but not sales.

Video 104
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How to Create Sales Email Sequences That Convert

Modern go-to-market teams know it takes more than one email to break through the noise. Multiple touchpoints means more ways to get your pitch right — and, potentially, more ways to be wrong. The good news? Once you know how to write compelling, one-off emails to entice prospective customers, you can easily do the same across a short sequence of emails.

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Power Up Your Zoom Meetings With AI in Nutshell

Nutshell

Zoom meetings can be an essential part of any teams sales, customer onboarding or ongoing account management processes. By integrating Zoom with Nutshell , your team can log Zoom calls as activities for better tracking and reporting and save notes about each meeting to keep everyone in the loop and improve the customer journey. Now you can also leverage AI to quickly summarize and transcribe your Zoom calls, just as you can with click-to-call conversations using the AI-powered click-to-call feat

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Before You Invest in a New Sales Tool, Ask Yourself These Questions

SBI Growth

Sales enablement has boomed. The State of Sales Enablement Report for 2023 found that the number of businesses with a dedicated sales enablement team has grown to 90%, up from 75% in 2022. The Growing Role of Sales Enablement Sales enablement is a catch-all term applied to any practice that attempts to increase sales productivity. Its not uncommon to find sales enablement departments responsible for a plethora of disciplines such as strategy, sales processes, analytics and reporting, lead genera

Tools 156
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There Will Always Be Excuses!

Partners in Excellence

I was listening to my friend Matt Heinz. He said something obvious, yet profound, “Every day there is an excuse.” There has always been and will continue to be any number of reasons to make excuses. We’ve seen the rapid change, disruption create new reasons for excuses. This week, we see global economic turmoil. And then there is always AI.

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Best B2B Sales Tools for 2025: The Essential Toolkit for Sales Success

Zoominfo

Even the most driven sales teams require the right resources to effectively target prospects, nurture relationships, and close deals. Theres certainly no shortage of sales tools available to help your team master every step in the modern sales process. The bad news? There are way too many of these tools, and their competing claims and different overlapping use cases make it challenging to assemble an effective GTM tech stack.

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The Trends You Need to Succeed This Holiday Season

October Prime Day is usually an early sign of how consumer spending trends ahead of the holidays. This one was no exception. Our October Prime Day Report breaks down what’s working: the products flying off the shelves, the categories winning big, big brands, and the search terms defining demand. All brought to you via Similarweb’s Shopper Intelligence platform.

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Executive Leadership is the Key to a Lasting and Successful Sales Transformation

Understanding the Sales Force

Last week I wrote this important article about how you can use sales process to increase revenue by 28%. The article was incomplete because while it discussed which category of sales process you had, what a proper sales process must include, the importance of a predictive sales scorecard, and the benefits of both, it did not include anything about governance.

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How to Build Trust in Sales and Coaching: Tips (video)

Pipeliner

In todays world, people are more careful about who they trust. This is true in sales and coaching too. In a podcast with John Golden, coach Joanna Lott shared great advice on how to build real trust with clients. Joanna is a certified coach. She helps other coaches find clients by being honestnot by using tricks or hype. Why Trust Is Hard Today John said many people dont trust salespeople.

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Latest Podcasts: Sales Leadership Best Practices

Force Management

Last month on the Revenue Builders Podcast, our guests shared experiences in revenue leadership and what they've learned about how to prove your worth as a leader and secure the best possible outcomes for your team. We had several must-listen episodes for go-to-market leaders this weekfrom leveraging data to enhance team performance, to managing top-tier talent programs, to helping your teams build and close high-value pipeline, March brought some heavy hitters.

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A Poor Pricing Strategy is Driving Your Customers Away

SBI Growth

If youre not pricing correctly, youre driving customers away. In an uncertain economy, your pricing strategy has a greater impact on revenue retention than traditional churn strategies. SaaS companies have started to take notice with 94% updating pricing every year and almost 40% tweaking pricing every quarter. In 2025, the real pricing opportunity is therefore not related to the frequency of pricing changes, but the pricing approach you employ.

Strategy 156
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AI Strategies for Sales Managers: How to Cut Down on Tedious Admin Work

What if you could help your sellers stop wasting 72% of their day on non-selling activities and focus on bringing in revenue? Incorporating AI in your enablement workflows can help you cut down on busy work, get projects done faster, and let your team (and you!) focus on making a bigger impact. We put together this guide to show you how to use AI to cut time and costs for projects, including collateral creation, development of training videos, and automating tedious processes.

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The GTM AI Operating System

Sales Hacker

Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.

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Introducing the ZoomInfo 5000: A Curated Dataset of the World’s Most Influential Companies

Zoominfo

When its time for go-to-market strategy to become revenue reality, todays most innovative GTM teams know that intelligence makes all the difference. So how different would your team structure, campaign design, and competitive advantage be if you had rich, accurate Go-to-Market Intelligence on 5,000 of the worlds most important companies? Thats the idea behind the ZoomInfo 5000 ZoomInfos definitive dataset of the most important brands in business.

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5 Lessons From Rory McIlroy’s Win at the Masters (Money Monday)

Sales Gravy

On this Money Monday we're going back to Augusta where Rory McIlroy finally won The Masters and in doing so gave us 5 lessons for chasing and achieving dreams.It wasnt pretty. It wasnt clean. It was gritty, emotional, and one of the most unforgettable moments in sports history. Rory stepped onto the first tee looking calm, focused. Like a man whod been here before, and this time, was ready to finish it.

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🎧 Why We Need Real Sales Classes in Schools

Pipeliner

In this episode, sales expert Geoffrey M. Reid author of The Revenue Catalyst joins John Golden to explore why structured sales education is missing from most universities and why that needs to change. Reid explains how the lack of proper training leaves many graduates unprepared, and how schools can close the gap by bringing real-world sales experience into the classroom.

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Buyer’s Guide: 5 Tough Questions To Ask a Salesforce Managed Services Provider

This guide is for leaders who recognize the importance of Salesforce but would rather trust a team of external experts to do the heavy lifting. Choosing the right managed services provider is a significant decision that impacts your business's efficiency and success. In this 10-minute read, you'll find 5 essential questions to ask any potential provider.

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Elevating the GTM Approach with Patra: 3 Keys to Success

Force Management

For today's B2B tech firms, the path to rapid growth and repeatable revenue means advancing through stages and change. Each transformation story is different, but most boil down to three keys for success: choosing the right strategy or partner, applying the new methodology within daily rhythms, and ensuring long-term adoption. When Patra, an insurance-tech provider, crossed the $100M in ARR benchmark, their leadership launched a partnership with Force Management to elevate their go-to-market app

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Dive Into Email Engagement With the Link Report

Nutshell

Tracking engagement with your marketing emails is a critical part of determining whether your strategies are working. And measuring marketing effectiveness is more than just looking at metrics like email open, click, and unsubscribe ratesits also about seeing which recipients are clicking your high-priority calls to action (CTAs), so you can gauge your audiences interests and behavior.

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Building Trust in Selling

Anthony Cole Training

There are entire books written about building trust in selling, but for today, we will focus on one key element that may seem quite ordinary and obvious but is actually a well-honed skill of highly successful salespeople. And that skill is: Find out what your client or prospect wants. How is that done?