SBI Growth

NOVEMBER 1, 2013

Top sales reps share a common trait. Why Top Sales Reps Will Be Unemployed in 2 Years set an SBI record for most views in one day. The post offered advice for top sales reps to avoid becoming obsolete. What can sales and HR leaders learn from this massive response? What separates top sales reps from the rest?

Hiring 308

Hiring Social Media Comparison Forecasting 308

Sales 2.0

AUGUST 4, 2018

In order to contact prospects you need to have their contact information. This is the first post in the more practical area of actually doing this prospecting thing. During the posts about preparation I told you about getting your prospect profile together. I imagine you are in sales to sell things. Social calling helps.

Prospecting 150

Prospecting InsideView Cold Calling Social Media 150

SBI Growth

MAY 21, 2013

Does your Chief Sales Officer rely heavily on you for their success? As the sales operations leader, you focus on helping your sales leaders shine. Think about your most valued sales ops team members. At the core, your best sales ops employees: Deliver insight, not just data. Help sales make their quota.

Hiring 300

Hiring Collateral Comparison Territories 300

Sales 2.0

MAY 1, 2020

You may easily say “yes” but if I look at real sales people’s actions over the course of a couple of decades, I see that their actions say “no”. They can get expensive but if you know this could be a dream account that cost will be tiny in comparison to the payoff. This is hours of work, not minutes. It can be frustrating.

Enterprise 416

Enterprise Enterprise Social Media Referrals 416

Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 30, 2012

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan. Not being one to ever pass up opportunities like this I, conducted the following comparison. First, it's important to know that OMG's assessment is sales specific - built for sales. Then modify the names of the findings to make them sound more like sales findings.

Hiring 249

Hiring Lead Scoring Lead Rank Sales Qualified Lead 249

The Pipeline

APRIL 17, 2013

Since the company had a union to deal with, (yes I know, sales and unions, what a concept, nonetheless), the choice of who stayed and who left was not always made based on abilities and potential. Those that do, are your switch hitters, they can deliver revenue in by succeeding in both cases, prospecting and selling.

Demand Generation Agencies 296

Demand Generation Agencies Top of Funnel Territories Demand Generation 296

Zoominfo

JANUARY 15, 2021

Sales reps can easily lose a successful sale if they don’t have the right tools or framework to work with. Both market and sales intelligence fall under the umbrella of lead intelligence, which collectively gives comprehensive insights about prospects. What is Sales Intelligence? What is Market Intelligence?

Sales Qualified Lead 207

Sales Qualified Lead Marketing Qualified Lead Marketing Top of Funnel 207

Zoominfo

JANUARY 27, 2023

Sales prospecting is arguably the most critical part of a sales professional’s workflow. Sales prospecting is a foundational element for a revenue team — it’s the practice of identifying and connecting with potential customers to initiate the sales cycle. What is Sales Prospecting?

Ideal Customer Profile 130

Ideal Customer Profile Prospecting Intent Data Buyer Persona 130

SBI Growth

NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Reduced overall sales cycles. It’s about providing valuable content that prospects seek to solve a problem. Only focusing on acquiring a prospect early is too limited. It's written to a prospect in the evaluation stage. Strong call to actions would be favorable 3rd party reviews or a side-by-side comparison grid.

Direct Mail 319

Direct Mail Marketing Demand Generation Demand Generation Targets 319

Hubspot Sales

NOVEMBER 12, 2024

Getting ghosted is an unfortunate fact of sales life nowadays. Every once in a while, the conversation with a prospect is going to die down and never pick back up — but you don't have to take those fizzle-outs lying down. 6 Ways to Re-Engage an Unresponsive Prospect 1. Let's see what they had to say! Offer a mini-audit.

Demand Generation Agencies 111

Demand Generation Agencies Prospecting Strategy Follow-up 111

The Pipeline

JANUARY 2, 2014

As the first post of the years, I thought I would set the tone for the blog and hopefully sales in 2014. Let’s start by setting straight some unadulterated s**t that has made its way into main stream sales over the last few years. A cute marketing term that elevated the noise created by Sales 2.0, Big difference.

Demand Generation 295

Demand Generation Demand Generation Targets Sales Cycle Comparison 295

Mr. Inside Sales

JULY 11, 2020

Could I at least do a no cost/no obligation comparison quote for you?”. If your prospect says yes, then there’s an opportunity here and you’ve uncovered it. Layer: “And when was the last time you did a comparison with another provider?”. [If Could I at least do a no cost/no obligation comparison quote for you?”.

Comparison 180

Comparison Face-to-face How To Objections 180

Sales and Marketing Management

DECEMBER 10, 2018

Be relevant by finding new ways to segment your prospects further and be more specific to particular subgroups — that's how you write sales emails that get responses. Time restrictions such as limited-time offers can give your prospects just the push they need to sign. So can perfect targeting and messaging.

How To 218

How To Ideal Customer Profile Campaigns Guidelines 218

SBI Growth

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

B2B CMO’s are expected to deliver hard Lead Generation metrics: Quantity of Sales Qualified Leads to the sales force. The quick wins will build credibility with sales and the CEO. Focus on wins that positively impact the ability of the sales force to Make the Number. Infuse the Sales Process with Buyer Insights.

Top of Funnel 282

Top of Funnel Demand Generation Agencies Sales Qualified Lead Decision Maker 282

Sales and Marketing Management

MARCH 26, 2018

Despite the plethora of martech and sales enablement technologies now on the market, most sales teams are still performing at sub-optimal levels. With all these new tools making a salesperson’s job easier, there’s no excuse for your sales team not to excel. In these three channels is where sales performance can be enhanced.

How To 218

How To Face-to-face Sales Qualified Lead Lead Capture 218

SBI Growth

OCTOBER 20, 2013

You just got off the weekly call with the Sales Leadership team. Your boss, the SVP of Sales, has some ‘great’ news. “We We got budget approval to add new sales heads. During that time, we have insisted on the ‘Topgrading for Sales’ method of hiring. What is Topgrading for Sales? What does Topgrading for Sales do?

Hiring 288

Hiring Ideal Customer Profile Lead Rank Lead Scoring 288

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 23, 2024

This is my third article using the Bible as an analogy to sales and I am currently reading Numbers. If you think the 1870’s was a long time ago, it pales in comparison to God working with KPIs more than 5,000 years ago. Make your sales team biblical and do God’s work. In most cases, they do not. Work on your KPIs!

Comparison 177

Comparison Exact Follow-up Call-back 177

Jeffrey Gitomer

AUGUST 23, 2011

In order to struggle less, you must begin to make the transition from “making a sale” to “creating a buying atmosphere.” They concentrate on the system and not the prospect. Let me give you the non-sales skills version. None of them are about “how to close the sale.”

Selling Skills 326

Selling Skills Hiring Social Media Lead Rank 326

Bigtincan

OCTOBER 4, 2021

Salesloft and Outreach make prospecting easy by automating outreach. Both of these prospecting tools offer services like sending mass outreach sequences by email and social media, and they simplify cold call outreach with their popular cold call dialer service. Provides metrics on how engaged leads are on sales calls.

Comparison 105

Comparison Sales Qualified Lead Conference Lead Rank 105

Bigtincan

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

There is no shortage of sales onboarding solution options to choose from and most of them offer basic instructor-led training that is created once and typically isn’t updated for months or years at a time. Visual data points on sales KPIs (like bookings and close rate) that quickly allow you to see where reps are struggling.

Comparison 105

Comparison Software Software Hiring 105

No More Cold Calling

JUNE 13, 2013

Guest blogger, Michael Nick, explains where (and how) to use ROI in your sales process. This rubbish comes from people looking for headlines or who really don’t understand the concept of client relationships and how sales tools can help identify issues and monetize value. In your current sales process, what do you do first?

ROI 235

ROI Sales Qualified Lead Analysis Microsoft 235

DiscoverOrg Sales

MAY 23, 2018

We hear a lot about sales and marketing alignment: How important it is for B2B, and how so few of us are doing it right. SALES: Marketing leads are crap. MARKETING: Sales is lazy. SALES: They weren’t a good fit anyway. 7-quick-wins-sales-marketing-alignment. Sales and marketing have always relied on each other.

Lead Rank 257

Lead Rank Marketing Qualified Lead Lead Scoring Top of Funnel 257

Zoominfo

JUNE 28, 2021

Enter conversational marketing — the new paradigm to tackling your business deals and converting prospects in minutes. In simple terms — speak to your prospects and customers immediately and witness faster conversions. Your marketing will always feel irrelevant and intrusive when it is not driven by your prospects.

Conversion 246

Conversion Marketing Lead Capture Face-to-face 246

Zoominfo

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

If you think a B2B sales funnel is an abstract idea, brace yourself. It’s time to build a sales funnel that captures and converts your best buyers. Your digital-savvy B2B prospect is researching the product they think they need. That’s where your streamlined, four-stage sales funnel comes in. What Is a B2B Sales Funnel?

Top of Funnel 179

Top of Funnel Ideal Customer Profile Funnel B2B 179

Selling Energy

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

That said, be careful not to overwhelm your prospects with too many options. Most buyers like to have choices, and they get personal satisfaction knowing that they made the right choice. The perceived risk of making the wrong decision may become a roadblock to making any decision at all.

Comparison 90

Comparison Buyer Prospecting Marketing 90

Sales 2.0

JULY 28, 2018

I wanted to boil down cold calling vs. social selling data so we could do a somewhat fair comparison. So obviously my axe to grind is that I think social selling is the way to go when prospecting as it’s almost 4 (3.66) times more efficient/faster. Social prospecting relies on leveraging your network. Here’s the punchline.

Social Selling 186

Social Selling Cold Calling Networking Comparison 186

MTD Sales Training

OCTOBER 16, 2017

For me, it’s all about unearthing the needs, the wants and desires of your prospects and then positioning your product or solution in a way that makes it the only choice. If the need for the commission and sale is greater than your desire to help the buyer then this will show. A comparison. MTD Sales Training. Be helpful.

Consultative Selling 203

Consultative Selling Comparison Policies Commission 203

Zoominfo

JANUARY 20, 2021

Overflowing the sales funnel with leads doesn’t necessarily guarantee more paying customers in the end. Abundant lead conversion can happen when sales reps practice meaningful engagement with them throughout the sales funnel. Leads transform into customers by stepping through a carefully curated sales funnel.

Top of Funnel 162

Top of Funnel Funnel Sales Cycle ROI 162

Hubspot Sales

JANUARY 13, 2020

Ryan works on the sales floor of a novelty electronics store and sells eerily lifelike sleeping puppy dolls that breathe (for legal purposes, I can’t actually link to their online retail page, but they exist and are terrifying; look them up.). Consumer Sales. The phrase means exactly what it sounds like: sales to consumers.

B2C 104

B2C Comparison B2B Buyer Persona 104

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

So when I measured my win rate by all opportunities (at-bats), including prospects with whom there was no real opportunity, and those we could not qualify, my win rate is only 44%. So if we tie win-rate directly to baseball and define a sales loss the same as we define a strike-0ut, I struck out in 56% of my at-bats.

Pipeline 177

Pipeline Coaching Opportunity Comparison 177

DiscoverOrg Sales

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

B2B sales pros and marketers swim in an ocean of information. We asked over 200 sales and marketing professionals about 78 data points (and “secret sauce” combinations of data points) in a comprehensive survey, Breaking Open the Predictive Black Box: Which Data Points Actually Lead to Higher Conversion Rates and More Sales?

Ideal Customer Profile 238

Ideal Customer Profile Data Intent Data Lead Rank 238

Hubspot Sales

MAY 26, 2020

Other times, you’re not — and it’s better that both you and your prospects are aware of those shortcomings. The last thing you want to do is mislead someone during the sales process about your product, service, or capabilities, only to anger your newly acquired customer with poorly set expectations. Sales Battle Cards.

Sales Process 119

Sales Process Collateral Comparison How To 119

Sales Hacker

JULY 6, 2021

For far too long sales has been optimizing a prospecting process that makes life easier for the rep, but hasn’t put that same focus on the buyer’s experience. In this session, you will learn how to change normal sales prospecting conventions in a way that will impact your conversion rates and pipeline immediately.

Prospecting 96

Prospecting Comparison Pipeline Meeting 96

Pointclear

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Not only does this single-criteria measurement perpetuate the downward spiral represented by most companies’ poor sales results, it also reduces ROI on short- and long-term marketing and sales investments. Take a look at the following cost per lead comparison.

Cost per Lead 204

Cost per Lead Lead Rank Lead Scoring Marketing Qualified Lead 204

Zoominfo

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

The sales and marketing go-to-market frameworks weve relied on for decades staples like the funnel, the flywheel, and the buyers journey are fast becoming obsolete or are out the door already. Buyers Demand Relevance and Timing Prospecting thats irrelevant or poorly timed can harm deals more than help them.

Top of Funnel 130

Top of Funnel Lead Rank Intent Signal B2B 130

Smooth Sale

JANUARY 29, 2024

Email Is Compatible with Every Part of the Sales Funnel Effective Zoho email marketing campaigns and other approaches have the advantage of middle and bottom-of-the-funnel content. Emails are, in comparison, a far more effective solution for building a relationship with a prospect or customer. Celebrate Success!

Top of Funnel 181

Top of Funnel Social Media Funnel Comparison 181

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 8, 2023

While many tech companies have adopted the use of BDRs to conduct inbound and outbound prospecting, most companies in most industries did not go there. So let’s assume that we are talking about a traditional sales organization with traditional salespeople who have responsibility for both finding and selling opportunities.

Decision Maker 156

Decision Maker Penetration Account Comparison 156