July, 2015

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15 Sales Tips from NSA ‘15

The Sales Heretic

As a sales trainer and keynote speaker, I am, of course, a member of the National Speakers Association. Which means that last week I was in Washington, D.C. for the 2015 NSA Annual Convention. More than 1700 of the world’s top professional speakers and trainers gathered for four days to learn from each other. The [.].

Course 260
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Decision Makers Want To Deal With Decisive People

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca . A question I regularly ask when working with a group of reps on prospecting, is “who do you call on?” or “who do you want to call on?” The answer I get is “the decision maker”. Now I have used a lot of different directories and databases, and they all give a title, not role in decision. But let’s say they did, the real question is what happens when you speak to that decision maker.

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Wondering How to Grow Sales? Create Time to Think

No More Cold Calling

You’ll never get your next great idea without a quiet space to innovate. How do techies come up with such innovative ideas? Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone, and Elon Musk did it with Tesla. Reed Hastings did it with Netflix, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, and Elizabeth Holmes with Theranos. Every day we read about new companies addressing needs that never existed before.

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7 Secrets of Success in Sales

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2015-07-31. Author: Jamie Thomas, Vice President Talent Acquisition for Combined Insurance. Teaser: Building a successful sales career is challenging, but it can also be interesting and satisfying. To help determine if you have what it takes to build a career in sales, here are seven best practices that are the foundation of most every successful salesperson.

Insurance 250
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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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Unconventional Ways to Get Your Salespeople Out of a Rut and Closing More Deals

Steven Rosen

Are your sales reps constantly complain that they are “stuck”? It could just be one tough deal that seems to be endlessly dragging on, and subsequently dragging them down. Or it could be a bad quarter that is making them feel stuck in a huge rut. How do you help them get through and get back on top of their game? Maybe we all need to think outside of the box a bit and explore some more unconventional ways to help them move on and start bringing in those big deals again.

Closing 240

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Bugged by the Difference Between Great and Lousy Salespeople

Understanding the Sales Force

Yesterday I noticed a large, furry, dead bug on the hood of my car. It seemed to be attached to the outer lip of the hood - like the edge of a cliff - right where the hood drops down to the grill. I got out of the car to remove the chunk of dead fur and I was shocked to see how wrong I was. It was dead all right, and it was furry. I'm not a tall person so I wasn't sitting high enough in the car to notice the distance between the bug and the lip of the hood but my estimate was off by more than 2

Exact 223
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Delivery Over Messaging In Prospecting Calls

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca . When it comes to effective prospecting there is usually a complete imbalance between two critical components of an effective message. Effective here means leading to initial engagement. The two components are “the content” of the message, and the “delivery”. The being the ability to ensure that the content is packaged and delivered in a way that the recipient can full receive and digest it and get out of it what the seller intended.

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Referral Networks: The Missing Ingredient in Your Marketing Best Practices

No More Cold Calling

Guest blogger Ken Thoreson tells how to grow your referral networks. I drove 90 minutes in traffic to attend a networking event. I’d only been home from vacation for a week and was still fighting jet lag, but the walls were closing in on me. I had to get out, connect with new people, and renew relationships with others. After all, networking is one of the most important marketing best practices for a sales professional.

Referrals 248
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The millennial B2B buyer can’t be ignored

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2015-07-01. Author: Paul Nolan. Teaser: By 2020, it is estimated that millennials will make up more than half of the work force. Many of them are being promoted to decision-making positions. Dustin Grosse, Chief Operating Officer of ClearSlide, a sales engagement platform that empowers sales teams to engage customers, recently shared his thoughts about the changing dynamics of buying, selling and managing the generation that is out to save the world.

Buyer 239
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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 Key to Great Mid Year Reviews

Steven Rosen

What Great Sales Managers Do. By Steven A. Rosen. Many sales managers will be sitting down with their sales people over the next month or so to review progress on objectives, business plans and development plans. Sales managers spend a considerable amount of time preparing for a mid year performance review. Sales managers may spend a day per rep preparing and delivering a mid year review.

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What To Say When The Customer Asks, “Why Should We Use You?”

MTD Sales Training

So, you’ve got to the part of the conversation where the customer asks the £64,000 question, hence indicating they are interested but haven’t yet been persuaded to think seriously about your. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

Customer 228
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How to Avoid Becoming Obsolete

The Sales Heretic

Technology, society and the marketplace are all changing faster than ever before. With those changes come both threats and opportunities for your business. How can you avoid the former while seizing the latter? Listen in as Jeff Shuey (Chief Evangelist at K2) and I join Michele Price on Breakthrough Radio. In this special episode, the [.].

How To 222
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Sales Data Or Insight Driven?

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca . The other day I go a resume that had a familiar phrase in it, “John Smith – A Data Driven Sales Professional. While I understand what they were going for, I am not sure it landed right. (Or maybe it was just me). No doubt the age of “big data” or perhaps a better label being used by some, “fast data”, is upon us.

Data 247
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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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Business to Business Sales Reps Shouldn’t Cave on Price

No More Cold Calling

Can your buyers afford NOT to work with you? Jane was a senior vice president with a premier global company. She always brought in the best resources to work with her executives—consultants and speakers who were the highest profile and most respected in their fields. Yet, when Arlene sent Jane a proposal for a special project they had been discussing, Jane pretended she couldn’t afford it.

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How to Utilize Video in Your Sales Strategy

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2015-07-24. Author: Matt Daly. Teaser: Video is a key component of the marketing mix. When marketing and sales work together to develop content and share resources that meet the needs of their customers, success is realized. Video is a key component of the marketing mix. When marketing and sales work together to develop content and share resources that meet the needs of their customers, success is realized.

Video 220
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Does Your Prospecting Plan Work? 11 Questions to Ask Yourself

The Sales Hunter

The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unfortunately, this exemplifies the expectations of too many sales prospecting plans. Below are 11 questions you can ask yourself regarding your sales prospecting plan. These questions will equip you to gauge how effective your prospecting plan is and what […].

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5 Keys To Becoming Your Customer’s Trusted Partner

MTD Sales Training

If you’re in any kind of sales position, you really want to make buying and using your products easy and profitable. That’s the real reason why people buy them in the first place; to make their lives. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

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Beyond the Basics: How to Develop and Retain a Top-Performing Sales Team

Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Sales at Allego

Maximizing sales rep performance is no easy task. 📈 Traditional sales training methods focus heavily on the first few weeks in the sales role. Companies dedicate time, resources, and budget to onboarding new hires, only for them to forget what was learned in those first few weeks, lose motivation, and struggle to come to grips with their role.

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Keys to Selecting a Sales Training Company

Understanding the Sales Force

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a Sales VP about the training he said he wanted (but didn't really) for his sales team. In most cases, unless the Sales VP initiates the call, bringing someone in from the outside really isn't high on the priority list.

Training 209
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3 Words to Ditch To Improve Your Sales – Sales eXecution 304

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca . Words are a big part of selling, seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how little attention some in sales pay to the words they choose. Words impact not only what your prospects hear and their reactions to them, but almost as important is the effect they have on you as the seller. Words impact and reflect you view of things and situations, and while many will argue that it’s just semantics, they fail to realize or acknowledge the degree to which

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“Sales Management” Is Not a Dirty Word

No More Cold Calling

Great sales leaders must also be great managers. Remember when the phone was ringing off the hook and companies hired anyone who could fog a mirror? No one had time to prospect, because they couldn’t keep up with the business coming in every day. Then the recession hit. Oops. These new hires (more order-takers than salespeople) were fired. Companies had no pipelines, and many businesses folded.

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3 Common Failings of Sales Management

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2015-07-13. Author: Chris Dent. Teaser: In working with hundreds of sales forces, we have found that ineffective sales management is usually due to one or more of three common failings. By addressing these issues, companies can elevate the effectiveness of their managers, which in turn will boost the performance of the sales organization as a whole.

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How to Optimize Call Monitoring: Automate QA and Elevate Customer Experience

Speaker: Laura Noonan, Chief Revenue Officer at CallFinder + Angie Kronlage, Director of Program Success at Working Solutions + April Wiita, Vice President of Program Success at Working Solutions

Are you still manually reviewing calls? 🤔 It's time for a change! The traditional method of manual call monitoring is no longer cutting it in today's fast-paced call center environment. Industry experts Angie Kronlage and April Wiita from Working Solutions are here to explore the power of innovative automation to revolutionize outdated call review processes!

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PowerOpinions: Making Lead Scoring a Success Part 2 [Expert Advice]

Pointclear

We recently asked top industry experts the following question: 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? Why did we ask? Because it has become clear that marketing automation is making it easier than ever to generate poor quality leads. And sales is sick of it.

Lead Rank 206
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6 Buyer Tactics That Will Slash Your Margins

MTD Sales Training

We often talk about the selling skills required to deal with today’s complex and competitive market place. Those skills normally revolve around the abilities of salespeople to achieve specific sales. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]].

Margin 208
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Why I Was Kicked Out of a LinkedIn Sales Group

Understanding the Sales Force

Each day I read several newsletters written by physicians who are also natural or homeopathic practicioners. They are proponents of natural health care, a nutritional diet, and supplements. They are vocal in their criticisms of the FDA, Big Pharma, and mainstream medicine. The most vocal of them are viewed as huge threats to the FDA and big Pharma, because they have legitimate cures and protocols for most, if not all diseases, while Big Pharma needs us to take their drugs, which cure nothing, bu

Groups 203
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LinkedIn Serves Up Catholic Like Feature

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca . People always seem to be looking for a means to repent and ease their guilt. Whatever the cause or underlying motivation, people feel better when doing something, even if it is not the right thing for the wrong reasons, acting gives the illusion of accomplishment. So when it comes to sales, social media offers an outlet more immediate and less demanding than going to a confessional, when they know they have wronged and are feeling guilty.

LinkedIn 240
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Secrets of a Successful Sale: Optimizing Your Checkout Process

Speaker: David Nisbet, Everett Zufelt, and Michaela Weber

Once upon a time, in the vast realm of online commerce, there lived a humble checkout button overlooked by many. Yet, within its humble click lay the power to transform a mere visitor into a loyal customer. 🧐 💡 Getting checkout right can mark the difference between a successful sale and an abandoned cart, yet many businesses fail to make payments a part of their commerce strategy even when it has a direct impact on revenue.

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Too Busy to Get Referrals?

No More Cold Calling

Even when your plate is full, you’ve still got to eat. “I was so busy this week, I neglected to prospect.” That’s what I heard from Jeff, a frustrated salesperson. But I didn’t let Jeff get away with this lame excuse. What else was he doing that was more important? You know the answer to that question: Nothing. If salespeople don’t stay in touch with prospects and referral sources, they won’t be able to get referrals and keep hot new leads coming in.

Referrals 237
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Are You Ready for Machine Learning?

Sales and Marketing Management

Issue Date: 2015-07-01. Author: Jeff Erhadt, CEO of WISE.IO. Teaser: In this era of Big Data, we’re inundated with messages to use data to drive personalized and predictive experiences for customers. But for many, the gap between this data-driven vision and reality is large and growing. Machine learning alleviates the burden of establishing fixed rules for how to react to data.

Data 216
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5 Ways to Shorten Your Sales Cycle — NOW!

The Sales Hunter

1. Ask this key question to ask every prospect during the first contact: What is your timeline for making a decision? It only makes sense that if your goal is to close sales faster, you must be working with prospects who are most likely to buy NOW. A prospect who says they’re not going to buy […].