January, 2019

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Yes, Gender is a Factor in B2B Buying Decisions: Selling to Men and to Women

DiscoverOrg Sales

Are there differences selling to men and women in a B2B sales process? That was the question we set out to discover. My husband and I are avid remodelers, which means I’ve spent a lot (A LOT) of time at Home Depot and Lowe’s over the last 15 years. I remember clearly, during those Saturday afternoons walking up and down aisles looking for just the right tile, how much I preferred shopping at Lowe’s to Home Depot.

B2B 192
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Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies? I did!

Jeffrey Gitomer

Paula Kearney just spent the weekend selling door to door. She made more than 150 sales. Paula is 7. Paula's success has her so pumped to sell more, her parents have to dampen her enthusiasm with the reality of homework, school, household chores and bedtime. What kind of saleswoman will this kid be when she's 21? So, what does this 7–year old kid have to do with your sales success?

Call-back 222
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The Science of Strategy – What Steve Jobs and I Have in Common

Bernadette McClelland

Strategy is one of those words that, to a right brain creative like me, every now and then sends ‘this does not compute’ messages through the brain. Not dissimilar to a strategist hearing words such as ‘creativity’, I guess. With the definition of science being: ‘a systematically organised body of knowledge on a particular subject’, and Michael Porter’s definition of strategy in the Harvard Business Review, ‘the creation of a unique position involving a distinct set of activities’. then th

Strategy 262
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How to Write a Winning Direct Mail Sales Letter

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Warren Fowler Sales teams and marketers focus on digital communication so much that they seem to forget the power of offline promotion channels. While online tools are often more convenient and practical than traditional marketing techniques, the fact remains that the latter usually perform better. For instance, reports reveal that up to 90 percent of direct mails get opened, while emails average 25 percent at best.

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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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You’re No Different Than Your Competition

No More Cold Calling

Don’t believe everything you hear about selling in a digital world. You’ve probably heard the often-quoted statistic that says 57 percent of the buying process is complete before a customer talks to a salesperson. Rubbish. Believe that, and you’ll look like everyone else to your buyers. You’ll get in way too late. Your prospects will be confused about how your solution is different from the next guy’s.

More Trending

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Dave Kurlan's 10 Surefire New Years Resolutions For All Salespeople

Understanding the Sales Force

Like most people, this year I intend to make good on my New Year’s resolution. It’s actually more of a life resolution than it is a New Year’s resolution in much the same way that salespeople should make theirs a career resolution. If it’s important enough then it shouldn't be for only one year. I’ve compiled a list of resolutions that all salespeople should make and follow.

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Are Small Business Owners Salespeople in Disguise?

Jeffrey Gitomer

YES! The success of a small business rests on the owner's ability to sell. Small business owners have about 50 different hats to wear, but sales is the biggest hat an entrepreneur wears. Actually without the sales hat, the other hats are useless. When I say sales, I'm not just talking, "Hey, please buy my stuff." Sales is not just selling your product or service.

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Crikey, I Shipped It!

Bernadette McClelland

I have always said to my kids, ‘behave yourself because you never know who’s watching’. Like all kids, without fail, they listen to their mum (she says tongue in cheek!). But the point I am making is you never know who is watching you. Not from a creepy, stalking way, but more an observational perspective. And today, our personal branding extends way past a name on a building, a copyright mark that we might put against our initials, or the bio we choose to add to any profile we put on the web.

Call-back 308
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6 B2B Sales Trends for Amazing Success in 2019

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Sabrina Ferraioli “A trend gains power over time, because it’s not merely part of a moment, it’s a tool, a connector that will become more valuable as other people commit to engaging in it.". — Seth Godin. To stay ahead of the competition and thrive, it’s essential to identify and adopt sales techniques that can boost your productivity and results.

Trends 297
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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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5 Reasons Your Team Doesn’t Know How to Get Referrals

No More Cold Calling

Asking for referrals might be hard, but it pays off big! Ask most anybody for the secret to how to get referrals, and they’ll probably tell you the first step is to simply ask. That might be true, but it’s far easier said than done. Whether you’re a sales newbie or a veteran rainmaker, asking is hard. Apparently, it’s even harder for many men. Two guys in their early 50s recently told me they felt uncomfortable asking.

Referrals 309
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To Err Is Human

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. I have written in the past about how “ perfection is overrated.” The quicker you realize that the more productive you’ll be. As with many things in sales, it comes down to focus. There is no secret that I am big on execution, but always with the question “To what end?” Meaning that the outcomes should be driving things. This allows me to focus on the outcomes of my activities, and less on the activity itself.

Education 290
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The Top 8 Requirements for Becoming a Great Salesperson

Understanding the Sales Force

If you're young enough, some of the questions in the first few paragraphs won't apply because you haven't experienced the world without the innovations mentioned below. Don't let that prevent you from reading this because after the milestones, we'll get to the good selling stuff. For those of you who are my age or older, do you remember the first time you saw color TV?

Wireless 292
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How Do You Measure Customer Experience?

SBI Growth

Recently, my colleague Sid Nakappan wrote an article on How the CEO can jumpstart the Customer Experience Transformation. If your boss put this article on your desk, you are probably getting started. With the interest of beginning with the end.

Customer 290
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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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Don't Dread Cold Calls, Laugh Them Off.

Jeffrey Gitomer

You will no longer dread the dreaded cold call after you read this column several hundred thousand times. There is a fear and dislike many salespeople have when it comes to cold calling. John Whittington at the Lake Norman SalesMasters ® club mentioned that he had a big fear of being thrown out of a company when making a cold call. It was suggested to him that his strategy should be to only cold call on one-story buildings.

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4 Negotiation Strategies to Help Your Sales Process

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Dean Kaplan As the head of a collections agency, I work with many different kinds of businesses. One thing many businesses with collection issues have in common is that they focus too strongly on making a sale, and not strongly enough on improving their sales process. Although it’s obvious that any business needs sales to survive, organizations that become too focused on sales at any cost tend to overlook warning signs that a client might not be creditworthy.

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Why Curiosity Is Critical for Sales Success

No More Cold Calling

What is 7427466391? Imagine if you saw this on a billboard along your commute route …. What would you do? Roll your eyes, think this is nonsense, tell others about it, or go to the site and find out what’s going on? The curious solved the equation (answer: 7427466391.com) and went to the site, where they found another equation. The few who solved it learned the secret to the strange billboard.

Google 299
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A Critical Mistake In Handle Prospecting Objections

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. People will tell you that the number one reason sellers do not like to prospect, specifically telephone prospecting, is rejection. However, if we step back, there is no less rejection in other means of prospecting, say e-mail or LinkedIn prospecting; when you look at the numbers, the phone is more effective than e-mail, (better together), it’s just not in your face (ear), like the phone.

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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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50 Prospecting Truths- It’s Your Job: Truths 1-10

The Sales Hunter

Prospecting is not an afterthought. Prospecting is the foundation sales should be built upon. Furthermore, sales is what business is built on, and business is what drives the economy. If you remove prospecting from the equation, business and in turn the economy will be affected very quickly. Several years ago, I created a list titled “20 Sales Truths: The Guide to Sales Freedom.

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Stop ‘Special’ Pricing and Start Value Pricing

SBI Growth

All businesses need to prove that their products are valuable; simply declaring it to customers will do little to grow the business. The window to prove your solution is worth the investment and is becoming increasingly brief. If there’s a.

Lead Rank 255
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Top 13 Requirements to Help You Soar as a Sales Manager

Understanding the Sales Force

In my last article I shared the t op 8 requirements for becoming a great salesperson. Wow, did that resonate with people and there was a great discussion about it on LinkedIn. In addition to that, I received a number of emails asking, what are the requirements for becoming a great sales manager? I'll share those in a moment but first, since they were so popular, a few more "do you remember the first time" questions: Do you remember your first cell phone that didn't need to be plugged into a roof

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Sales in a Digital World: Adopting an Omni-Channel Approach

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Chanan Greenberg The sales landscape is shifting – customer service is becoming the most important factor for buyers, expected to surpass both product and price within three years, according to the Customers 2020 report. Further, the landscape is expanding – 81 percent of potential buyers conduct online research prior to purchase, and 30 percent of all ecommerce purchases are from mobile devices.

Channels 259
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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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The Best Cold Calling Tip Is Stop Immediately (Do This Instead)

No More Cold Calling

. Have you ever met a salesperson who enjoyed cold calling? (Well, maybe one in 100.) How about a buyer who enjoyed receiving cold calls? (Yeah, me neither.) Not only is cold calling tortuous for everyone involved, it’s one of the reasons that only 54.3 percent of sales reps made quota last year. Cold calling doesn’t address the top two challenges that sales teams face.

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5 Components Of A Successful Salesperson’s Belief System

MTD Sales Training

What is a belief system? Wiki would have it described as a mental representation of an attitude oriented toward the likelihood of something being true. I like that concept, because it identifies a model that supports the way someone likes to behave, based on a system that supports those beliefs. That means it can’t always be supported by empirical formulae, but is determined by someone’s confidence in an opinion or belief.

System 235
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How to Be a Memorable Salesperson Part 2: Collaborate With Buyers

Connect2Sell

Being memorable in sales translates into making more sales. This 12-part series on how to be a memorable salesperson includes specific ways you can make yourself stand out to buyers. Each post in this CONNECT2Sell series includes research from a study with 530 B2B buyers and in-field observations from a sales coach. This post describes how to be more memorable by doing more collaborating with buyers.

Buyer 229
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Implementing an Advocacy Process as Part of Customer Success

SBI Growth

Advocacy is on fire! Why? Because harnessing passion from advocates is an authentic way to drive customer intimacy and revenue growth. Research from the Demand Gen Report shared that as much as 84% of buyers seek input from their peers.

Customer 249
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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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An Easier Way to Coach Salespeople - For a While

Understanding the Sales Force

One of the challenges that sales managers have is their trepidation around transitioning from very little coaching to daily coaching; and at the same time, moving from coaching light (ineffective coaching) to coaching pro (effective coaching). Why? They aren't masters of role-playing and role-playing is one of the primary tools to demonstrate best practices and how effective sales conversations should sound.

Coaching 240
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Why Consultative Selling Does Not Work for Prospecting

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling™ I was recently working with a new client. His mission is to set up appointments on behalf of his manager. My new client was stressed and frustrated and having no success. He told me that he was reaching and having brief conversations with some prospects but those conversations went nowhere. He said he was trying to be consultative, to elicit details and to drill down on prospect objections.

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Nine Attitudes for Sales Success

The Sales Heretic

Ask any sales expert, and they’ll tell you that the right attitude is essential for success. But it’s not just one attitude that’s necessary—there are several. I would suggest there are nine different—but related—attitudes you need to nurture in order to be successful in sales. 1. Optimism I have never met a successful salesperson or [.].