May, 2019

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Timing is Everything

John Barrows

The more experienced I get in business the more I realize how important timing is with almost everything. I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve heard about (or come up with myself) that were great ideas at the time, but failed because the market wasn’t ready for them. Good Ideas, Bad Timing. My former company, Basho, developed an app that plugged into Salesforce and gave you insights/triggers on customers and contacts that you could directly input into pre-made, customizable templates and then tr

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Own Your Time

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. Time is a truly critical element of sales success, yet too many take a very passive approach to their time. If not careful, time can be stolen by or wasted on the wrong opportunities. The most successful sellers will tell you to guard and own your time, not letting others waste it. To succeed in prospecting, in fact, in any element of sales, you need to own your time.

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10 Things You Can Do to Prospect Faster

The Sales Hunter

We all wish every lead turned into a great prospect and in less time. You probably also want it all to take you less time than it takes to decide what you want to eat for lunch. That would be the greatest customer, right? Yes, in a perfect world, that could happen. I would be happy to settle even if the entire process only took 24 hours. The fact is that too often leads don’t go anywhere and we’re left with a painfully slow journey to try to get the next customer.

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Small Business Owners: The Future Is Your Responsibility

No More Cold Calling

Get out of the weeds. How many balls can you keep in the air at one time? Some business leaders are better jugglers than others, but everyone has their breaking point—or, rather, their dropping point. Juggling priorities is a challenge for every business owner. You’re overwhelmed with business development and all the things you need to do to attract and retain customers.

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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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10 Reasons Why Salespeople Hallucinate

Understanding the Sales Force

I was in the basement of our home looking for something when I saw it. It moved left to right, low, between the stored Christmas trees. I took another look and this time it moved right to left. Each time I moved, it moved. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it wasn't a critter but a shadow that I was casting. I saw something that simply wasn't there.

More Trending

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Is Your Value Proposition Strong Enough?

Jill Konrath

I was eating lunch with the new president of a large manufacturing company. She was well aware of the work I’d done with their sales organization. So when I asked about her biggest challenge, I assumed we’d be talking sales. Instead, she answered, “Waste.”.

Company 302
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Your Numbers Suck

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. You hear it said a lot in different fields of endeavour, “their numbers” or “his numbers” suck. Told in the abstract about a ballplayer you can understand what they mean. Given that the subject of the observation usually is not present, it remains more a descriptor with no direct impact on the subject. However, when a manager tells their rep, “your numbers suck,” it has an immediate and lasting detrimental impact.

Sage 313
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A Partner Strategy Without Sales Operations Alignment Is Destined for Trouble

SBI Growth

Are Your Sales Operations Chaotic? It is a story told time and time again. As a Sales Operations leader in your organization, every day feels like an uphill battle. You have KPI’s to hit and leadership is looking for results.

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How to Get Referrals and Finally Conquer Your Fear

No More Cold Calling

Asking for referrals feels riskier than cold calling. “I’m not sure of the reason, but I have never been comfortable asking for referrals.” That comment was from a 20-year sales veteran, the kind of seasoned pro who should know how to get referrals, and given this person’s track record, should feel confident about asking. I wasn’t surprised. It’s what I always hear.

Referrals 327
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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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How Top Salespeople Anticipate and Manage Resistance

Understanding the Sales Force

Last week Tom Hopkins shared a post on LinkedIn that resembled what I have said so many times. He said, " The art of selling involves two jobs: Job One is to reduce sales resistance and the other is to increase sales acceptance.". Many readers left comments about the importance of relationships as a means to preventing resistance from going up. I left a comment that said, " Thanks Tom.

ACT 317
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Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams in 5 Easy Steps

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Steve Randazzo Any marketer worth his or her salt knows you have to understand your audience members before you can engage them. But the most important audience you have isn’t potential partners or customers – it’s the folks on your sales team. If your sales team doesn’t buy into your marketing, its members will struggle to sell, and business will falter.

Marketing 302
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Friday Five – Boost Activity and Sales

Score More Sales

It is that time of year where you and your sellers are going to be more distracted with that upcoming vacation, parents / friends / other family visiting, and other benefits of the summer season.

Benefit 281
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Better Use Of Your Time

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. On Tuesday I posted about the need for salespeople to own their own time. Had a number of folks reach out to see what steps they can take to ensure they are maximizing from this resource. Based on a couple of calls, I decided to follow with a specific methodology for better use of your time. Get Out Of The Zone. As with most transformational things, we need to take specific and uncomfortable steps.

Maximizer 286
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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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Promoted! Sales Manager Goals and Objectives

Connect2Sell

As a sales manager, you’re responsible for delivering results. Leading people starts with leading yourself and making choices that truly get the right results the right way.

Promotion 233
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Small Business Owners Don’t Want to Learn How to Sell

No More Cold Calling

Hiding behind technology doesn’t drive sales—THIS WILL. Next week is National Small Business Week in the United States. For more than 50 years, the U.S. president has issued a proclamation that dedicates the first full week in May to celebrating America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners. There’s plenty to celebrate. More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and those companies create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year, according to the

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What to Do with the Salespeople Who Become Your Biggest Problem

Understanding the Sales Force

I coach a lot of sales managers and sales leaders and when I ask them what they want help with today, it's rarely a big opportunity, it's seldom coaching best practices, it's hardly ever targeted metrics for their team, and it's almost unheard of for them to request that I help them improve as sales managers, Oh no. They almost always want help with their biggest problem child.

Coaching 312
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Workplace Wellness Can Deliver a Healthy ROI

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Paul Nolan The mission of Atlanta-based Hodges-Mace, LLC, is to help its client companies communicate clearly the full details about their employee benefits package so workers can get the most out of them. It stands to reason, then, that Hodges-Mace pays careful attention to its own employee benefits package. The company, which has been named one of the best places to work in Georgia by Georgia Trend Magazine, incorporates education, contests and incentives into its benefits program, ado

ROI 257
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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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How the Best CEOs Drive Their Strategy to the Sales Force

SBI Growth

Most companies have ambitious plans for growth. However, few ever realize them. According to the Harvard Business Review, seven out of eight companies in a large corporation failed to achieve profitable growth. Yet 90% of the companies in the study.

Strategy 230
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Why “Content First” Salespeople Have an Edge

The Pipeline

The Pipeline Guest Post -Susan Varty. Imagine you had everything you needed to say at your fingertips. All the customized emails, personalized messages, all the marketing materials, all the product benefits, and all of the relevant articles you would love to send your prospects. Wow. That is a dream indeed. As a salesperson, all interactions require content.

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Who Makes a Great Prospect? 4 Questions You Must Answer

The Sales Hunter

You cannot afford to waste your time with prospects that will not become your customers. Your time is too valuable! All prospects are not the same. The sooner you know who is good and who isn’t, the better off you will be. By getting answers to these four questions, you’ll also help turn them into better customers by offering them more value. Too many salespeople wait too long to get answers to these questions and it leads to having a pipeline that’s essentially a sewer line.

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6 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Email Marketing Budget

Zoominfo

In 2017, email marketing turned half a century old. Yet, B2B marketing professionals continue to rank the channel high on their list of preferred marketing tactics. The reason for this is simple. Email marketing is an inexpensive way to promote products, increase sales, and retain customers. In fact, email marketing has a median ROI of 122%– more than 4 times higher than other marketing channels, including social media, direct mail, and paid search ( source ).

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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 New Salesenomics

Understanding the Sales Force

Back in the 1960's it made sense for gasoline prices to be discounted down to the nearest 9/10 of a cent because gas prices ranged between 17.9 to 18.9 cents. But when gas prices are around $3.00 per gallon, how does 9/10 cent continue to make sense? Some habits die really hard. I don't know about you but some things just don't make sense to me. I loved the Leavitt/Dubner series of books on Freakonomics and thought I could share some interesting sales and sales management data that make little s

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How to Write a Marketing Plan in Six Easy Steps

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Lonny Kocina A well-executed marketing plan is like a GPS. It guides your customers into your sales process. Done right, your marketing should result in more leads, higher sales and a stronger brand. Following steps in a logical progression, without going off on tangents, is one of the fastest ways to achieve your goals. Negotiating business contracts can be complicated.

Marketing 237
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Promoted! Effective Sales Management Begins with Letting Go

Connect2Sell

Why is there so much confusion about what effective sales management looks like?

Promotion 279
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The Complete Salesperson

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. I know we’re not supposed to stare at people’s peculiarities, but at times it is hard not to. For instance, at the gym, where you see someone with a well-developed upper body, standing on two twigs. While the first instinct may be to snicker, but having worked with salespeople, I see this type of oddity almost daily. Selective Training.

Handbook 235
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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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Your Competitor is Not Who You Think It Is

The Sales Hunter

You probably think your competitor is the big evil company that just came out with a more superior product than yours. No! That big evil company is not your primary competitor. Your two biggest competitors are: 1. Your own self-limiting doubts about what you can’t do. 2. The “no decision” response that too many customers ultimately decide on.

Intent 237
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6 Common B2B Sales Problems and How to Avoid Them

Zoominfo

There are so many factors that can stand in the way of exceptional B2B sales performance—poor leadership, lack of organization, no sales process—the list goes on. While some of these problems are easily recognizable, some of the most common obstacles that stand in the way of your success are hard to identify. Today, we explore some of the more common sales problems—problems you might not even know you’re facing.

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Dave Kurlan's 23 Steps to Improved Channel Sales

Understanding the Sales Force

When you purchase a car, do you consider yourself a customer of the dealer you bought or leased it from, the auto maker, or both?

Channels 296