January, 2020

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An Ode To Inefficiency!

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. At first glance, good times are continuing for selling organizations; revenues are up and it looks like everybody is hiring. The economy seems to grow in line with the average sales, or is it the other way? And every app you add to the stack, claims to add 30% to your productivity and efficiency. Reminds one of the old joke about a salesman introducing technology to a VP of sales.

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Sales Managers: Think You’re Ready for Referrals?

No More Cold Calling

Here are five important steps to make your team referral sales experts. If salespeople were self-motivated, they wouldn’t need sales managers or metrics. Yep, most of us are lazy and lack discipline. I’m including myself here. It’s a lonely world for account executives. I’ve been there—given a quota (usually without my input) and a list of client companies, and then told to “go at it” and do whatever it takes to get meetings.

Referrals 328
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The Core 10 KPIs for Accelerating B2B Growth

SBI Growth

“What is the standard, and what is everybody else doing?” You’ve asked yourself this question individually in many different situations. What you choose to eat, how you decide what to wear to an important event, or even how often you.

B2B 340
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Cold Calls – Interruption or Disruption?

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. When we were young, we accepted things we were told but knew not to be true. We also understand that ignoring some of the facts can add to the discussion. The example here is the old saying about sticks and stones and words and the ability of these to hurt. We all know that words can hurt, and over time, do much more damage than sticks or stones.

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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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Gatekeepers Are Your Responsibility

Engage Selling

Good deals get stuck when you lack access to the right people to successfully close a sale. There are two ways that lack of access occurs.

More Trending

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New Data Reveals a Finding That Correlates to Sales Success

Understanding the Sales Force

We had a request for some data from one of our longtime partners. My knee-jerk reaction to her request was that it would be a big nothing burger. She asked for data that would show the difference between salespeople who are goal oriented and those who are not. I did not expect much of a difference except in the area of Motivation but I was wrong. Very wrong!

Data 364
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Hey Sales Manager, Get Your Head Out of That Spreadsheet

No More Cold Calling

Poor leadership will cost you $3.5 million per sales manager. “ Message to Management: Your job is to get the rocks out of the road for your salespeople so they can do what they were hired to do—sell!”. I wrote that 15 years ago in my first book, NO MORE COLD CALLING: The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust. But I don’t think any sales manager listened, because more than half of reps are still missing quota.

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Tactics To Help You Meet Your 2020 Sales Goals

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Jeff Kalter Are you at risk of becoming obsolete? Or worse, could you lose your sales job altogether? You could be vulnerable if you’re not sharpening your sales skills and honing the tactics that will help you succeed in 2020. Forrester analyst Andy Hoar didn’t mince words when he spoke at the 2015 Forrester Sales Enablement Forum. He told the audience about his research and his expectation that out of the then 4.5 million B2B reps currently selling, as many as 1 million could be gone b

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Time For The Day 21 Check-in

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. Everyone knows it takes 21 days to form new habits. Probably more accurate to develop good habits, as most people can take up bad habits in a heartbeat. In the end, it turns out to more a myth than reality making it perfect for a sales discussion, as there so many bad habits formed pundit propagated myths. Remember how dead the phone was before it came back?

Meeting 317
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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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19 Benefits of Asking Questions

The Sales Heretic

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (and if you’re not, you can be—just click one of the “Subscribe” links to the right, wink, wink, nudge, nudge), you know that I’m a big fan of asking questions. When I conduct sales training seminars, I typically give audiences 20 to 40 questions to ask their [.].

Benefit 288
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Selling For Non-Salespeople – How To Become More Client-Oriented If You’re Not In Sales

MTD Sales Training

Do you often hear people say ‘Oh, I’m not in sales…I can’t sell anything!’. If you do, and they work in your company, you’re letting go of many opportunities for successfully creating a great image for your brand. I say this because everyone, from the CEO to the janitor , creates an image for what you do. Imagine one of your receptionists answers the phone in a gruff manner because they have just had a bad meeting with their manager.

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The Deal Breaker That Prevents you From Hiring a Great Salesperson

Understanding the Sales Force

One of the questions we are often asked by HR Directors is, "Can people game the OMG assessment?" Of course they can try, but we have a very effective algorithm that smokes out those who attempt to cheat. It doesn't happen very often that somebody attempts a big cheat but when it does, it's almost magical in the way we uncover them. There is a very small percentage of salespeople who attempt an all out cheat.

Hiring 288
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Should You Throw Your Strategic Plan in the Trash?

No More Cold Calling

Successful sales execution requires more than sales technology. “Joanne, the challenge is always in the execution.” That’s what a client told me more than 20 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. Companies today purchase the latest and greatest sales technology, provide minimal training, and then wonder why it’s not adopted across the board. Because it doesn’t actually help with sales execution.

Guarantee 329
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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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How Salesforce Invested in Customer Success to Soar to $1B in the Last Recession

SBI Growth

Remember when a cloud was only a fluffy thing in the sky? It was only 20 years ago that Salesforce introduced the revolutionary idea to help companies use cloud-based applications for customer relations management. The applications would be run over.

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What are they thinking about sitting in traffic?

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. In a previous life, I used to be a cab driver; as a result, I still use a lot of driving references. People who work with me know I believe in leaving your product in the car, makes for a better conversation. And when you think about it, we are a car culture, and in addition to going from point A to point B, we do other things in the car.

Lead Rank 250
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21 Things Successful People Say Regularly

The Sales Heretic

As a professional keynote speaker and trainer, I have a tremendous appreciation and respect for the power of words. The right words at the right time can solve problems, heal wounds, create connection, or move people to action. They are essential to your sales, business, and personal success. Whether you’re a salesperson, manager, or business [.].

Sales 285
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14 Questions to Ask a Candidate’s References Before Hiring

Zoominfo

Depending on who you ask, reference checks are either an extremely valuable tool or a complete waste of time. But the fact is: a great candidate’s resume is only part of the hiring equation. You’ve got their previous experience and accomplishments on paper, but the intangibles are still unknown to you. You can trust your intuition and go forward with a hire—but we’ve all been surprised before.

Call-back 211
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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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The Science Behind One Company's Top Sales Performers and Why They're So Much Better

Understanding the Sales Force

There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives. In today's article, I'll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates. Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded , used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.

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Terrible Business Decisions

Grant Cardone

Let’s dive into history again this week and find out what made Mark Twain a terrible businessman and investor even though he was a brilliant writer. Because after all, no matter how successful you are, you’re capable of making terrible business decisions. Quick backstory: Mark Twain famously wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and was one of the highest-paid authors of the 1800s.

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Will Your Organization Survive a Recession? Examine Your GTM Approach

SBI Growth

Recessions are an economic reality. They are also difficult to predict. The question isn’t whether there will be another recession, it’s when the recession will hit. The truth is, nobody knows when the next recession will occur. You can listen.

Analysis 262
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How to harness cognitive bias to win more sales

Membrain

“I like the sound of your solution, but I’ve already spent a lot of money with this vendor, so we’re going to keep trying to make it work.” “You seem to have built an impressive solution, but we really put a lot into our in-house solution, and even though it’s not working right now, we like it, so we’re going to keep building on it.”.

Vendor 157
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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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Don’t Tell Your Customers to Have a Great Night

The Sales Heretic

It had been a rough night. It was supposed to have been a great night. It was the first class of a three-day aikido seminar featuring one of my favorite instructors. Unfortunately, his flight was severely delayed, which resulted in that evening’s class starting and finishing late. Which meant that we went to dinner late, [.].

Customer 253
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How to Build a Sales and Marketing Database from Scratch

Zoominfo

If you’ve been given the task of setting up your company’s sales and marketing database, you’re probably not overly excited … especially if it’s something you’ve got to build from scratch. How do you find prospects quickly? How do you verify the accuracy of the data? Is it really cheaper to build a database? All of these questions are probably making your head spin!

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An Inside Look at Why 3 Good Salespeople Failed and 3 So-So Salespeople Succeeded

Understanding the Sales Force

You hired a great salesperson that didn't work out. You hired a so-so salesperson that did work out. You hired another great one that kicked ass, and another one that was so-so. That's the story of hiring salespeople. It's mostly hit or miss with an emphasis on miss. In this article I'm going to share an actual example that illustrates why this happens so frequently.

Hiring 263
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Podcast 132: The Art of Closing A Deal With Danny Read

John Barrows

This week we’re pleased to have an award winning sales rep on the podcast. You may remember back at Dreamforce, Chili Piper threw a competition judged by John Barrows and other sales leaders. The criteria to win was to tell the panel about a deal you closed against the odds, using teamwork and generating a great solution for the buyer a the same time.

Closing 141
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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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3 Actions CEOs Take to Capture Market Share From the Competition

SBI Growth

The 2019 fiscal year is in the rearview mirror, and 2020 has officially started. Strategic planning is finished, and plans to get off to a fast start in FY20 are in motion. For many CEOs, the strategy and approach used.

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All the things marketers can (and should) be doing with a CRM

Nutshell

Although typically perceived as software for salespeople, CRMs are the secret sauce behind most successful marketing initiatives. A CRM is an integral piece of software for marketers and salespeople. Powerful and versatile, CRMs are used to manage every aspect of the sales pipeline , from signing up newsletter subscribers to nurturing longtime customers, and literally everything in between.

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Go Beast Mode with Your Money

Grant Cardone

Ballplayers looking for real investments to take care of themselves after retirement… Recently Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch did an interview that went viral, sharing with ballplayer peers to get their money right because “ your career won’t last forever.”. If you didn’t see the interview, and you’re a rapper, ballplayer, athlete, artist, actor, producer, writer, comedian… or anything that requires a special talent —watch it right now: If you have trouble hearing it, this i