Sat.Oct 12, 2019 - Fri.Oct 18, 2019

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The 5-Step Formula for a Reliable Sales-To-Service Handoff Process

Sales Hacker

Want happy employees, happier customers, and more revenue? The secret may surprise you… It’s as simple as a solid sales-to-service handoff. For several years, I ran account management at a marketing agency — a business model infamous for mismatched expectations and subjective quality of delivery. I’ve seen lots of good AND bad handoffs, and learned what to look for the hard way.

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The 3 Ds of Time Management

The Center for Sales Strategy

It’s no secret time management is one of the highest requirements for succeeding in sales. Consistent questions heard within the industry are, “What are some ways I can improve my time management?” and “How can I be more efficient?”. There are a multitude of strategies to help us be more productive, but they can be difficult to adopt because they force us to go against routines we’ve had for years.

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Unscalable: How to Build Relationships at Scale

Anthony Iannarino

Much of what I write here is going to be anathema to a particular variety of sales experts and those who read too much into the idea that relationships are no longer critical in sales. Much of the dominant opinion that relationships don’t matter in sales stems from the book, The Challenger Sale. But were you to ask the authors, they would tell you that “challengers” had the second-highest score on relationships, and it was just a smidge behind “challenging.

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The step-by-step guide to building an effective sales strategy

Zendesk Sell

In construction, it’s impossible to erect a building if you don’t have one critical document — a blueprint. Steel frames, power tools, and a team of builders are all important elements, but they’re useless if you don’t have a document to guide the process. Like a blueprint is essential for constructing buildings, you need a strategy as a manager to build a successful sales department — a step-by-step plan to help you and your team drive company revenue.

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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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Sales Compensation Planning: 5 Tips to Improve Performance in 2020

Xactly

Sales incentives are the number one driver of team performance. Improve your team's performance in 2020 with these five sales compensation planning tips.

More Trending

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Timing In Prospecting is a Mug’s Game

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. At one time, I had a co-worker who had a bit of a problem with the horses. He always knew just the right horse, in the right race, cause “today was the day.” He handicapped it, and every day he knew why his timing was just right; each day, it was not. A lot of people in sales remind me of a conversation I had with Leon. They seem to be convinced that not only is sales about timing, but they have divined a way to leverage it to their advantage.

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Get in any door

Sales 2.0

When I started selling technology I was told to get to the office at 8AM so I could cold call CIOs and catch them before their assistants came in. When I did succeed in catching a CIO on the phone (one in say 50 dials) they nearly all dismissed me as a time waster. In fact, looking back on my efforts, I agree with them. I was a time waster. I didn’t have any knowledge of their organization and issues.

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The Pros and Cons of Following Sales Playbooks

SBI

The Pros and Cons of Following Sales Playbooks. When you think of a “sales playbook”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you’re thinking of a plan or guidebook for your sales team to follow, you aren’t too far off. Most of us will agree that planning your work and working according to plan is a good idea. Yet not all sales workflows are created equal – there are some pros and cons to keep in mind before you decide whether a playbook is right for you.

Scale 101
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How Effective Listening Helps Build Customer Relationships and Close Deals

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Rafael Lourenco When you work for a B2B company, it’s easy to assume that your customers and colleagues make their decisions based only on ROI and other data. However, the higher you move in the hierarchy of an organization, or the closer you get to sales activities, the more your day-to-day life becomes about interacting with people – colleagues, bosses, investors, board members, employees and customers.

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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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Get Your “Foot in the Door” with this Sales Cold Email Template

Zoominfo

Cold email is one of the most common and tested tactics in a modern salesperson’s repertoire. And yet, sales reps still look for ways to improve their sales email strategy. It’s not hard to see why — after all, only 24% of sales emails are opened ( source ). Fine-tuning your cold email strategy might not make your open rates skyrocket to 90%, but it can make a major difference.

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Sales Process and Why So Many Salespeople Lose Their Way

Understanding the Sales Force

Last night I was on Interstate 90, the MassPike, driving home from the airport in a wind-driven rainstorm. It was so bad I couldn't see the white lines that divide the three lanes nor could I see the Jersey barriers dividing the eastbound from the westbound traffic. It was almost as scary as the plane's rocky decent from 30,000 feet in gale-force winds last night or driving in a blizzard!

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Why Sales Is Not a Profession

The Sales Hunter

Recently, I had a discussion with a sales manager about how to connect with customers. This was no casual conversation; it was serious, because he was with a start-up company who had 18 months at best, to achieve critical mass. The sales manager knew me well from my work with him at a previous company. The longer the conversation, the more animated we both became.

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The Implications Of Integrative Negotiation

MTD Sales Training

Have you heard of the term ‘integrative negotiation’? It’s not a term used often but it’s a concept that can take your negotiating skills onto the next level. Here, we discuss what it is and how you can best utilise it in your negotiating meetings, especially if you need to get to a position during win-win bargaining. The term ‘integrative’ comes from the counselling and therapy world.

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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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6 Steps to Building a Talent Pipeline Framework for Your B2B

Zoominfo

Companies hire new talent for a number of reasons. Perhaps they’re growing, or have new goals and needs, or an existing employee is leaving, etc. But, modern recruiters can’t simply wait for one of these things to happen before they start looking for new job candidates. Given the fast-paced and increasingly competitive hiring landscape, recruiters must take a proactive approach to cultivate a group of potential hires — even before they need to fill open positions.

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One Question to Close More Demos

Mr. Inside Sales

Have you ever gotten to the end of your demo and wondered how it was going to end? Wondered not only if the prospect was going to move forward, but also what it would take and how long that might take? If you have, then you’re probably missing one of the most important “pre-qualifying” questions you should be asking on each and every demo call before you launch into your actual presentation.

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Critical Thinking Skills Examples to Boost Your Credibility

Connect2Sell

At the risk of sounding preachy, we’re continuing what we started last week in the CONNECT2Sell series on Critical Thinking. Last week, we looked at truth as an absolute standard that buyers demand. This week, it’s a similar take on credibility because that, too, is in short supply (at least according to buyers!).

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Ease Compliance Woes with Better Data Management Processes

Sales and Marketing Management

Author: Ben Thoren This past May marked the one-year anniversary of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a data privacy regulation that has had a significant impact on the way enterprises process and store personal data. With this particular regulation and others like it being enacted across the globe, data privacy has become a mission critical priority.

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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 to Use Webinars Throughout the Buyer’s Journey

Zoominfo

Every form of content has unique advantages, so it’s difficult to say any one type of content is head and shoulders above the rest. But, if you were to declare the webinar the ‘king’ of marketing content , you wouldn’t be alone. After all, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders say webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads ( source ).

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Asking for a pay rise, differentiate from the competition

MTD Sales Training

Episode 37: Asking for a pay rise, differentiate from the competition, quote from Jill Konrath. In this episode we take a look at how you can prepare for and confidently ask for a pay rise. Our skillspill identifies the best ways to follow up with customers. And our Inspire Me quote comes from Jill Konrath. Take a look at this episode on [link]. The post Asking for a pay rise, differentiate from the competition appeared first on MTD Sales Training.

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9 Insider Tips for Closing More B2B Sales

Hubspot Sales

It’s no secret that selling to other businesses is tricky. You simply won’t succeed if you don’t take B2B selling for what it is: a high-stakes selling game that requires an entirely unique approach from direct-to-consumer selling. Before we dive into the insider tips, let’s get crystal clear on what B2B selling entails. When done right, B2B sales have the potential to be both extremely lucrative and deeply rewarding.

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Mr. Play It Safe Always Loses

Grant Cardone

Trying to avoid danger in a world that is filled with it is impossible. Bad things happen to good people every day. Sometimes you lose money before you make money. Customers betray you for the competition. Your spouse leaves you. Employees screw up. The stock market will not coddle you and the economy punishes good people and bad people alike. By being careful and trying to avoid danger, people actually spend their lives in danger.

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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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8 Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates

Zoominfo

Your marketing landing pages may receive a ton of traffic – but are you converting those visitors to leads? For marketers, there’s nothing more frustrating than low landing page conversion rates, especially when it’s difficult to determine what the cause is. Likely there are many reasons why your landing pages may be suffering from low conversion rates.

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Prospecting Dress Rehearsal and Warm-ups

The Pipeline

By Tibor Shanto. Some may not like to say it, but there is a lot of theater in sales. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, at times tragic, but sales is a performance art. Once you accept that, it becomes easier to accept some of the up-front work, rehearsal and more that goes into a successful sale. Practice, warm-up, dress rehearsal and all. Much like actors warm up physically before each performance, so should professional sellers.

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15 Key Integrations Between CRM & Your Other Business Processes

Hubspot Sales

If you are getting acquainted with your CRM software and are impressed with how it functions independently, allow us to introduce you to your new favorite feature — integrations. While CRM software is powerful on its own, integrating your CRM with other tools across your sales stack makes your job so much easier. Ideally, your CRM should serve as the core hub to all of your sales activities, and integrations serve as the supporting cast making your central software even more powerful.

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Setting Sales Managers to Fail

Engage Selling

Are you setting your sales managers up to fail? A few years ago, I met an executive running sales teams who had recently been promoted to the role. He gave new meaning to the term “hands off.

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How to Prove Marketing Value: Demonstrate Content ROI and Contribution to Sales

Every marketer knows how important it is to prove their efforts drive sales opportunities, but that’s easier said than done. When problems like sales and marketing misalignment, lack of data, and wasted efforts persist, marketers can’t measure, prove, or increase their impact on revenue at a time when demonstrating marketing value is critical. Using analyst and expert data, this guide to marketing impact and content attribution explains: How B2B buyers use content The most common types of conten

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6 Steps to Building a Talent Pipeline for Your Business

Zoominfo

Companies hire new talent for a number of reasons. Perhaps they’re growing, or have new goals and needs, or an existing employee is leaving, etc. But, modern recruiters can’t simply wait for one of these things to happen before they start looking for new job candidates. Given the fast-paced and increasingly competitive hiring landscape, recruiters must develop a proactive approach to cultivate a group of potential hires — even before they need to fill open positions.

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A fresh perspective on the Challenger Sale research

Membrain

First published in 2011, “The Challenger Sale” must be one of the most widely-read sales books of the past decade, and with good reason. Together with its successor “The Challenger Customer” (which I believe is an even more influential book), it served to introduce powerful new perspectives about today’s increasingly complex B2B sales environment.

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Productivity May Not Be What You Think It Is

Anthony Iannarino

One of the reasons you might not be as productive as you want to be is because the idea isn’t well defined. Many people who believe they are productive, are not. Not To-Dos. It is not crossing off tasks off a to-do list. No matter how many tasks you complete during a given day, you still may not have been productive with your time. You might have cleaned your desk and cleaned up the files on your desktop before you started work.

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