September, 2021

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15 Ways to Get Referrals

RAIN Group

Referrals are among the top ways sellers get leads and new business, but many struggle with generating them consistently. Often, this is because they haven’t thought about why buyers should refer them. They don’t have a system in place for generating referrals. We know our buyers rely on colleagues, associates, and friends to recommend providers. So when a prospect comes to us via this route, some of the work is already done for us.

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A Growth Strategy Without Market Data is a Hail Mary (Part 1 of 2)

OnStrategyHQ

Most of the OnStrategy Team lives in Nevada, so we know a thing or two about gambling (and sometimes you can get lucky!!). However, most leaders prefer to play it safe with the future of their companies. We suspect you feel the same way. The problem for most organizations, and many of our clients, is great market data is too expensive and time consuming to gather.

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Limited Partnerships: Their Structure, Value, & Practical Examples

Hubspot Sales

A limited partnership is a business model that can connect bold, enterprising entrepreneurs with savvy investors looking to finance lucrative, low-touch business ventures. If you fit either of those bills, thoroughly understanding the concept is in your best interest. Here, we'll explore the model further, differentiate it from similar business arrangements, review its pros and cons, and go over some prominent examples of what it looks like in practice.

Investors 117
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Passing the Price Gauntlet with Strategic Accounts

Holden Advisors

As a strategic account manager, you take the long view in working with your customers to ensure that each of them gets the right solution. You invest time in evaluating your customer's business and sourcing the best team internally to configure a valuable solution. It takes teamwork, planning, and execution. When it’s time to close the deal, procurement is introduced into the process and now runs the relationship and the deal – and they only focus on the price.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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Turning lemons into lemonade: Five ways to reset on customer management fundamentals in a post-pandemic world

Strategic Account Management Association

By Dave Duke, Co-Founder and CCO, MetaCX, and Joel Schaafsma, Research General Manager, SAMA. Turning lemons into lemonade. It is one of the most optimistic cliches known to man – and with good reason. The phrase tells us to have a positive mindset and look for the good when faced with a dire, and potentially devastating, turn of events. The pandemic has presented an opportunity to reflect on what matters most in our personal and professional lives.

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Close the Door on the Close

Software Sales Guru

Close the Door on the Close One of the reasons salespeople get a bad rap is because most people associate sales with a hard close. No one wants to be manipulated or pressured into making a decision that they may come to regret. Buyers don’t like a hard close, and the truth is salespeople don’t either. I’ve heard countless people say that they aren’t cut.

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Get on the Bus | Why Psychological Safety is vital to building trust

EcSell Institute

Tough road loss. Frustrated coach. After the game, outside the team bus, he stands with the other coaches and “talks smack” about his players behind their backs. The players overhear. And just like that, their psychological safety is gone. Coaches can lose the confidence and trust of their players faster than a toupee in a hurricane. And once those crucial coach-player components go away, it’s like running against the wind to get them back.

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33 Tips to Look Professional in Your Virtual Meetings

RAIN Group

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to selling virtually. Projecting a professional image in your virtual meetings is an important (and often overlooked) factor to consider. With a little forethought and preparation, you can make a great first impression with your buyers. Read on for guidelines and tips specifically focused on projecting a professional image in your virtual sales.

Meetings 138
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Defeating the "No-Decision" Trap: The Power of Divergent Thinking

Holden Advisors

Imagine if you could banish “no-decision” from your sales funnel. More deals that travel all the way to the win/loss finish line, less wasted sales time, more essential customer needs resolved, and a higher share of wallet. What’s standing in your way? Is it the wrong solution, an inadequate business case, inability to get budget, or something else?

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How to Become a Successful Real Estate Agent, According to Experts

Hubspot Sales

If you're anything like me, you probably spent last summer binge-watching Selling Sunset , the Netflix reality show that follows the high-end real estate brokerage firm the Oppenheim Group. The show makes the life of a real estate agent look glamorous — and it can be. With flexible hours and high earning potential, the life of a real estate agent can be both freeing and massively rewarding.

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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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Selling to Committees

Software Sales Guru

Selling to Committees All buyers want to have options, and they want a simple way to compare those options. An example is the Mutual Fund industry. Most brokerages have tools that allow buyers to compare funds side-by-side, helping them to make an informed decision. Yet Matthew Morey of New York’s Pace University, found that it was not necessarily the performance metrics that motivated the purchase.

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How to orchestrate customer journeys in real time at scale

Customer Think

Customer journeys are as individual as customers. Every customer has different needs, preferences, knowledge, information and another way to resolve their issues. In brief, every customer has a context of their own. As a consequence, customer journe.

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What Every B2B CMO Should Know Today

SBI Growth

With executives facing the same challenges and experiences, and in this unique time, on a level playing field. Clarity is needed for the C-Suite in terms of Marketing. Many CEOs have placed digital investments on the back burner and now.

B2B 133
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The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Customer Service

Help Scout

With access to fewer resources and generally leaner teams, small businesses need to be more creative and tactful in their approach to customer service. That’s not to say they can’t provide a top-notch experience — they absolutely can. They just need to be a little more focused with their efforts. In this guide, we cover some common topics surrounding small business customer service and provide some insights gained from our years of working in support — as well as insights from small business lea

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2024, The Year of the Customer

2023's struggles fueled a shift: companies are ditching wasteful strategies in favor of data and AI-powered growth. Enter 2024, the year GTC takes center stage. Discover 5 ways a customer-centric approach unlocks new revenue and delivers lasting success.

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Why Pricing Is So Hard and Why Most Companies Mess It Up

Holden Advisors

Why is pricing so difficult? And why do so many companies get it wrong? It often comes down to organizations not being clear on pricing purpose. Just think—what are some of the pricing purposes we hear in big organizations? One of them we hear a lot is “price to cover cost.” The biggest problem with that? Customers don't care about your cost, and they'll gladly tell you so in a negotiation.

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The Best Real Estate Hashtags to Capitalize on Your Online Presence

Hubspot Sales

Once upon a time, the best way for prospective home buyers and sellers to find a real estate agent was to reach out to friends and family for recommendations. But today, most clients use their mobile devices to find agents and seek out properties for sale. One way to reach these audiences is through social media posts and accompanying real estate hashtags.

Media 133
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Kaizen: The Japanese Approach to Continuous Improvement

Kainexus

In the business management context, continuous improvement means a never-ending effort to identify and eliminate the root causes of problems that produce errors or diminish customer value. Most often, it consists of many incremental improvements rather than one drastic change. Continuous improvement is an integral part of Japanese culture, which endeavors to improve on an ongoing basis.

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How Language Inequity Impacts the Customer Experience

Customer Think

Anyone who has traveled to a different country and didn’t speak the language knows the feelings of frustration and anxiety that come with that experience. Even fluent speakers who are experts in their fields can face bias if they have an accent. Somehow, as a society, we’ve correlated language skills with intelligence, when that’s far […].

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1st, 2nd, and 3rd Party Intent Data: Which Is Right for You?

How do 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party intent data compare? 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data each have specific advantages and disadvantages. It comes down to four factors: accuracy, cost, control and quantity. This infographic explains the pros and cons of each and helps you understand which one is best for meeting your business objectives. Intent data can be a great way to fill your pipeline and close more deals.

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Reimagining Events in a Hybrid World

SBI Growth

A hot topic on the minds of executives, validated by SBI’s Growth Advisory Board Program, is what the future of the workplace looks like and how to create an impactful EX and CX in a hybrid environment. Executives are looking.

Meetings 128
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Help Scout’s Step-By-Step Remote Hiring Process

Help Scout

While the opportunity to hire the best people anywhere in the world is incredible, hiring for a remote team does have its unique challenges. Help Scout has been a fully remote company for over 10 years now — with 129 people across 80 cities around the world — so our hiring process has to be aligned with our remote culture. That means: Optimizing interviews for people in different time zones.

Logistics 126
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Pick Up the Phone and Sell

Sales Gravy

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount, Jr makes his debut with discussion about leveraging the telephone with Alex Goldfayn who is author of the new book, Pick Up The Phone and Sell. In this insightful conversation, JBJ and Alex make the case that you should pick up the phone and sell because picking up the phone proactively can help you quickly double your sales.

Sales 122
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How to Be a Part-Time Real Estate Agent: Tips and Requirements

Hubspot Sales

Real estate provides an excellent avenue for a potentially lucrative, extremely gratifying side hustle. If you have the patience, diligence, personability, and time-management skills to build a career in the field around your current job, you can put yourself in a position to generate a steady stream of supplementary income. Here, we'll review the steps you need to take to become a part-time real estate agent, go over what you can expect to earn if you do it right, and see some tips on how to th

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How to Leverage Intent Data for Better Outcomes

Speaker: Susan Spencer, Principal of Spencer Communications

Intent signal data can go a long way toward shortening sales cycles and closing more deals. The challenge is deciding which is the best type of intent data to help your company meet its sales and marketing goals. In this webinar, Susan Spencer, fractional CMO and principal of Spencer Communications, will unpack the differences between contact-level and company-level intent signals.

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Selling to Complex Accounts: Your Customer Coach Relationship Strength

Sales Readiness Group

When navigating a large, complex sales opportunity, one of the most important relationships a sales rep can cultivate is the "customer coach.".

Sales 118
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How to Use Voice AI to Empower Live Agents

Customer Think

Your call center agents are the lifeblood of your contact center. They have a huge responsibility to represent your brand during a customer’s time of need and frustration, all while actually solving a customer service issue in real-time. Now that’s a tall order. Whatsmore, positive and negative experiences with your call center agents have a […].

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Uncovering the Secret to Clean Data

SBI Growth

In today’s world, CEOs are having to make critical business decisions while being saturated with data, trends, and ever-changing technologies. With all of this conflicting or faulty information, how can you make sound judgments for your organization without the threat.

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How to Scale Customer Support Without Compromising Service

Help Scout

It’s possible to deliver higher volumes of customer service at a consistently high level of quality — here's how.

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The 2023 Supply Chain Crystal Ball: Challenges and Solutions

Speaker: Olivia Montgomery, Associate Principal Supply Chain Analyst

Curious to know how your peers are navigating ongoing disruption? The supply chain management techniques that dominated the last 30 years are no longer supporting consumer behavior or logistics and manufacturing capabilities. So what’s working now? What should your plans for 2023 include? By researching the supply chain challenges and solutions that businesses – especially small and midsize businesses – are currently experiencing, we’ve learned what’s working and what’s not.

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Sandler Research Center Report: What Buyers Want Now

Sandler Training

Within the professional buyer/seller environment, preferences and practices have altered dramatically since the spring of 2020. The post Sandler Research Center Report: What Buyers Want Now appeared first on Sandler Training.

Sales 118
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What is a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) and Why Do You Need One?

Hubspot Sales

Purchasing a franchise is an excellent way to become a business owner while buying into an established brand. You’ll receive business guidance, marketing assets, training, and much more. However, while this is a great opportunity for you as an entrepreneur, you’ll want to make sure that you are making a sound business decision and are protected throughout the process.

Finance 125
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How To Position Yourself as a Trusted Advisor, Not a Salesperson

Sales Readiness Group

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to understand your needs better?” This is the go-to line most salespeople use as they transition the sales call from building rapport to discovery. But is this the best approach for selling to senior-level clients?

Sales 117
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Conversational Commerce: Stand Out from the Competition by Improving the Customer Journey

Customer Think

We are seeing an increasing willingness of consumers, but also B2B buyers, to interact with companies using chats or even voice interfaces. This can be attributed to the simple fact that words, written or spoken, are the method of communication that is most natural for humans. At the end of the day, we speak far […].

B2B 140
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The GTM Intelligence Era: ZoomInfo 2025 Customer Impact Report

ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!