May, 2022

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KAM Leader Series: Winning Customer Commitment

Strategic Account Management Association

By Tania Lennon, Global Space Lead, Talent Assessment and Leadership at ZS and Jennifer Stanley, Partner, North America Lead, Sales & Channel Practice, McKinsey & Company SAMA is proud to offer this 4th article in the 4-part series on the importance of SAM / KAM leadership. In this series we explore the key capabilities that … Continue reading KAM Leader Series: Winning Customer Commitment.

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The Buyer’s Journey

Software Sales Guru

The Buyer’s Journey The image below depicts the five phases a buyer moves through to recognize a need, assess alternatives, make a purchase, and promote that solution. Buyers move through these stages with no assistance. Moving through the phases is like an element moving through changes of state, from gas, to liquid, to solid. It is primarily an emotional journey.

Software 147
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The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding

Hubspot Sales

Everyone who's active online has some sort of personal brand established. Social media accounts, websites, digital portfolios, blog articles, and the various ways you communicate all contribute to your unique identity and image. Unaware of your personal brand? Take a few seconds to Google yourself. Whatever content mentions you is part of your brand.

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The Value and Benefits of Executive Leadership Development

The Center for Sales Strategy

57% percent of people were reported to quit their jobs because of poor leadership in their organization. Leaders set the tone of an organization's culture. In order to retain a happy and productive workplace, it's integral to understand the value of leadership development. Leaders can be found via a talent search. In other instances, leaders are born through continuous leadership development.

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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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The Sliding Scale of Sales Transformation

Mike Kunkle

Sales Transformation. It’s a term that means different things to different people. I’ve been involved in sales transformations that were entirely focused on getting the best-possible performance out of the sales force (ranging from a 30 to 600 percent increase in sales), independent of retooling the rest of the organization. In my experience, the potential for improvement in most sales organizations is significant.

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Strategic Leadership: Understanding its Purpose and Core Attributes

CMOE

You can’t have strategy without leadership. Strategy formulation requires a clearly defined vision, long-term goals, useful tools, and a plan to win. But without the guidance of an insightful leader who can drive the process, it is difficult to make any strategy a reality. Ultimately, strategic leadership is what makes the difference between success or failure.

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Preparing To Be a Player

Software Sales Guru

Preparing To Be a Player As a rule, success depends on practice; hours and hours and hours of practice. It’s true in sports. It’s true in music. It’s true in entertainment. Most professionals wisely eschew seat-of-the-pants performances. In the sales profession, we often enter into a negotiation with little to no preparation. As a result we rely heavily on instinct.

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Become a Certified Professional HubSpot Sales Representative

Hubspot Sales

The demand for sales roles only keeps growing. According to research published by HireDNA, sales roles shot up by 65% in 2021, totaling around 700,000 positions in the US alone. That’s why the HubSpot Academy is partnering with Coursera, the world's most trusted online education resource, to bring you the HubSpot Sales Representative Professional Certification — a five-course career development training for anyone looking to thrive in a new sales role, refine their sales skills, or impress poten

Sales 131
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3 Major Sales Time Wasters And How To Fix Them

The Center for Sales Strategy

You waste time! A lot of time. And so do I. It's an epidemic in the world today. One of the biggest challenges that organizations and salespeople face is the lack of productivity while feeling like they work all of the time.

Sales 133
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The Future of Video Messaging Featuring Vidyard’s Michael Litt

Sales Gravy

Video messaging is hot and it is a core component of effective prospecting sequences because it works! At Sales Gravy we love using video messages to grab the attention of prospects. Our favorite tool for sending those messages is Vidyard. That's why we were thrilled when Vidyard CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Litt agreed to sit down with Jeb Blount, Jr. on the Sales Gravy Podcast to discuss the future of video messaging.

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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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The Surprising Way to Boost Your Sales Team’s Morale

Engage Selling

Want to boost your sales team’s morale? I don’t blame you. Let’s face it, the top sales teams have no shortage of morale on their side. When you picture a … Read More. The post The Surprising Way to Boost Your Sales Team’s Morale first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.

Sales 122
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Drive Consistency in Your Sales Planning Process

Force Management

A salesperson’s time is valuable. Ensure your sales team is spending their time building a pipeline of high-value accounts. Support your sales managers and reps in developing a result-driven plan that focuses them on pursuing these high-value opportunities. Put a process in place that helps your salespeople repeatedly and consistently drive effective sales plans.

Sales 122
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?The Next Evolution of Sales

Sandler Training

Inspired by the transformation that we’ve all seen firsthand in the sales industry over the last few years – from the disruptions of virtual selling and remote work to innovative companies and technologies bringing new alignment between buyers and sellers – Sandler is excited to announce our commitment to further champion the next evolution of… The post ?

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6 Common Competency-Based Interview Questions & How to Nail Them

Hubspot Sales

Sometimes, more abstract, behavioral questions aren't enough to get a solid feel for whether an interviewee is right for a role. That's why several companies incorporate experience-rooted, competency-based interview questions into their interview processes — allowing potential employees to back up their personal claims with professional proof. As a job-seeker, you're almost bound to face competency-based questions at some point.

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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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Stop Spinning Your Wheels: Selling Techniques for Fast Closes

The Center for Sales Strategy

Stop spinning your wheels on lousy prospects! Slow kills deals. Every seller knows (and loves) the feeling of a textbook sales process that goes from identify to closed-won, quickly. The benefits of moving prospects to customers quickly through the pipeline expose several key leading indicators of the health of your sales team and sales process.

Sales 130
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5 Elements of a Problem Statement

Flevy

Managing any organization can be described as a constant stream of problems that need to be managed and solved. However, oftentimes, people like to immediately implement solutions without having spent the time and effort to truly understand and analyze the true nature of the problem at hand. Thus, organizations end up spending a lot of time, effort, and money without precisely knowing what the endeavor is going to do for them.

Banking 111
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Customer Engagement Shift | Sales Strategies

Engage Selling

????? I recently came across some interesting research from Gartner on the customer engagement shift. They discovered that when a customer is buying a brand new solution, they prefer online … Read More. The post Customer Engagement Shift | Sales Strategies first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.

Sales 116
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How to Hire the Right Sales Talent for Growth

Force Management

In this wave of mass resignations and global hiring, reduce hiring challenges and cost by narrowing your sales manager's focus. Define what the ideal sales talent candidate looks like for your organization so you can help your managers hire the right people for growth. The topic of sales talent has come up often on the Revenue Builders Podcast. John McMahon and John Kaplan dig deep with their guests, pulling out top-level advice you can use to make your sales talent a competitive advantage for y

Sales 112
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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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21 Data-Backed Sales Skills Every Top Performer Needs

RAIN Group

There’s simply not enough time in the day to focus on every essential skill needed to succeed in sales. While sales teams must prioritize skills development, it’s important to identify which skills could have the biggest impact on your sales results.

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Everything You Need to Know About Invoices

Hubspot Sales

Picture this: a customer needs a home makeover and happily agrees to use an interior design service after a consultation where they discuss the scope of the project, style and design, layout, paint, furniture, decor, and costs. There's just one problem: the business doesn't have an invoicing workflow. The customer doesn't know when payments are due, or how to add additional services from the designer onto their project.

Banking 116
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4 Reasons Social Selling Is So Effective

The Center for Sales Strategy

Social selling is on its way to equaling (and possibly overtaking) conventional selling in the near future. One study stated that with more than 3 billion people using social media worldwide in 2021, the customer base is right where social salespeople want them. Way back in 2020, before the world had gone haywire due to COVID and in the early days of the pandemic, Facebook sales by American Facebook users hit over 18%.

Media 127
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Partnerships with Emerging Market Startups

Flevy

For large global corporations, forming productive alliances with promising startups is a far more challenging undertaking than it appears. Global corporations frequently struggle to identify potentially advantageous startup partners. On the other hand, startups face significant difficulty isolating and contacting the appropriate decision makers in the corporations, given the massive hierarchies of global businesses.

Marketing 111
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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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Your Unapplied Knowledge Is a Waste of Everything!

Engage Selling

Don’t let unapplied knowledge destroy your sales team! I talk a lot about how the sales landscape today is completely different from just a few years ago…and that there’s no … Read More. The post Your Unapplied Knowledge Is a Waste of Everything! first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.

Sales 113
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No-code CRM integrations? Explore Insightly AppConnect

Insightly

Integrating applications is not new; companies have long been integrating their tech stack using tools like AWS Lambda and Zapier. These are complex tools that work very well. However, the desired user experience is moving to low-code/no-code integration solutions that still support robust builds, while offering reliability, speed, and – perhaps most importantly – ease of implementation.

CRM 105
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35 Free Sales Tools to Make Selling Simple

RAIN Group

Sales tools can help you standardize processes, improve your skillset, and make the best use of your time. We’ve compiled all our free tools to help you succeed—browse below for resources covering every topic of sales.

Sales 105
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A Guide to Fair Inflation Pricing

Hubspot Sales

As of March 31, 2022, inflation in the United States stands at 8.54% — the worst it has been in close to 40 years. Obviously, that figure has massive implications for businesses of all sizes, and several business owners are faced with a question that's every bit as uncomfortable as it is pressing: What do we do about our prices? Inflation product pricing is a tricky, nuanced process — how do you keep pace with inflation without alienating prospects and customers?

Logistics 116
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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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Secrets to a Strong Interviewing Process

The Center for Sales Strategy

An interview can make or break a company’s relationship with a new hire. A thorough interview process, using a validated talent assessment, looking for strengths, talents, and fit for the position, and examining fit to culture, can provide a strong jump off to a successful and lucrative career. A desperation hire where a “warm body” is hired with no thought to their success can only lead to frustration, bad feelings on both sides, and repeating the process when the new hire quits.

Sales 124
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Structured Problem Solving: Modified A3

Flevy

Solving problems, complex problems at that, involves not only good problem formulation but also a structured approach to complement it. Structured Problem Solving is simply an iterative sequence of framing hypotheses and testing them via controlled experimentation, revamped for the intricacies of the world beyond the laboratory. Structured Problem Solving is a formal, logical, and methodical approach to organizing individuals’ thinking.

Banking 111
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A CFO Perspective on Achieving Healthy Revenue Growth

Force Management

Each player on the executive team has a different perspective. The CFO is the ears of an organization. They combine everything they hear from leadership to create a balanced plan. They want to yield healthy growth. They go for accuracy.

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Stay Away From This Sales Metric | Sales Strategies

Engage Selling

?????? Are you staying away from this sales metric? I wrote an entire chapter in Right on the Money on data. Specifically, about not letting data control you. I love … Read More. The post Stay Away From This Sales Metric | Sales Strategies first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.

Sales 101
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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!