January, 2020

article thumbnail

Account Planning: Building for Long-Term Revenue

Upland

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” -Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe knew the value of not launching head-first into something without a considered plan of attack. How are sales teams meant to grow revenue in key accounts with a well thought out account planning strategy? According to McKinsey, “The five-year growth rate of total returns to shareholders for digital leaders is almost double that of all other firms,” when

article thumbnail

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.

CRM 155
article thumbnail

How To Deal With Your Competition When In A Sales Meeting

MTD Sales Training

You will no doubt have been in the position where you’ve been discussing purchase opportunities with your prospect and the subject of your competitors comes up. Whether it’s the price you are charging or their needs to get different quotes, or many other reasons, it can be quite deflating when the competition is brought up in the sales meeting. Should you try to by-pass the issue?

Meetings 150
article thumbnail

How to Ask Marketing for What You Need

Hubspot Sales

Chances are, your sales team is currently focused on making functional changes for significant improvement. This can include new quotas, territories, products, and compensation plans. Let's add one more thing to the list — creating a spirit of cooperation between your sales and marketing organization. Unless your team totally knocked it out of the park last year and you think lightning can strike twice using the same approach, now is a good time to try something new.

Marketing 141
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

Time to Put a Stop to Buyer Objections

Engage Selling

It’s a friction point that holds you back from achieving sales success: buyer objections. If left unchecked, those objections will stop you dead in your tracks from being able to present a compelling proposal to your prospective customer.

Sales 138
article thumbnail

Part One: Introverts Can Sell | Developing a Sales System [Podcast]

Sales Gravy

Can introverts sell? Jeb Blount author of Sales EQ, and Mathew Pollard author of The Introvert's Edge, break down the myths about introverts and selling. In part one of this series, you'll learn why successful introverts employ a consistent, repeatable sales system. Listen to Part Two of Introverts Can Sell Listen to Part Three of Introverts Can Sell Listen to Part Four of Introverts Can Sell Listen to Part Five of Introverts Can Sell Listen to Part Six of Introverts Can Sell Can introverts sel

Sales 136

More Trending

article thumbnail

The Complete Guide to SaaS Sales

Nutshell

By Cody Slingerland and Ben Goldstein. Selling something that your customers will never hold in their hands requires a very specific approach and a whole lot of practice. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) refers to any cloud software product that a company hosts and makes available to customers over the Internet, rather than offering it as a download onto their computers or mobile devices.

Sales 127
article thumbnail

3 books every sales professional needs to read in 2020

PandaDoc

‘Tis the season of packed yoga classes, downloadable budget templates, and book recommendations. Whether you’re the type of person who sets resolutions or not, there is an undeniable sense of self-improvement in the air. Maybe you’ve set some goals, but they lean more professional than, uh, sweaty. If you’re looking to level up your sales career in 2020 but don’t know where to start, we suggest checking out one, two, or all three of the must-read books listed below to get you equal parts inspire

article thumbnail

6 Differences Between A Solopreneur and Entrepreneur

Hubspot Sales

Do you love working independently? Have a great business idea and want to see it through from concept to execution? Does the idea of managing a team of employees make you cringe? If you answered yes to these questions and dream of being your own boss, you may enjoy working as a solopreneur. Solopreneur job examples include: Freelance writer. Virtual assistant.

article thumbnail

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.

Sales 122
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

Avoid These Critical Mistakes in Your Quarterly Business Reviews

Corporate Visions

The post Avoid These Critical Mistakes in Your Quarterly Business Reviews by Nicci Nesmith Hammerel appeared first on Corporate Visions. Is your quarterly business review format putting your customer relationships at risk? Once your prospect becomes a customer, you might focus on typical customer success drivers, like getting your customer to adopt and love your product, or to stay engaged through check-ins and quarterly business reviews.

article thumbnail

50 Sales Plays To Lead Your Team Through Hypergrowth

Drift

Let’s face it. Buyers no longer rely on salespeople to get information about a product or service. They don’t care about their lead score or what your sales team’s process looks like. And they don’t want another generic sales pitch. Because they have all the power. And can go online or talk to their peers to find all the information they need. To put it bluntly, today’s buyers don’t want to be.

Sales 118
article thumbnail

New in Nutshell: Take the grunt work out of email marketing with Nutshell’s Constant Contact integration!

Nutshell

Every day, thousands of businesses use Nutshell to organize their customer conversations and sell smarter. Given how important email is to B2B sales, Nutshell has always made sending and tracking sales emails a focus of our product, from our automated personal email sequences to our sneaky powerful Gmail and Outlook extensions. Until recently, Nutshell customers had only one option for integrating their email marketing efforts with their CRM: our award-winning Mailchimp integration.

Marketing 121
article thumbnail

Steal Our Marketing Persona Template (And the Customer Research Process That Goes With It)

Groove HQ

A marketing persona template and research process to help your business grow. Before coming to Groove, I worked as a full-time freelance writer and marketing consultant, mostly working in the B2B space. Many of the companies I worked with sent me their marketing personas (sometimes called “customer avatars”) as we started working together. Most (almost […].

Marketing 116
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

SQL vs. MQL, and What They Are

Hubspot Sales

During high school, I never did well during my physical education class. One of the main reasons? The track and field unit. Every year during this unit, we'd have to do a high jump, hurdles, and baton racing. Needless to say, none of these activities were my forte. However, baton racing has continued to be an apt metaphor in my career. For example, most organizations have a process of passing a lead from the marketing team to the sales team.

Internet 133
article thumbnail

Building Trust With Your Clients

Engage Selling

Building trust with clients should be at the forefront of every organization’s thinking and planning.

article thumbnail

5 Ways Buyers Ask For—and Get—Lower Prices

RAIN Group

Win-win negotiation is the way to go…except in one situation: when the buyer has their hand in your pocket. Whether they're doing it intentionally or just out of habit, sometimes buyers try to push down seller prices just to see if they can. When they do, you should counter with value , but you also have to signal as you respond, "That won't work. I know what I'm doing.

article thumbnail

How to Make Sure Your Buyers Remember Your Message

Corporate Visions

The post How to Make Sure Your Buyers Remember Your Message by Carmen Simon appeared first on Corporate Visions. The Science of Memorable Content. If you’re in Sales or Marketing, you’re in the business of influencing other peoples’ choices. Every time you communicate with your buyers, it’s an opportunity to move them in some way—to change, to choose you, or to stay with you instead of switching to a competitor.

article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

You’ll outgrow your company’s core values. Here’s what to do next.

Groove HQ

It wasn’t working, and I was frustrated. Four years ago, we put hundreds of hours into developing our company’s core values, and they now felt broken. The things we used to do because they were “scrappy” were beginning to strain our infrastructure. The things we used to do because they were “fun” led to stagnation […]. The post You’ll outgrow your company’s core values.

110
110
article thumbnail

The Price Proposal That Won't Scare Customers Away [Template]

Hubspot Sales

The nature of contract work begs a lot of questions. What does it take for a contractor to actually land a job? How do they differentiate themselves from their competition? How do their customers know what they’re getting into financially? How do you know if you love someone? Do dogs know their own names? A lot goes into answering those questions, but there’s a consistent factor involved in most of them.

article thumbnail

Is Your Sales Team Forgetting This Crucial Step?

Engage Selling

Could your sales team be forgetting about this crucial step? Recently, I was coaching a sales manager and we discovered that their inside store reps thought they were too busy to do a proper quote.

Sales 117
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

Hiring for Culture Fit—The Secret Weapon

The Center for Sales Strategy

To remain competitive, organizations must invest more time and effort into the selection process. If you’re curious why so many companies fail to fully activate the talents of their people, take a closer look at how they make their hiring decisions. Regardless of what your company does, there is only one way to build a top-performing organization. You need to make sure you get both the talent and the culture fit right with every single hire you make.

article thumbnail

Relax! 5 Marketing Ideas for Massage Therapists

Outbound Engine

There are few things more relaxing than getting a good massage. As people seem to be more stressed than ever, services such as massage therapy are more needed than ever. However, coming up with marketing ideas for massage therapists can be quite challenging. It’s your job to think creatively to make sure your business stands out from your competitors.

article thumbnail

Key Sales Enablement Metrics You Should be Tracking

Showpad

Analytics, which can also be referred to as data science, is best described as the formal process of discovering and illustrating the patterns that can be found in data. (The word is also sometimes interchangeably used with “big data,” but to be clear, analytics involves reviewing and drawing actionable conclusions from information, whereas the former is just the info.) .

Sales 97
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

The Inbound Sales Matrix: What It Is and What It Can Do for You

Hubspot Sales

How do you know how much effort you should put into pursuing a specific prospect? How can you prioritize one contact over another? Those scenarios aren’t always easy to navigate. Prospecting is a spectrum. There are going to be sales opportunities worth pursuing to different degrees for different reasons. But, how can you tell what those degrees and reasons actually are?

article thumbnail

The Simplest Yet Most Difficult Sales Skill | Sales Strategies

Engage Selling

Silence is one of the simplest things a seller can learn to do, but it is the most difficult for them to execute in the sales process effectively.

Sales 112
article thumbnail

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.

article thumbnail

5 Daily Phrases Great Sales Leaders Say

The Center for Sales Strategy

What we say and how we say it matters. The language used with prospects impacts your capability to excite and encourage them about the deal at hand. Certain words prompt predictable behavior, and every word or phrase you choose to use will generate an emotional response. Sales leaders who understand the psychology of communication and language learn to upgrade their vocabulary quickly.

Sales 100
article thumbnail

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!