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When it comes to icebreakers, “describe yourself in three words” is by far one of the toughest. You’re a complex person, with unique ambitions, experiences, preferences, and traits -- how are you possibly supposed to distill yourself down to three mere words? Unfortunately, get-to-know-you conversations aren’t the only time you’ll face this prompt. LinkedIn headlines are essentially the professional version: They ask you to describe who you are and what you do in just one line.
Slumps happen to everyone. No matter how good you are or how long you have been in sales, sooner or later you're going to hit a sales slump. And they always seem to come at the very worst times. (Actually, when is it ever good to go into a slump?) It’s never exactly the same, but it sometimes looks like this: You've put a lot of time and energy into a prospect, and thought for sure he or she would say yes—but the person gives you a NO.
Sales Leaders miss or make the number one sales call at a time. Yet they typically don’t pay enough attention to each call. They look at each rep’s performance to quota. They review the pipeline. These are difficult to control. Sales leaders can.
If you’re a longtime Salesforce user, there’s a good chance that you’re miserable at work right now. Despite its reputation as the CRM market leader, Salesforce is infamous for being clumsy, confusing, and overpriced. It’s built for large enterprises—not for the people who actually have to use it. Considering that Salesforce can cost tens of thousands of dollars in technical setup and development before your reps even start selling, our best advice to sales teams is don’t get involved with it in
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.
I have seen and heard tons of techniques and tricks on how to ask for referrals from your customers. But I have to tell you that most of those so-called golden nuggets are actually outdated, old-school pitch-mentality approaches to working with updated, modern and sophisticated consumers. I am going to make this short and sweet, because asking for referrals from your clients should be a natural and comfortable act and not some slick technique.
The first time I went to dinner with a business partner, I was terrified. What if I accidentally brought up a sensitive subject or committed a faux pas? What if it was hard to eat my meal gracefully? What if I made too much eye contact -- or equally bad, too little? Fortunately, the dinner went well. Now that I attended several professional dinners per year, I stay up-to-date with the types of business etiquette and professional norms.
The first time I went to dinner with a business partner, I was terrified. What if I accidentally brought up a sensitive subject or committed a faux pas? What if it was hard to eat my meal gracefully? What if I made too much eye contact -- or equally bad, too little? Fortunately, the dinner went well. Now that I attended several professional dinners per year, I stay up-to-date with the types of business etiquette and professional norms.
The great sales managers know that if you want to see an increase in performance then you have to set expectations. But just setting expectations is never enough. You need to put a system in place where you can measure what you expect. As the management saying goes, "Your salespeople will respect what you inspect… and you need to inspect what you expect.".
If your business name makes people do a double-take when they see it, you’re doing something right. We asked 10 Nutshell customers to tell us the origin stories behind their unique business names. Some of them have personal meaning, some have local significance, some were just pulled out of thin air— and all of them are awesome. SplitMango. “Apart from being an available domain name at the time we started out, SplitMango is just a really cool name.
I still see so many salespeople struggling to truly understand how their customers’ challenges, needs and objectives impact individuals throughout the organization. Your customers and prospects are actual people with both personal and professional needs and goals. They are not buildings or firms. They may not have a product or service, or the right one, to help them attain required results.
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.
Want some tips on cold calling? Here’s the cold calling cheat sheet! I must receive about 20+ emails each month that ask me for specific help and guidance on cold calling so here are some top tips: Sound Like A Human Being. Try not to sound like a robotic cold caller. That’s what 95% of the cold callers sound like. You need to sound as though you are just calling up a colleague for a chat rather than a “have I got a deal for you” salesperson!
One of the most important conversations salespeople have with their prospects is the discovery call. Here lies the proverbial fork in the road for you and your prospect. Either they’re a good fit for your product or service and you can move forward with the relationship, or it’s time to part ways. But it’s not always immediately obvious which path to take.
“I had a really good meeting! But. I can’t get the prospect to call me back!” or “I had such a great meeting, but I never got an answer to the proposal.” I hear statements like these frequently when working with salespeople. They return from a meeting telling their manager how great it was, but then nothing happens. Wishful thinking sets in. Calls get made to the prospect on a weekly basis, managers ask about it in their weekly meetings, and salespeople start saying, “I don’t know what could hav
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.
The ability to read body language signals and respond accordingly is an important weapon in a salesperson’s arsenal. As a salesperson, you should be actively seeking to “hear” your prospect’s body language, as much as you’re listening to the words they’re saying. On some level, we humans naturally pay attention and react to body language. When you see someone smile, you know instinctively that they’re happy (or at least indicating positive feelings to you).
I can see the eyes rolling every time the topic of account planning comes up. I can even hear the inside voices of so many sales people. They’re saying, “But it takes me away from my clients.” “It’s a waste of time.” “I only do it because management makes me do it.” You get the drill. So, I provocatively lay down the edict and enunciate in a very loud, strong voice: Don’t do account planning!
No matter what you sell, a consultative selling approach is essential if you want to land the business. Click on this link if you’re looking for a consultative selling course. If you’re looking for tips then please read on! For me, it’s all about unearthing the needs, the wants and desires of your prospects and then positioning your product or solution in a way that makes it the only choice.
As a sales manager or leader, your problem probably isn’t too little data. It’s too much data. After all, with the latest tools we can measure everything -- and we do. From the percentage of reps using your CRM and cohort retention rate to average time to hire and sales velocity, there’s a nearly endless list of metrics, reports, and data points. Let’s be honest: It’s overwhelming.
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.
I have been doing sales training and consulting for nearly 20 years and I always get a chuckle when salespeople tell me they need to find ways to close business in two calls. When I hear this today, I wonder where these people are living. Do they live on the same planet as I do? It’s not about the number of calls—it’s about the length of the sales cycle.
Joining us for today’s show is Matt Slonaker, the Executive Vice President Business Development and Marketing for Chronos Solutions. Matt is an executive leader with extensive experience in turnarounds and knows how to generate revenue growth with the unique blend.
If your sales team is operating without a sales process, you need to do something about it—right now. Building a sales process is absolutely necessary to your company’s success, and is perhaps the most important thing you can do as a sales manager to impact your team’s ability to sell. Fortunately, creating a sales process from scratch isn’t as complicated as it seems.
Never Ending Value, Evergreen Relationships, Lifelong Business How to create and employ customer and client strategies for continual business with your clients Alan Weiss and I are hosting a live event in February 2018 in South Beach, Miami to help you grow … Read More »
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.
A sales manager on one of our leadership programmes was asked what he considered to be his biggest priority at work. We thought he would have said ‘hitting targets’ like everyone else had said on the programme. This sales manager said something rather intriguing. He said that his biggest priority had to be keeping his team motivated and inspired. That was because, if he managed to achieve a highly-motivated team, it was much easier to achieve his targets.
You may have heard, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” That might be true in some aspects of life -- but over email, sweating the small stuff is exactly what you should be doing. Business email etiquette. Email etiquette rules dictate what’s appropriate and what’s not when you’re sending a message to a prospect, business partner, coworker, manager, or acquaintance.
It’s an age-old question: should SDRs report to sales or marketing ? Ask five people, and you’ll get five different answers based on individual experience and factors ranging from company stage to the SDR career path to the individual personalities and preferences of a company’s heads of sales and marketing. It’s a complex issue that is always evolving as the marketplace changes.
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.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe.” Honest Abe and I see eye-to-eye on this, but as I’ve often said, simply knowing what to do is never enough. It’s the matter of actually doing it that makes all the difference. After speaking with a sales manager last week, I wondered, “How would Honest Abe’s philosophy apply to sales management today?
Did you just do a double take? Don’t close sales…isn’t that counter-productive to our sales success? You heard me right. Salespeople should not be attempting to “close” sales with clients. It’s all in the definition.
The Sales Director role is considered to be the lifeblood of many companies because of the strategic and operational role they play in the success of the business. Recruiting for the role can be a painstaking experience, especially when there are so many good candidates out there. How can you attract the right one for your business? How can you differentiate the really great from the averagely normal, so you stand a better chance of choosing the right person?
Sales compensation is one of the trickiest aspects of the sales organization to get right. Not only are salespeople notoriously good at figuring out and exploiting loopholes in the pay structure, but there are tens of different variables to balance. How to create a good sales comp plan. Sales comp plan types. Salary only. Commission only. Base plus commission.
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!
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