Sat.Jan 15, 2022 - Fri.Jan 21, 2022

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Don’t Waste Your Time: Five Red Flags to Watch for with Unsolicited RFPs

Holden Advisors

In the world of sales, it’s easy to get caught up in the possibilities of an unsolicited RFP. But , if you find yourself dealing with procurement, you might want to save your energy. Some years ago, out of the blue, I was invited to participate in an RFP for a $13 billion apparel company. If you're unfamiliar, an RFP is a Request for Proposal by a company looking to hire someone to complete an important task for them.

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The Problem with Safety Nets

Software Sales Guru

The Problem with Safety Nets I was watching David Rubenstein interview Noubar Afeyan, the co-founder of Moderna, when David asked Noubar why so many start-ups were founded by immigrants. Noubar replied that if you were uprooted from your home, especially forcibly as he was from his native Lebanon, you have no sense of entitlement. He said that a sense of entitlement is only possible if.

Software 147
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Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Customer Service

Customer Think

As technology advances, so does everything else. No business is immune to this, and that includes the customer service industry. Customer service roles are under much pressure these days to find new ways of dealing with complaints efficiently while still providing high-quality support. It’s also important for companies to monitor the stories being said about […].

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BBQ and Business Acumen

The Center for Sales Strategy

BBQ and business acumen. Traditionally, those two items don't go together, but for this story, one is the key to the other. I started in sales in 1993, straight out of college. I didn't have a lot of work or life experiences that I could draw from as I worked with business owners helping them to improve their businesses' performance. I did my best reading the Wall Street Journal, the business section of the local paper, and reading the latest business books to help grow my knowledge of business.

Sales 124
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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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Sellers: Use This Problem-Solving System to Lead Strong Discussions with Buyers

RAIN Group

When it comes to solving what may appear to be an intractable problem, sellers and sales managers are often at a loss for how, exactly, to lead the problem-solving process.

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Creating a Pathway to Achieve Goals | Sales Strategies

Engage Selling

Are you creating a clear and purposeful pathway to achieve goals? Unfortunately, this is something most salespeople fail to do. They simply set the goal, but they don’t create the pathway to achieve it. How to Create a Pathway to … Read More » The post Creating a Pathway to Achieve Goals | Sales Strategies first appeared on The Sales Leader.

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Finding the Right Mentor

The Center for Sales Strategy

We're used to hearing “ it takes a village ” when we're talking about family, but what if that “village” theory is true in business as well. Well, it sure helps! Finding the right mentor can help you navigate your career and give you a village of knowledge instead of going at it on your own.

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Empathy Training Basics, Programs, Benefits, and More

Groove HQ

Understand the role empathy plays in the workplace and how to nurture it among your team. The post Empathy Training Basics, Programs, Benefits, and More appeared first on Groove Blog.

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The Development & Use of the PDSA Cycle of Improvement

Kainexus

The PDSA cycle is a popular approach to process improvement because of its simultaneous simplicity and effectiveness. Although it started in manufacturing, the PDSA model for improvement can be applied to any process, making it applicable across almost every industry. Today, PDSA is prevalent in healthcare, hospitality, education, construction, and professional services.

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4 Predictions for Global Customer Service in 2022

Customer Think

Last year, I made a few predictions about what to expect in the future of customer service. Although I may have had a rosier outlook about the “end” of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did see massive strides in the advancement and adoption of AI as well as the continued digital transformation of businesses across industries […].

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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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Minimizing Internal Roadblocks – Let Your Sellers Sell!

The Center for Sales Strategy

Have you ever heard a seller complain that there just isn’t enough paperwork to be completed? How about that they wish your CRM was more complex? Or that there aren’t enough departments involved in their sales? As a manager, it's likely that you have heard the exact opposite from most of your salespeople. Hunters like to hunt, but many don’t really like to cook or clean up after their kill.

CRM 114
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The 8 Best Ecommerce Help Desks On The Market Today

Help Scout

Learn why help desk software is essential for your ecommerce business, and consider these eight options to help you deliver standout support.

eCommerce 105
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CRM integration: What it is, why is it essential, and 4 key integrations

Insightly

How to empower your teams with CRM integration and APIs. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration is essential to unlocking the true power of a CRM. Integrations add functionality to CRMs and build a reliable source of truth you can count on to make decisions across your entire organization by connecting every single application you use to run your business.

CRM 104
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Top 12 2022 B2B Marketing Trends to Watch

Customer Think

By Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing If you missed my LinkedIn series last month, here’s a recap of all twelve B2B marketing trends, investments and focus areas I expect to see from CMOs and teams in the new year. In Summary: Change.

B2B 135
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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Weekly Roundup: Workplace Leadership, Old School Selling + More

The Center for Sales Strategy

- MOTIVATION -. "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.". - AROUND THE WEB -. > Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way – The Great Game of Business. Are you a leader? Before you answer that question, consider … there’s a big difference between management and workplace leadership. There are dozens – heck, hundreds – of definitions of leadership.

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11 Key Customer Service Metrics + 4 Real Example Reports

Help Scout

Discover 11 meaningful customer service metrics, learn how to choose the right measurements for your team, and view four example customer service reports.

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How to Ramp Salespeople Up Fast On New Sales Technology

Sales Gravy

Most sales organizations and sales enablement teams are actively seeking ways to ramp salespeople up fast on new sales technology. Likewise, many sales leaders and executives have experienced the frustration of investing in Sales Tech only to see it go unused by their sellers. If you've been there, you know that it's a huge waste of money when sales teams fail to adopt sales tools.

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3 strategic steps to grow your business and keep your audience

Customer Think

Are you looking to expand your audience base? Are you wanting to turn first time customers into repeat consumers? Expanding and keeping your audience is a goal of all scale-ups and SMEs. A customer who makes repeat purchases creates sustainability for your company and having a loyal audience costs much less than only attracting one-time […].

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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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10 Essential Skills for Account Managers

Account Management Skills

*Updated January 2022. What’s the most useful skill you need in your Account Manager role and how much formal training have you received? This was the question I posted in a LinkedIn Account Manager Group. Top 10 Skills and Expertise You Need As Account Manager. As I collated the results it struck me that while it was acknowledged by many that the role and skills required of an Account Manager vary from industry to industry and job to job, the group were fairly unanimous in what they believed th

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11 must-listen podcasts for anyone who works in sales

Crank Wheel

Look no further for the best sales-focused podcasts.

Sales 98
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The Benefits of Effective Leadership

Aepiphanni

As John Maxwell put it, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” Effective leadership initiates a positive domino effect that impacts every level of a company, from the C-suite at the top, trickling all the way down to the inexperienced, lower-level management, and beyond. In our experience, […].

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The most effective B2B customer engagement strategies for 2022

Customer Think

As the new year has kicked off, many revenue organizations will look to improve their customer engagement strategies, whether it is for retention or improved customer experience purposes. According to Forrester, 56% of marketing leaders say that improving customer experience is a top priority for supporting their company’s business strategy during the next two years. […].

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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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2022: The year of customer service-led growth

Zendesk

While leaders navigate a constantly changing reality, they must keep thinking about how to drive their business forward. As many companies hold on deploying new initiatives until the outlook is more clear, they are eyeing where current investments can be made: such as in customer experience. Why CX? Where human interactions are concerned, it’s quality, not quantity that ultimately matters most—now more than ever before.

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How CRM Improve Business Performance

Apptivo

Business can be of any type, but one prime factor that all businesses focus on while boosting the business performance metrics is customer relationship management. Customer Relationship Management is the backbone for efficient business performance management. When your employees develop successful and exemplary relationships with your customers, then it is comfortable to improve the retention rate.

CRM 98
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When are You Due for Your Next Health Check?

Peter Simoons

When I visited my general practitioner in January last year, I thought I was going in for my annual health check and my doctor mentioned that it had been a long while since I came in for a health check. I was a bit confused. I knew that it wasn’t exactly a year since I last had a checkup, but it wasn’t that long ago, or was it? … It appeared that three years had passed since my last “annual” checkup!

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How to Build Personalized Experiences Your Customers Will Actually Love

Customer Think

We are in a new digital experience frontier. In the past two years, digital customer engagement went from being a fun perk to a business critical must-have. As consumers we enjoy the benefits of early access to the sales on our favorite goods, playlists that anticipate our music interests, celebrations when we reach our 100th […].

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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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The 4 types of CRMs and their differences

Insightly

The 4 classic types of CRM Systems. A Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) is a tool to manage all of your organization’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. CRMs provide a firsthand understanding of your customer’s experience to help you match your products and services to their needs. . Like any tool, you’ll get the most out of your CRM when you put the most into it.

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Best Practices for Strategy Implementation in 2022

Strategic Planning and Management Insights

Anthony Taylor here, I'm the Managing Partner at SME Strategy. We facilitate strategic planning sessions and help teams implement their strategic plans. And today, I wanted to make a short video about best practices for implementing your strategy in 2022.

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Why You Need An Innovation Business Strategy In 2022

Aepiphanni

The beginning of the year is the time most businesses implement new strategic plans designed to successfully lead them towards their year-end goals. With 2021 having similar challenges as 2020 due to the global pandemic, all businesses seem to be including decisions around their work environments as part of their 2022 strategy. In a podcast […].

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The New Jobs of Sales and Marketing: facilitate the buying before the buyer

Customer Think

It’s time for a rant. After decades of writing books and articles explaining why we close such a small percentage of prospects and how, exactly, to facilitate the Buy Side to close much more, I’m going to say what I really think. I’ll begin with my surprise: why do sales and marketing largely ignore the […].

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ABM Evolution: How Top Marketers Are Using Account-Based Strategies

In times of economic uncertainty, account-based strategies are essential. According to several business analysts and practitioners, ABM is a necessity for creating more predictable revenue. Research shows that nearly three-quarters of marketers (74%) already have the resources needed to build successful ABM programs.