Greasy Salesperson Let’s face it: “sales,” for many people, gets a bad rep. Just say “I work in sales,” at a social gathering, and watch the people around you work extra hard to avoid eye rolls and snarky comments. Unfortunately, slimy sales professionals who employ less-than-honorable tactics have given more reputable sales professionals a bad name. So, it’s our job as upstanding professionals to banish those greasy sales tactics that leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths, and instead focus on honest, relevant strategies in which everyone emerges a winner. Here are some slimy  ...

Trying to assign a firm, be-all-end-all number to sales best practices is tricky. While it’s always good for the sake of clarity to aim for specific numbers, it can be self-defeating and counterproductive to force yourself to adhere to a set number if your particular talents don’t lend themselves to it. When you think about how many calls a top performing sales person should make in a day, it’s important to remember that quantity does not equal quality. Quantity ≠ Quality Assigning a specific number puts the emphasis on quantity, or “busy work,” not on the process it takes to cultivate  ...

A recent sales summit got industry professionals together to network and share some of their top insight into their success.Tim Clarke, the director of product marketing at Salesforce, shared tips from sales superstars, and we’re going to share the best of those snippets with you here to hopefully inspire you, too! Sales vs. the Internet “Rather than reduce the power of salespeople, the Internet made salespeople more powerful than before.” -Jason Jordan, Partner, Vantage Point Performance Some have argued that the Internet could mean the end of traditional sales forces, but according to  ...

On vacation The out-of-office email. We all have to write them, and you probably have a stock, generic message you use every time you need it. At their essence, these emails are transactional ones. They’re automatic emails triggered by an action taken by another individual. And while a basic, stock message will suffice… why not have some fun with it and potentially stand out from the crowd? Here are some refreshingly fun, unexpected ideas to inspire a quirky out-of-office reply. Use them at your own risk, or maybe just thinkabout using them! Make it poetic Poetry and rhymes are more prone  ...

Leads, suspects, prospects, qualified and unqualified—the terms used to describe potential customers in the sales process are quite varied, and it can get pretty confusing! One thing that’s clear, though, is hitting your sales goals depends on filtering quality prospects from the crowd. Not only is it a waste of time and effort to pursue a lead that likely won’t convert, it’s harmful to your sales numbers and emotionally defeating, too. What’s better? Filtering a big list of leads down to some truly honed-in prospects, and perusing them based on thoughtful research. Not all leads are  ...

“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” Peter F. Drucker. In many business-to-business sales organizations, the marketing team is charged with generating leads and starting the sales process, then nurturing the leads until the appropriate time for a hand off to the sales team to close the transaction. Effective collaboration between marketing and sales is crucial to maximize success. Marketing departments are often incentivized directly or indirectly to capture the greatest number of leads. There is some logic to the idea that the wider the lead  ...

Much of the business-to-business selling process has changed from the days when rounds of golf and extended lunches were used to develop a personal relationship to bring a sale to a close. Today’s digital age of computing and the Internet have allowed buyers more control to research and compare more thoroughly before engaging a seller, which creates a more informed level of decision making. It has brought the rapid acceleration of inbound marketing which in many cases has lengthened the business-to-business sales cycle. Buyers are more empowered, independent and demanding so it is  ...

Are your customers being stolen by more enterprising and better trained staff? Is it because your competition is doing better cold calling? There is nothing more sad than a sales person who awakens too late to the fact that they need more appointments. We believe that Cold Calling and Prospecting are the cornerstones of what you are building for yourself. The Rule from Sandler is: “You can’t fail at Cold Calling unless you fail to Cold Call.” The time and effort you put into getting appointments for your clients will bring rewards in the months and years to come. Prospecting is not a  ...

A webinar, the name being truncated from “web-based seminar,” is a presentation over the Internet in real time using video conferencing software often with VoIP audio generally in the form of seminar, lecture or workshop. The distinguishing feature of a webinar is that it is interactive between the presenters and the other participants who can submit questions and comments during the ongoing session. This distinguishes a webinar from a webcast, which has one-way data transmission and no interactive quality, or simply a streaming video. Webinars allow groups in discreet locations to  ...

The business-to-business sales environment of today is highly competitive. Buyers have independent access to virtually unlimited information and often do not engage salespeople until late in the purchase process after having extensively researched their purchase decision. According to a Corporate Executive Board study of 1,400 business-to-business customers, buyers are now at least 57% through their purchase decision before they even first contact the seller. The research firm Gartner surveyed 700 buyers based on recently completed enterprise purchases who reported they spend only 32% of  ...