May, 2012

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Sales Management Success Metrics

Anthony Cole Training

I started playing tennis seriously or semi-seriously about 18 months ago. When I started I took some lessons, played some mixed doubles and would practice against a ball machine. When I would hit against the ball machine back then about 40 or 50 of the 200+ balls would end up on my side of the net. When I practiced my serve about 33% of the balls I served ended up on my side of the net.

Sales 196
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What Sales People REALLY Do (Too Funny)

A Sales Guy

Exactly!!!!!! This is without a doubt, the funnies description of sales people I’ve ever seen. Amen! Thanks to the boys over at Salesloft for pointing me to this. Accurate? What do you think?

Sales 143
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8 Universal Web Design Principles You Should Know

ConversionXL

The design of your website is more important for conversions than you think. You can implement any conversion boosting tactic in the world, but if it looks like crap, it won’t do you much good. Design is not just something designers do. Design is marketing. Design is your product and how it works. The more I’ve learned about design, the better results I’ve gotten.

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Sales Coaching Lessons from the Baseball Files

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan As evidenced by one of my book titles, Baseline Selling , I have frequently borrowed from Baseball when the analogy is more useful than the sales message. Although the following stories may appear to be about my son and/or his baseball team, they are actually about coaching and adapting. Baseball - I brought my son to the batting cage to work out a swing flaw after his line drives had become weak ground balls.

Gaming 99
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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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Learning From Lazy Sales People

Partners in Excellence

Often, when I get involved with a new client, I seek out their “laziest” sales people. You know the one’s I’m talking about. There’s always someone that hides away. He keeps a low profile, probably stays out of the office, never volunteers to do things, but always seems to make the number. Perhaps he’s just barely making it, but he’s making it (which is significant when data show that fewer than 50% of sales people are making the number).

Sales 98
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3 Sales Tips From Two-Year Olds

Score More Sales

Before I got into professional selling, I was a preschool teacher who worked with two-year olds. We were licensed for 12 two-year olds in our room within a daycare center, and I had two assistants. For anyone who knows me now, it may be hard to believe that I did that for five years, utilizing my degree in education. I actually loved it, but unfortunately, it didn’t pay the bills.

Sales 92

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Stuck Between Guy Kawasaki and Jill Konrath

A Sales Guy

Top Sales World just released their list of Top 50 Sales and Marketing Influencers for 2012. On that list, stuck between Guy and Jill, was me. It was a surprise and an honor to be on a list with some of sales and marketings most respected and accomplished people. I didn’t expect it at all. How was this list created? Over the past few weeks, a small team of professional researchers rigorously examined the credentials of one hundred and fifty possible “candidates” to arrive at t

Consult 122
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Ridiculously Effective Technique for Online Lead Generation

ConversionXL

An average website has a sales conversion of 1% to 2%. So it’d be fair to say that on most sites more than 95% of visitors don’t buy anything (especially on their first visit). So instead of trying to sell them right away, we should capture leads (emails) instead. I firmly believe that the best way to sell something is to avoid it at first.

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Basketball and the Difference Between Sales Studs and Sales Duds

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan I heard former NBA all-star and current ESPN basketball analyst, Bruce Bowen , talking about Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics. He characterized Garnett as one of the toughest competitors on the court, unlike some younger, very talented players who aren't as competitive and don't know how to close out games.

Sports 96
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Creating Crap At The Speed Of Light

Partners in Excellence

There are a huge number of tools available to help sales professionals be more effective and efficient. Properly used and implemented they can have a profound impact in improving sales performance. At the same time, used improperly, the provide the potential of causing great problems or creating crap at the speed of light. Every tool has the opportunity, properly used to have great impact or improperly used to have great negative impact.

CRM 95
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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, and Terrence Sheflin

As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.

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Make 5 Strategic Calls This Week and Grow Sales

Score More Sales

It’s a simple concept – being strategic in your thinking, planning and acting in sales works. This week is an important week – it precedes the first weekend of Summer here in the U.S. and is a power week to make contact with buyers. Many are focused and intentional about getting work done – so be sure YOU are also intentional.

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Simulate Sales Success When Hiring

Anthony Cole Training

I just finished reading an article in Psychology Today that discussed the 'new' interviewing process of simulating the work situations that your prospective new hire will be faced with IF you hire them. When determining if a sales person is going to be a successful as you anticipate this would be a great idea for you to implement NOW. For years as part of our recruiting program - STAR (Sales Talent Acquisition Routine) we have strongly suggested that you create an environment that you sales pers

Contract 133
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A Letter to Your Prospects

A Sales Guy

Selling is hard. The profession has a bad rap. Sales people aren’t always seen in the best light. The truth is however, most sales people are passionate about what they do and are genuinely invested in the well being of their customers and prospects. Knowing how hard it is to sell and the perception challenge sales people face, I thought I’d write a letter to our prospects on behalf of all sales people, in hopes it might change a few minds and soften the stance of our prospects.

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Don’t Just Sit There:5 Strategies for Proactively Getting Testimonials

Engage Selling

Chris and I try to stay pretty active – running and hitting the gym regularly. I have to admit I chuckle every time I see one of those infomercials on T.V. You know the ones, promoting an exotic piece of exercise equipment promising to deliver incredible results… Results that most will probably never achieve. I actually don’t have a criticism about these pieces of fitness equipment.

Clients 82
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Don't Let AI Pass You By: The New Era of Personalized Sales Coaching & Development

Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Sales & Devyn Blume, Sr. Account Executive

Are you curious about how artificial intelligence is reshaping sales coaching, learning, and development? Join Brendan Sweeney and Devyn Blume of Allego for an engaging new webinar exploring AI's transformative role in sales coaching and performance improvement! Brendan and Devyn will share actionable insights and strategies for integrating AI into coaching and development - ensuring personalized, effective, and scalable training!

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Warning to Sales Focused Companies Wanting to Stay Relevant

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Mike Myatt wrote an article for Forbes ' online site called, To Increase Revenue Stop Selling. This article has been very heavily viewed and commented. I don't agree with most of Mike's suggestions but in his defense, he is not a sales expert, sales writer, sales manager, sales leader or salesperson. He simply doesn't like being pitched or sold to and urges salespeople (he doesn't want them to sell or be called that) to simply let him buy - when he wa

Consult 87
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How Easy Are You To Do Business With?

Partners in Excellence

I have to admit, I’m writing this out of a little bit of frustration. I have a prospect, it’s virtually impossible to communicate with them — at least through the normal channels. Now, you may say, “Dave, don’t you get it–they don’t want to talk to you!” But they really do want to talk and communicate with me.

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Productivity Tips for Sales Teams With iPads and Tablets

Score More Sales

photo courtesy of Apple(R). Did your team receive iPads or other tablet PCs and you find them under-utilized? As a long time PowerPoint user myself, I have felt guilty about my iPad being my glorified Evernote platform and e-mail source on the road. Ashley Furness, CRM Market Analyst at Software Advice recently wrote about this very issue – teams of salespeople have received or will received tablets but do not have clear deployment plans.

Product 85
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Is Your Sales Pipeline Plugged?

The Sales Hunter

How is your sales pipeline doing? Is it turning out the types of leads you need or is it merely junked up with stuff you don’t realize is junk? Too many salespeople keep leads in their sales pipeline that have zero potential of every resulting in sales, but they do this just to give them a sense of security. If you’re looking for security, go get yourself a blanket.

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How to Optimize Call Monitoring: Automate QA and Elevate Customer Experience

Speaker: Laura Noonan, Chief Revenue Officer at CallFinder + Angie Kronlage, Director of Program Success at Working Solutions + April Wiita, Vice President of Program Success at Working Solutions

Are you still manually reviewing calls? 🤔 It's time for a change! The traditional method of manual call monitoring is no longer cutting it in today's fast-paced call center environment. Industry experts Angie Kronlage and April Wiita from Working Solutions are here to explore the power of innovative automation to revolutionize outdated call review processes!

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Problem Solving not Pain Finding

A Sales Guy

A young man went to the doctor the other day and said he wasn’t feeling well. After asking the young man a few questions and looking around, he found his pain. The Dr. replied; ”Yup, you’ve got a tumor in your abdomen and it’s giving you stomach aches. Here is some pain medicine, take 2 every 4 hours and the pain will go away.” Translate this into sales and it’s what we’ve been taught for years.

Clients 120
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Podcast Series: Building Relationships Across The Entire Organization

Engage Selling

Today I stress the best practices for maintaining customer loyalty. Asking for referrals, involving yourself in customer’s personal interests, and business life, and building corporate rapport are all keys to understand. Today I stress the best practices for maintaining customer loyalty. Asking for referrals, involving yourself in customer’s personal interests, and business life, and building corporate rapport are all keys to understand.

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Are Sales Leaders More Receptive to Training Than Salespeople?

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan When a room full of sales leaders arrive for two days of intensive training, there are many things that can and do happen. Here are ten of them: They can and do resist if they were sent there. If they chose to come, on their own, resistance never occurs! Fortunately, the resistance fades away by the end of the first day.

Sales 85
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Pattern Recognition And The Sales Process

Partners in Excellence

The human brain is an awesome instrument! One of the things it enables us to do, sometimes almost unconsciously, is to instantly recognize patterns. We encounter a situation, in nano seconds, our brains compare the situation with others we have encountered through our life. It quickly enables us to recognize, “I’ve encountered something like this before—-this is how I recognized it, this is what I did, this is what happened as a result.” We do it thousands of times a

Process 93
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How to Improve Email Deliverability and Optimize Each Send

Learn how to optimize email deliverability and drive greater email ROI. What lands your email in the customer’s inbox? Understanding those factors, otherwise known as email deliverability, is critical to getting the most return on your campaign investments. But the “rules” around which factors land you in the spam folder aren’t always easy to keep up with.

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Cold Calls Warm With Research in Advance

Score More Sales

We are assuming you are doing inbound marketing in your b2b business. The question I was asked: “Would you rather make 100 cold calls or 20 well-researched calls to b2b sales prospects?” (A trick question?). Of course we’d all take the 20 higher caliber conversations over a “dialing for dollars” mentality. In fact those days of calling anyone without research are long O-V-E-R.

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Relationship Selling? Is There Such a Thing?

The Sales Hunter

I recently exchanged comments with a person who claimed they don’t do “relationship selling.” In fact, they claimed they don’t sell at all. The person’s perspective was he doesn’t need to sell because he works on building a relationship with the prospect and then they wind up buying. My response to the person was that what he was doing was selling by building a relationship with the other person.

Sell 80
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How to Know it’s Time to Change Your Sales Strategy

A Sales Guy

When’s the last time you changed your sales strategy? Do you even have one? Do you build it once a year or is more dynamic than that? Is your sales strategy even still relevant? Most sales organizations don’t have specific sales strategies. Those that do, they normally aren’t very flexible and that’s a problem. Your sales strategy should be dynamic and keenly tied to capitalizing on market conditions.

Sales 120
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Got Grumpy?

Engage Selling

Sometimes there is simply no way of making them happy… My niece Georgia was not a happy camper last week when the weather got warm but she still wanted to wear tights. She was hot but didn’t want to get changed… Turns out, a perfect recipe for a very grumpy girl. Unfortunately, identifying the landmines in advance with a six year old can be a bit tricky.

Product 79
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Brick & Mortar Retail Relevance: How to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Speaker: Jay Black, Senior Account Executive

Let's set the record straight: in-store retail isn't dead - it's evolving! Faced with the digital age and the demands of omnichannel shopping, some retailers are thriving while others are struggling to adapt. Join Jay Black in this exclusive session as he explores the strategies that set successful stores apart, including: Crafting unique and unforgettable in-store experiences 🛍️ Mastering the art of retail demands 🛒 Navigating inventory challenges in today's climate 📦 an

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The Other Rejection - How Salespeople Struggle to Cope

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan. Photo Credit - Fever Pitch on PhotoDune. My colleague, Frank Belzer, just posted a terrific, thought-provoking article on Rejection. Please read that first for the rest of my article to have the proper context. Five years ago, Passive Rejection wouldn't have been an article topic because back then, it was rare to not get your repeated calls returned.

Pitch 82
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Differentiated Value —- Just Good Enough!

Partners in Excellence

These days, so many of the conversations among sales professionals and pundits is about challenging our customers, about getting them to think differently, about creating superior and differentiated value. I talk and write about it a lot, as do many others. . Sometimes, when I sit back and re-read what I write, or some of what others write, I get the impression that what we challenge ourselves and all sales professionals to do is the functional equivalent of “solving world peace.”

Consult 92
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Analyzing Sales Opportunities in Your Pipeline

Score More Sales

Do You Have a Sales Funnel? Are you part of a B2B sales organization proactively looking each week at what deals are in your sales funnel (or sales pipeline)? You probably fall into one of three camps: A. You have a robust, helpful CRM tool that gives you several helpful reports which you can review each week, and lists you can easily pull up on a just-in-time basis.

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Sales Prospecting: Are You Even Focused?

The Sales Hunter

Prospecting for sales is hard enough, but it’s made even harder when the strategy being used is either based on hope — or worse yet something like spraying and praying. I talk a lot about the need to have a very clear sales prospecting process. Just as important the need to be focused in following it. Too many salespeople at the first sign of something not going right get scared and change direction.

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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