September, 2012

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As the Head Coach - Practice for Sales Success - It's Your Job

Anthony Cole Training

I played football for 13 years, coached or was part of football for an additional 6 seasons. It defined who I was for a long time and defines many of my beliefs today. I have been coaching sales peoplt to sales success for over 20 years. There are some similarities. One belief I have today is that practice of any skill or performance is essential to gaining a successful outcome.

Gaming 181
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Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad

ConversionXL

I’m sure you’ve come across dozens, if not hundreds of image sliders or carousels (also called ‘rotating offers’). You might even like them. But the truth is that they’re conversion killers. So if they’re not effective, why do people use them? 2 reasons: Some people think they’re cool. But cool does not make you money – at least not this way.

UX 134
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Lean Sales And Marketing — High Variability, Low Productivity

Partners in Excellence

Sales people don’t like the routine! We do different things every day. Each situation is different, each call is different. There’s huge variability in our jobs — or so we like to think. But is it really true? Is it really true that we can’t plan our days, that there aren’t some standard practices or processes that we leverage?

Product 127
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What’s in Your Head When You Call a Prospect or Customer?

A Sales Guy

It’s the moment of truth. You’re about to call back the prospect you’ve been chasing for the last two months. You are about talk to your customer who makes up 30% of your quota. You’re about to start making cold calls. It’s call time. When you sit down to make that call, whether it’s one call or 4 hours of cold calls, what’s in your head?

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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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How to Find a Sales Mentor

Score More Sales

Lori, Trish, and Jill August, 2012. To be professional in any career, you need mentors. I first met Jill Konrath after reading her new book, Selling to Big Companies in early 2006. I met Trish Bertuzzi in 2010. Perhaps how I stumbled into finding great mentors in the B2B sales world might inspire you to find mentors and inspiration yourself. I didn’t set out intentionally in actually “choosing” mentors.

B2B 113
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Is a Lost Sale Better for Salespeople Than a Win?

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan In the past decade Boston's sports teams have won a number of championships. The two that excited me the most were the Red Sox' 2004 World Series victory and the Patriots' 2001 Super Bowl win. When I reminisced about those long-awaited championships, I was suprised at how little time I spent savoring those wins, compared with how much time I spent mourning the huge losses.

Gambling 106

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39 Factors: Website Credibility Checklist

ConversionXL

If you’re Amazon or Apple – congratulations! You don’t have any credibility issues. Most of us aren’t so lucky. Almost all but the biggest companies have an uphill credibility battle ahead of them every time a new visitor lands on our site. What’s website credibility and why is it important? BJ Fogg – the world’s leading researcher on web credibility – has said that web credibility is about making your website in such a way that it comes across as

Trust 133
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Lean Sales And Marketing — Time Available For Selling

Partners in Excellence

A sales person’s job is to sell–nothing surprising. More and more, however, it seems that things conspire against us, diverting us from engaging our customers. There’s some market research that puts the time available for selling at around 42%, but more and more, that figure seems optimistic. . Several years ago, we did a study of a one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world.

Sell 122
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37 Sick Sales Guru’s to Follow on Twitter

A Sales Guy

I don’t think anyone who reads this blog is confused about my opinions on social media and its impact careers and successful selling. Whether you are a CEO, SVP/VP sales, Sales Manager or a Sales Leader if you have not embeded social into your daily processes you aren’t doing your job. At the very least, every person, who has a job to do should AT LEAST be using Twitter as an information stream.

Cold Call 115
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Lower Your Price or Get Better Customers?

The Sales Hunter

The argument is simple: Lower your price and you’ll do more business. Sure, it might be simple, but it’s also stupid. Lowering your price to get more business means what you’re getting is more cheap customers. Stop and ask yourself this question, “Which would I rather have? Cheap customers who are always harping on me about price or full-price customers who see the value in what I sell?

Price 93
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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali

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 Your Salespeople Focus on This to Grow the Business

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan After being on vacation for parts of the past 3 weeks, it was important for me to quickly determine what I needed to focus on today, my first day back. Of course, my calendar and task list suggested that most of the day had been laid out prior to my vacation but there is so much more to refocusing than what appears on the calendar and the task list.

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Evaluating Sales Success - What is the Standard?

Anthony Cole Training

I was watching TV one morning last week while getting ready to deliver a 'surgical strike' report to a new client. A surgical strike is a summary of the evaluation we do for organizations to help determine why they get the sales results they get. This in turn helps the company and us determine the correct path to take to improve sales management, sales behaviors, sales skills and eventually sales results.

Gaming 170
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There Are Only 3 Ways to Increase Online Sales (Are You Optimizing For All of Them?)

ConversionXL

There are three ways to grow sales – online and offline both. Only three. However, most companies focus only on one – and are missing out on revenue opportunities. So what are these 3 ways to increase online sales? increase the number of customers, increase the average order size, increase the number of repeat purchases. #1: Increase the number of customers.

Price 125
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Sales Competence, How Do We Know?

Partners in Excellence

Yeah, I know, I know. Many readers will react to this title with responses like, “Isn’t Sales Competence an oxymoron? Isn’t that something like Military Intelligence?” But if we want to maximize sales performance across our organizations, it’s critical that we have a model that identifies critical competencies for the sales organization.

Territory 119
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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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The Hearts of Sales People

A Sales Guy

I’m reading my friend Mike Weinberg’s new book, New Sales Simplified. I’m enjoying it so far and will share my thoughts with this community shortly. But, I couldn’t wait to share this quote. This is a great explanation of sales. Read it, let it sink in and ask yourself, does your organization enable this or work against this?

Sales 115
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12 Things Salespeople Would Like to Tell Their Sales Manager

The Sales Hunter

If you’re wondering what salespeople would like to tell their sales manager, below are 12 things salespeople have shared with me. Sales managers, read this list and ask yourself if any apply to you. If you’re a salesperson reading this, you can agree with any or all, but in the end, don’t use any of them as an excuse as to why you can’t do something.

Sales 91
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Getting Excited About New Sales Opportunities

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Why do salespeople get more excited about big sales opportunities than they do about strong sales opportunities? I don't know about you but I get much more excited about an opportunity that has a strong likelihood of closing than a big one that has at best less than 50% chance. What about you? Salespeople are generally too optimistic and not skeptical enough about what they are hearing.

Sales 87
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Why Sales Meetings? Do They Lead to Selling?

Anthony Cole Training

I just read a quote by noted business expert Peter Drucker: "Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organizations. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time. In an ideally designed structure.there would be no meetings. We meet because people holding different jobs have to cooperate to get a specific task done.

Meeting 145
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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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32 Business and Life Lessons: What I Learned Running Companies on 4 Different Continents

ConversionXL

This is my personal story of how I went from having a job I did not like at all, not knowing what to do with my life to building several successful businesses. I’ll share my lessons I picked up along the way. It all started in Dubai. I came to Dubai to work for an international non-profit for a year. After the year was over, I landed a job as a sales person for a property portal in Dubai.

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How Do You Use Your Downtime?

Partners in Excellence

Sales people always seem to be busy and on the “go.” We’re running from meeting to meeting, we have phone calls to make, and then there’s always email. We seem to always be in motion, always doing something. But then there is the “downtime.” Those few minutes waiting to see the customer. All that time traveling to and from the customer, all the spaces between those activities we have on our agendas.

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Can You Anticipate What Your Customer is Thinking?

A Sales Guy

The best sellers I’ve ever seen have an amazing ability to anticipate what their customer is thinking. Buying is a process, check boxes have to be checked. The checks are in the buyers head or in an elaborate excel spreadsheet. Buyers won’t buy unless the boxes are checked. Behind each box to be checked lies a decision to be made. To check the box the buyer has to believe AND feel the information adds up, that it corresponds with getting them to their goals and objectives.

Customers 115
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Close More Sales by Giving Your Customers an Option

The Sales Hunter

Allowing your customer to choose between two options will allow you to increase your sales by allowing your customer to feel like they’re in control. Many times customers will hesitate to buy something, even if it’s what they’re looking for, if they feel the salesperson is pressuring them. One way to engage your customer in the closing process and allow them to feel they’re in control is by asking them a question as part of your close.

Closing 87
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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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Is Your Sales Opportunity Qualifed

Score More Sales

Is it a sales opportunity or not? It seems like a real sales opportunity – but is it? They told you they like you and your company. They found you online, after lots of research. They seem to have a lot of other potential business. There was all sorts of things that they needed from you and your company – proof of concept, white papers, data sheets, demos and more.

Sales 85
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Salespeople Must Use & Embrace Life's Most Embarassing Moments

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Can you remember that time, back in school, when you did something so embarrassing that you wanted to run away and hide forever? Of course you do - it was all about you. But I will wager any amount of money that you are the only one who remembers. The others who were there that day and anyone you might have told have long forgotten.

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Your Customer Creation Equation

ConversionXL

What did you do last Sunday? Well I had breakfast with Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist. There’s a shortage of good and easy-to-read books on conversion stuff, so I was excited when he released his brand new book, Your Customer Creation Equation. Well actually the book is so new that it’s actually being launched 2 days from now at Content Marketing World.

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Are False Positives Killing Your Sales?

Partners in Excellence

A False Positive is a term used in medicine. Imagine some sort of test that comes back with results saying you have a life threatening condition, but in reality you don’t. The results of the test were mistaken, giving a False Positive. If your doctor doesn’t know the results are mistaken, that a False Positive has occurred, the doctor could prescribe treatments for a condition you don’t have.

Pipeline 118
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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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New Sales Simplified [The Companies Role]

A Sales Guy

All too often sales people face the wrath for sales failure or the celebration for sales success by themselves. It seems obvious, they are the ones on the frontline. It makes sense. If sales people aren’t making the number, it’s their fault. When they are, they should be celebrated. When it comes to sales organizations, I agree with the second statement but not the first.

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VIDEO: The Secret to Being a GREAT Salesperson

The Sales Hunter

If you want tremendous sales success, you are going to have to stop doing what average salespeople do. To see what I mean, check out this short video on what it takes to be a great successful salesperson.

Sales 86
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The Pressure of September in Sales – 3 Tips for Success

Score More Sales

It’s crunch time for B2B sales teams everywhere working to close deals by the end of Q3, and by the end of the calendar year. Just like professional sports, there are jobs on the line for sales leaders (coaches) and individual contributors (players) if they don’t hit promised and forecasted numbers. Why now? Large, complex sales cycles for SaaS services contracts and other product-based deals take time to come to closure.

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Sales Managers Must Make Sure That This Never Happens

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan You are driving down the highway and you see an enormous truck in your side mirror. The truck is moving very fast - twice your speed - and closing in quickly. You continue to look in the mirror and because of the way your side mirror is shaped, it appears that the closer the truck gets, the more likely it seems that the truck will simply run right over you.

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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