October, 2018

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Strategy Is Sexy, Execution is Boring

STAR Results

Business success is a function of brilliant strategies and excellent execution. How are your sales to date? Every sales leader I have spoken with could easily answer this question. I am sure you can as well. Here is a more challenging question: How well are you doing when it comes to strategy execution ? This is a much more challenging question and there is no easy answer.

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How “False Expertise” Can Damage Your Business—and How to Protect It

ConversionXL

When I last checked, there were 987,119 “thought leaders” on LinkedIn. Soon, there’ll be more than a million. How many of those do you trust? “False expertise” is misidentified competence: We perceive expertise where there is none or evaluate expertise based on irrelevant factors. False experts include legions of self-appointed “gurus” and “visionaries” who saturate social media with bad advice.

UX 188
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Trending Sources

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There are ONLY 4 Levers Sales Can Pull to Grow Revenue

A Sales Guy

It’s not uncommon for revenue to slide. It happens to all sales organizations at one time or another. Revenue being down isn’t the most difficult problem. Knowing why revenue is down and where to look is the biggest challenge. This post is gonna lay the four areas CSO’s/Heads of Sales should be looking if their revenue is on the slide. When sales are down there are only 4 levers leadership can pull to improve sales.

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Is Technology Actually Helping or Hurting Your Sales Conversations?

Membrain

Technology can be a double-edged sword for sales departments. The promise of greater efficiency and effectiveness is hard to resist, yet many technologies actually make things worse rather than better.

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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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If Your Sales Process Looks Like This, You’re Blowing Deals

Openview

I got on a call with an SDR recently who was nothing short of lovely. He asked great questions, talked about my goals, what I was looking for, what I wanted to see in their technology, etc. He listened well, was authentic, and was helpful from start to finish. Then I asked to see the technology. Which is when he told me it wasn’t his job and that he’d have to get me scheduled with an Account Executive because he wasn’t allowed to show me.

Process 110
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Stop the Prospect Chase and Follow-up

SalesProInsider

Most people know who first responders are…those heroes that charge into danger to save the day! In selling efforts, though, we are more likely to run into non-responders. Those prospects who seem to run away from you after a conversation. The non-response reaction starts harmlessly enough. You have a meeting with a prospect that seems to go well.

Follow-up 110

More Trending

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10 Recent Neuromarketing Research Studies (and Their Real-World Takeaways)

ConversionXL

Neuromarketing assesses how our brain reacts to stimuli, not simply what we self-report in qualitative surveys. These are truths that our impulses write onto MRIs. Sometimes, as several studies below illustrate, those two systems—the conscious and subconscious—offer conflicting interpretations. Importantly, scientific knowledge is almost always built incrementally.

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Salespeople, Why is Everyone Playing from the Same Playbook?

A Sales Guy

I think too many sales organizations, their salespeople AND their sales leaders are playing from the same playbook. Why? I don’t see enough innovation. I spend an incredible amount of time with salespeople and sales leaders, and the most common thing I see is how similar they all are. Most everyone hires based on the same hiring principles. Most everyone prospects using the same prospecting principles.

Cold Call 117
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Sales And Sales Management Is Broken

Membrain

I have to admit being consumed with CSO Insights latest Sales Performance Report. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read it, make sure you take the time to download and study it. It’s filled with fascinating analysis, each chart presents huge opportunities for performance improvement.

Sales 111
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This “Unfair” Advantage Separates Top-Notch Sales Teams from The Rest

Openview

Imagine you’re part of a Grand Prix race through the winding streets of Monaco. You’ve got the fastest, most exotic car. The best crew. Powerful fuel. And you’ve been training for years. But, while your rivals zip along the harbor like electric slot cars, you sputter along at a crawl. It turns out, your wheels aren’t perfectly aligned. They’re each set in slightly different directions, creating tremendous friction.

Quota 104
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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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Part 1: How to Walk Away from a Bad Deal

Sales Hacker

“It’s Like Deja Vu All Over Again”. Another quarter sales target just barely made. It was a close call. As you go over the numbers with your team you realize that trying to close a sale with XYZ Industries cost you a ton of time, almost made you missed your quota and almost cost you your job (maybe – you never know, but you suspect it). It’s not that you haven’t been down this path before.

Negotiate 105
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21 Powerful, Open-Ended Sales Questions

RAIN Group

Broad, open-ended sales questions are great for helping you find out what's going on in your prospects' and clients' worlds. They are essential to sales success. In fact, "listened to me" and "understood my needs" are two of the top five factors most separating sales winners from second-place finishers. Sales questions also help you connect with buyers personally, understand what's important to them, reshape their thinking, and create better futures for them.

Sales 111
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Demand Generation: Turning Tactics into Strategy

ConversionXL

There’s a building. In a back room, a guy peels potatoes. Out front, two people sit at a table. By the door, a person answers a phone. Does that make the building a restaurant? No? Would it become one if the guy peeled potatoes and oranges? It’s an absurd standard. It’s also the same one we apply to demand generation. You have a website. You blog. Visitors request demos.

CRM 132
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A Lesson In Commitment

A Sales Guy

How often do you commit to something and then not follow through? I get it, it happens a lot. We aren’t perfect. But not meeting a commitment scratches the surface of lying. No! You didn’t lie, but it has a similar effect. When we commit to someone, and then break that commitment, it undermines trust. In this video, I talk about a way to improve your ability to keep your commitments.

Trust 115
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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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New Data Shows that You Can Double Revenue by Overcoming This One Sales Weakness

Understanding the Sales Force

My wife and I have been watching 24 for the last few months and we've made it to season 7. Once in a while, one or both of us falls asleep during late-night episodes but we are always saved by: PREVIOUSLY ON 24. With that in mind, I will save you if you didn't happen to read last week's article which is a pre-requisite for this one. PREVIOUSLY ON UNDERSTANDING THE SALES FORCE.

Sales 107
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How We Reduced Sales Ramp Time By 40%

Openview

One of the biggest challenges for any scaling company is to bring a new sales rep up to speed quickly. Decreasing the time to productivity for new reps is crucial to meeting ever-expanding goals and closing more deals. While building a strong onboarding program that includes knowledge acquisition and skill development is key to sales ramp, it’s only part of the process.

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Sales Hacker’s 35 Most Influential Women in Sales

Sales Hacker

Welcome to Sales Hacker’s first-ever Influential Women in Sales list! In this exclusive list, we wanted to honor not just female leaders that promote their own sales platform (no shame in that!) but those that take it even a step further by being incredibly intentional about promoting the next generation of female salespeople and making their path a little easier.

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The Simple Secret to Doubling Your Income in Sales

Women Sales Pros

What would it mean to you if you doubled your income—with the same number of customers? Think about how it would feel to give the same amount of effort and earn two, three, or many more times as much. Last month, I conducted a training with a large software company and discovered their top rep, Trina, earns more than five times as much as the lowest performer in her company—while talking to the exact same number of customers.

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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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B2B Marketing Attribution: Models, Tools, and Processes

ConversionXL

Talk to any B2B marketer about attribution and they’ll either roll their eyes or rant about how it’s important but hard to get right—long lead cycles, multiple contacts from a single organization, etc. Some might stare blankly and ask what you mean. As a group, we’ve gotten a firmer grasp on top-of-the-funnel metrics. We can prove that social media and SEO drive traffic and top-line conversions, but we still struggle to show the bottom-line impact of marketing.

B2B 131
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3 Ways to Help You Close Your “Non-Urgent” Buyer

Jeff Shore

By Amy O’Connor. ?It’s every salesperson’s worse nightmare – the non-urgent buyer. The buyer who says they are in no rush to make any type of decision. In fact, they may not even buy at all according to them. You know what this typically is? B.S. – buyer strategy! It’s important to understand that the buyer’s number one strategy is to appear non-urgent in front of a sales person.

Closing 105
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Salespeople With This Weakness Score 47% Worse at Reaching Decision Makers

Understanding the Sales Force

A lot of the salespeople I coach have a weakness in their Sales DNA - their need to be liked. Approximately 58% of all salespeople have this weakness and on average, salespeople score 76% in that competency. Elite salespeople have an average score of 87% and weak salespeople have an average score of 69%. What would it look like if we were to pivot this data and look only at the group who have it as a weakness?

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Sales Coaching for the Digital Age

Openview

Maintaining a position of preeminence in the highly competitive IT industry requires leaders to adapt to changes in the business landscape more rapidly than the competition. Continued success also relies on innovative sales enablement techniques that boost performance, help meet customer needs and achieve bottom line results. While many corporate sales enablement functions are already leveraging state-of-the-art enablement mechanisms, like online and virtual trainings, chat bots etc., most are s

Territory 101
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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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Don’t Drop the Ball on Follow-Up: Announcing Action Items by Gong.io

Gong.io

“Send us an invite for 3 PM next Tuesday,” said the VP of Sales. “I’ll get my CFO to join. But send your ROI study beforehand. He won’t join unless he knows how you’re thinking about ROI.”. I had just wrapped up a demo with a key account and could feel the momentum. I quickly sent the calendar invite for Tuesday. But while I juggled 30 other deals in my pipeline, I completely forget to send the ROI study.

Follow-up 103
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3 Steps to Communicating Your Value by Painting a New Reality Picture

RAIN Group

One of the greatest difficulties in sales is helping buyers understand what outcomes they will achieve when they work with you. Creating a picture of what outcomes are possible with the solution you present is imperative for two reasons: Buyers need to be convinced of the positive outcome—and that you can achieve it—or they likely will not purchase.

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The “Foot-in-the-Door Technique,” or When Longer Forms May Work Better

ConversionXL

“How can a person be induced to do something he would rather not do?”. Researchers Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser asked that question more than half a century ago. In their era, it usually meant convincing someone to endure a pitch from a door-to-door salesman. In ours, it often means incentivizing web form fills—gently prodding others to part with personal information that, they fear, could spark a swift, relentless inbox invasion.

Technique 113
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3 Common Scenarios that Make Your Customer the Sales Person

Jeff Shore

By Jeff Shore. ?. ?I am going to propose three scenarios that are similar to ones you might come across fairly often in your sales career. ??Scenario #1: You sell life insurance. You are having a conversation with a friend in a social setting, and the talk turns to your friend’s insurance coverage. He says to you, “I would switch our policy over to you and your company, but my wife picked our life insurance and she likes the agent we are using now.”.

Customers 104
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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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Finally! Science Reveals the Actual Impact of Sales Coaching

Membrain

I have read and even reported that sales leaders who coach their salespeople see a boost in revenue of around 27%. It sounds like a realistic number but I have not seen any science to back it up. Until now. Check this out!

Sales 102
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Stop Cold Calling – Start Warm Calling with your COI!

Women Sales Pros

Love it or hate it, there’s no getting around it. Prospecting is one of the most effective and fastest methods to grow your business. It’s also one of the most widely disliked aspects of a sales professional’s career. So how can you make it easier? Stop cold calling and start warm calling with centers of influence and referrals. As the saying goes, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Cold Call 101
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Are You Solving the Wrong Sales Problem?

Engage Selling

Could you be solving the wrong sales problem? In other words, is the culprit behind a lack of sales the real issue, or an easy “scapegoat” which is masking the real problem?

Sales 99
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3 Time Management Strategies to Get More Done with Less Effort

RAIN Group

There are only 24 hours in each day. Some people are able to achieve incredible amounts in that time seemingly effortlessly. Others put in massive amounts of effort, but don't seem to get where they want to be. What are those in the more productive group doing differently? How are they able to achieve so much more?

Product 104
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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