August, 2013

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The Truth About Sales People #2 - They Need To Change Their Focus

Anthony Cole Training

'Your sales people are probably focusing on the wrong thing(s) when meeting with new prospects. But.it isn''t their fault. From the time they join your organization, you teach them, or reinforce with them, that in order to persuade a prospect to buy, they must be able to effectively communicate a unique selling proposal, a competitive edge, or a dazzling 30-second commercial.

Sales 204
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What Every Great Sales Person Must Have in 2014

A Sales Guy

'A BLOG! If you expect to continue to be a great sales person and remain at the top of your game, then it’s time to start your own blog. Waiting any longer will relegate you to the middle or even worse, the back of the pack. Why a blog? The answer to that question is in three parts: We are in an information world and information (content) has never been more important to sales.

Sales 131
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Trending Sources

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11 Low-Hanging Fruits for Increasing Website Speed (and Conversions)

ConversionXL

'Website speed matters. Fast-loading sites perform better on all fronts: better user experience, higher conversions, more engagement, even higher search rankings. If you’re after mobile traffic (everyone is), site speed becomes even more important. No one wants to download a 4MB website on their smartphone, but most sites are that way. Yours can be different.

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Get Sales Compensation Right to Recruit Winning Salespeople

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Sales candidates, especially good ones, are exponentially more difficult to attract than they were just two years ago. We regularly observe clients struggling when it comes to getting resumes from quality candidates. One of the reasons is compensation. 1. True or False: The higher the compensation, the better. 2.

Extrinsic 108
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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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“Problem Talking” Is Not “Problem Solving”

Partners in Excellence

'As sales people, we build the greatest value for our customers by helping them solve problems. Stated differently, customers value sales people who are problem solvers. However, too often, I encounter sales people who think they are problem solvers, when really they are problem talkers. There’s a huge difference. We know what problems our products and solutions solve.

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3 Ways to Boost Your Confidence as a Salesperson

The Sales Hunter

'What will it take for you to not only feel confident, but also for others to view you with confidence — to trust that you genuinely are there to help them? It doesn’t take long for us to discover that confidence plays a significant role in the world of sales. Interestingly, the assumption is often made that if someone has chosen selling for their profession, they are “naturally” confident.

Price 103

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There are a Too Many Bad Sales People

A Sales Guy

'I’m going to interrupt the normally cheery, uplifting, feel good nature of this blog with a black cloud observation. I suspect, like many of my posts, this one is going be controversial and going to p**s a lot of you off. However, my thoughts on that are, if this post pisses you off, it’s your subconscious telling you something. Therefore, you might want to listen to it.

Quota 128
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Give Your Advertising ROI a Serious Boost by Maintaining Scent (11 examples)

ConversionXL

'Want to know how to deal a serious blow to your landing page conversions? Have it look different from the ad they saw before landing on the page, and have it contain different words. In other words, one of the best ways to improve landing page conversions is to maintain scent: make pre-click and post-click message + look & feel match. There needs to be “scent” The ad they see or the email they read needs to smell like the landing page they land on.

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Why Sales Leaders and Salespeople Get Frustrated

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan OK, so you do get frustrated with sales or you wouldn''t have clicked the link. Why? Do you get frustrated with: Salespeople? Prospects? Results? Effort? Forecasts? Effectiveness? Focus? Discipline? Consistency? Growth and Improvement? Pipeline Velocity? Change? Behavior? Attitude? Sales Selection? On Boarding?

Pipeline 100
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Do You Really Know Your Sweet Spot?

Partners in Excellence

'Maximizing sales success, market penetration, and growth requires knowing your “sweet spot.” The sweet spot is that set of customers having problems that we are the best in the world at solving. These customers are likely to be our best, most loyal, and most profitable customers. The biggest drain on sales performance is selling outside the sweet spot—trying to get customers whose problems we aren’t the best in the world at solving to buy.

Launch 103
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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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5 Steps to Close More Sales

The Sales Hunter

'How are you doing in meeting your 2013 goal? Here are 5 steps you can take right now to close more sales faster: 1. Follow-up. The single biggest reason more sales aren’t closed is salespeople give up and fail to follow through. You may have made two calls and think nothing is going to come of it. Try again. We’ve all seen studies that show the importance of following up, and yet so few people actually do it. 2.

Closing 102
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The Truth About Sales People #2 - Their Sales Approach is Not Remarkable

Anthony Cole Training

'Your sales people are probably focusing on the wrong thing(s) when meeting with new prospects. But.it isn''t their fault. From the time they join your organization, you teach them, or reinforce with them, that in order to persuade a prospect to buy, they must be able to effectively communicate a unique selling proposal, a competitive edge, or a dazzling 30-second commercial.

Sales 120
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How to Know if You’re Bringing Value – Note to Sales People

A Sales Guy

'How do you know if you offer enough value in the sale to close it? How do you know if you have enough leverage to not compete on price? How do you know if the client needs to make the deal? Ask this one question; What’s the impact to the customer or prospect if the DON’T buy my product or service? Your answer to this question tells you everything you will need to know.

Contract 123
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Work Your Referral Network – It Is a Sales Bounty

Score More Sales

'If you were hungry and had a refrigerator full of fresh, just-picked fruits and vegetables delivered right from a local, award-winning farm, would you reach in and grab some of that goodness? What if you were hungry and forgot to look in your refrigerator – you were just too busy dealing with issues that have come up, and helping existing customers, calling prospects, and looking for prospects?

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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 Key to Powerful Sales Conversations

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Earlier this week I wrote this article about the importance of using specific words and phrases at specific times. That article discussed some of the milestones in the sales process where just the right word or phrase can make a such a huge - make or break - difference in the direction that the sales call takes.

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Insight Is Not The End, It’s The Beginning

Partners in Excellence

'There has been so much good discussion on Insight over the past few years. Everyone tends to have a different point of view–or twists what Insight is to support their own point of view (and I am probably guilty of that). But in reading a lot of the discussions, I get a feeling that Insight is becoming the destination. If we, sales people, just had the right Insights, pitched/messaged the right way to the right customer, we’d have the answer to ever B2B sales person’s dream

Pitch 98
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The Power of Short Questions in the Sales Process

The Sales Hunter

'The best way to engage your prospect or customer is by asking short questions. When you do, you will tap into opportunities that long questions will never reveal. Short-questions are truly an amazing tool most salespeople never seem to grasp. The vast majority of salespeople love to show how smart they are by asking long complicated questions. Problem is that questions of that type do little to help the sales process.

Process 100
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Good Reads for B2B Sales - 99 Prospecting Tips from Sales Experts

Pointclear

'Keeping up to date on the latest innovations and opinions in sales can be time-consuming, especially in the the digital space. Sales Sphere features relevant blog articles from PointClear''s online B2B sales circles. The Rise Of Inside Sales Is Shaking Up The Sales Pipeline. “The most successful organizations are realizing the vision of sales 2.0, by using the data, metrics and predictability that inside sales has always been known for,” says Anneke Seley, CEO of Reality Works Group.

B2B 89
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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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6 Killer Individual Sales Stats to Measure Your Sales Reps

A Sales Guy

'In baseball, there is the batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, HRs, ERA, WHIP, RBI’s and a whole gang of other stuff. In football, there is completion percentage, TD’s, YAC (yards after the catch), QBR (Quarterback Rating), yards per carry, yards per game and more. In basketball, there is field goal percentage, blocked shots, steals, free throw percentage, points per game, efficiency and, as with the other two, a whole slew of other individual stats.

Sports 121
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Inside Sales Power Tip 126 – Stop Calling High

Score More Sales

'If you are a B2B seller using the phone and email to connect with prospects and only calling on the C-suite, I’d like to ask you to stop calling high for just a moment and consider broadening your reach. I’ve been in your shoes, working to reach top executives in hundreds, even thousands of companies over the years. In one position my preferred contact was Chief Financial Officers.

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Why Do Salespeople Forget What They Learn?

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan I was on the golf course three times in the past 7 days. That''s 3 more times than I played in the last 2 years combined! As you might expect, I was very inconsistent and the resulting score was not surprising. I was never a good golfer, not taking it up until 8 years ago when I turned 50. However, during the first 3 years I took weekly lessons, went to the driving range each day, and played quite often in an attempt to become good enough so that I c

Up-sell 97
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Knowing More Than Our Customers

Partners in Excellence

'I get disturbed by much of the hyperbole around Insight Selling and Teaching Our Customers. We are supposed to know more than our customers. I think in many cases that’s true and an important part of value creation. Certainly, we know more about our products and solutions–but that is probably meaningless to the customer until very late in their buying process.

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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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4 Quick Tips for End-of-the-Summer Prospecting

The Sales Hunter

'Don’t lose momentum now. If anything, you need to pick it up while your competition is still on vacation. August is a huge vacation month and that means it’s easy to think there is zero business to be had. Don’t worry about August being a poor month. Instead, race like mad to set yourself up to win big from September to December. Here are 4 quick things you can do now to set yourself up for a big finish: 1.

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'Gold Calling' Is Alive and Well

Pointclear

'More musings on the premature death knell for outbound sales. S. Anthony Iannarino wrote in a blog that “All generalizations are lies.” One of the biggest and most damaging is that cold calling is dead. One article espousing the theory that cold calling doesn’t work anymore states that making cold calls creates the perception that you have nothing better to do; or worse that you are desperate and needy.

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There are Too Many Bad Sales Managers [Yeah, and Sales Leaders Too]

A Sales Guy

'I’m here to drop another dark cloud observation on this community. It’s a follow up to my post which, in a nutshell, I said sales people suck. Not very surprising, it got a lot of attention. I expected most people to jump down my throat calling me a sellout (which I expect to get from this one too). It didn’t happen, well not entirely.

Quota 121
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Inside Sales Power Tip 129 – Get More Leads

Score More Sales

'Do you want more and better leads when reaching out to potential buyers? This is definitely one of the top requests I hear when meeting with those prospecting for net-new business. It seems that no matter what data services your company subscribes to, it is still difficult to find those leads you know could become more probable prospective customers.

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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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Which Industries Need the Most Help to Get Sales to the Next Level?

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan The lumber and building products industry is notorious for having weak salespeople (compared with the population of salespeople in all industries) who call on distributors and retail lumber yards and take orders. They could be far more effective, much more efficient and experience exponentially better results.

Retail 97
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What Is Your Customer Trying To Achieve?

Partners in Excellence

'Too often, both we and our customers get so caught up in activities that we lose sight of what we are trying to achieve. A few weeks ago, I was participating in a deal review. It was a huge software deal, the customer was evaluating new systems to replace something that had been in place for a long time and was, apparently, no longer serving them.

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VIDEO SALES TIP: Would You Buy From You?!

The Sales Hunter

'I run into salespeople all the time who say they believe in their product and price, but a true test is this: Would you buy from you? Do you believe in your material enough that not only would you buy, but at the price you are asking? The most successful salespeople are willing to dig into the depths of such questions. Check out the below video to better understand what I mean: Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. .

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PowerViews with Nick Stein: The Role of Games in the Sales Office

Pointclear

'Mobile and social technologies have radically changed the way people buy. Buyers are increasingly savvy and willing to shop around, and salespeople have to recognize how the landscape has changed and how the interaction with potential customers continues to evolve. Companies must take the lead and make sure their sales people are familiar with the new paradigm, says my latest guest on PowerViews, Nick Stein, senior director of marketing and communications at Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud

Gaming 85
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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