November, 2012

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No Secret to Sales Success - Shut Up and Listen

Anthony Cole Training

Ernesto Sirolli does a wonderful job of helping us understand that in order to get more of what we want we need to learn to do 3 things: Ask. Shut Up. Listen. It's not a complicated lesson but one that is abused daily by sales manager and sales people that claim to know better. I don't mean to be critical so let me explain. I've been coaching and training sales people for over 20 years now.

Sales 181
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First Impressions Matter: The Importance of Great Visual Design

ConversionXL

People make snap judgements. It takes only 1/10th of a second to form a first impression about a person, and websites are no different. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave. This number comes from specific studies.

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People Don’t Dislike Sales People, They Dislike Bad Selling!

Partners in Excellence

People don’t dislike sales people, they dislike bad selling! I wish I had said that, but it originally came from Andy Rudin —thanks for the great quote. There’s a lot of data going around about customers not wanting to engage sales people until very late in their buying process. The numbers vary, but they seem clustered around 70% of the buying process is completed before sales people are engaged.

Sell 125
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Speed Matters – A Lesson in Lead Follow-Up

A Sales Guy

I’m moving in a few weeks. I hate moving. Because I hate it, investing in movers is well worth it to me. I’ve been putting it off for too long, so yesterday I Googled moving and found a site that allowed me to get quotes from 6 different movers at once. This was awesome. I put in a few bits of information, the application auto populated 6 moving companies that serve my area and all I had to do was click a button.

Follow-up 119
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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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Zig Ziglar's Legacy to the Sales World

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Zig died today at the age of 86. Seth Godin memorialized him here. I wrote about our chance meeting here 6 years ago. I want to talk about Zig's life and his sales and selling impact. He paved the way for people like me by almost single-handedly creating the motivational speaking industry. Today, motivational speaking has evolved to include sales and sales management training and coaching, sales consulting, sales force development, sales enablement, s

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5 Lessons I Learned from Zig Ziglar

Score More Sales

You don’t meet too many people who make an impact on your career and your life. It was sad to hear that sales legend and motivator to millions, Zig Ziglar, has passed on. At the same time, thinking of Mr. Ziglar evokes all sorts of memories and lessons early in my sales career. When I started out as a technology sales professional, I had little idea what I was doing – just the words of my grandmother, who was my mentor in business.

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People Comparison Shop, Stupid

ConversionXL

If you think people might buy your products or services without checking out the competition first, think again. Research says that on average consumers visit three websites before making a purchase. Another insight by the same study was that the more sites a consumer visits, the more money they are likely to spend. In other words, the more expensive the product, the more time people take to comparison shop.

Retail 109
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Moving From Value Creation To Value Co-Creation

Partners in Excellence

As sales people we have been drilled and drilled in “Value Propositions.” Over time, our concepts of value propositions have changed–as they should. Value propositions used to be generic claims (usually generated by marketing) about value, perhaps statements about our products–things like “best quality,” “richest functionality,” “highest performance.” and so forth.

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How to Thin Your Pipeline and get to the Real Opportunities

A Sales Guy

Pipelines are an interesting thing. They are supposed to provide valuable insight for BOTH management and sales people. Their purpose is to provide visibility into the health of the selling process, letting the sales organization know how close or far they are from making quota. Pipelines however, are more than a key indicator. They dictate behavior.

Pipeline 116
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Do Prospects Lie to Your Salespeople Like the Airlines Do?

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan We've all been on planes when they tell us to put our electronic devices into airplane mode so that the devices - your laptops, ipads, ipods, kindles and phones - do not send a radio signal looking for a connection. They tell us that these signals can interfere with the plane's instrumentation. Scary stuff!

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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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Salespeople Who Give Discounts are Not Salespeople

The Sales Hunter

It’s time for me to rant about salespeople and discounts. When a salesperson offers a customer a discount, what they’re saying is they have not been able to do a good enough of a job demonstrating value to the customer. To offset their inability to do what they’re supposed to be able to do, they feel the way to close the sale is by offering a discount.

Price 105
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Closing DNA - The 3rd Must Have for High Performance Sales Teams

Anthony Cole Training

I started this series of blog post on the 3 Must Haves For High Performance Sales Teams with #1 Prospecting DNA. Do me this is an obvious skill set and is the priority of any other UNLESS you outsource this to a 3rd party OR you have a sales environment where your sales team essentially plays "Catch" - people either calling in or walking in. #2 is Qualifying DNA - if you don't have to worry about prospecting then this by far is the most important skill set to possess. possessing the DNA of quali

Closing 165
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3 Tips to Keep Your Sales Focus

Score More Sales

Working hard in sales but not accomplishing enough? Last week I was interviewed on the OpenView Lab blog about ways to keep focus through the end of the year. If you’re bogged down by lack of closed business, upcoming holidays, relatives, and distractions like Cyber Monday, you might want to listen to the interview since it is audio and easy to listen to.

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“Content Free” Content

Partners in Excellence

I haven’t whined in a while, so pardon me for this indulgence. We all know that content is critical in engaging prospect and customers. Let me rephrase this, “good content is critical… ” Clearly, organizations are getting the message about content, the problem is they are forgetting to provide the content. A couple of examples, in cleaning out my email this morning, I’ve actually encountered several offers that I’ve found interesting.

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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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Do What’s Right

A Sales Guy

The secret sauce of sales is simple, do what is right. If your product isn’t a fit, don’t sell it. If your product meets 6 of the 7 needs of the client, tell them about number 7. If there is a better option, let your customer know. Don’t hide anything, lying through omission is still lying. If what you sell doesn’t work, take it back.

Clients 115
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What the Huge Patriots Win Teaches us About Sales Momentum

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Perhaps you watched the Thursday night Thanksgiving Day football masacre between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. The Patriots scored 35 unaswered points in the second period and in one 52 second timeframe, scored 3 touchdowns. Unbelievable! Incredible! Unheard of! The more common reaction though is, "How quickly it all unraveled for the Jets".

Pipeline 101
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Moneyball Design: Why the Research and Data Analysis is Critical to Getting Your Prospects to Convert

ConversionXL

136 CMOs were recently asked “What do you see as your biggest opportunity for revenue generation in early 2013?” 46% of them said “improving conversions” Excellent. Now that we know where the opportunity lies, how do we go about doing it? We had two prospective clients this past week where their overall site design was good enough that they didn’t need a full redesign.

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3 MUST HAVES DNA for High Performing Sales Teams - Pt.1 The Hunter

Anthony Cole Training

I am reading the blog of Insideview. One of their recent posts is about building a "Rock Star Team of Sales Hunters". They highlight a research paper by one of their partners, Vorsight, that has identified a hunting sales model - (DEPT)^T. The "D" in the formula stands for DNA. In this instance, the author of the research paper is suggestion that "DNA" is defined as the genetic code for sales hunters.

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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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New Leads Study Supports Quickness and Follow Up

Score More Sales

A sales leader asked me yesterday, “What do we do with the sales reps that are not following up on the 50% of leads coming in that don’t get called more than once?”. He was commenting in response to the fact that 50% of all leads coming into a company are never called a second time. This fact is from research previously done by Leads360 , a cloud based leads management and sales automation company.

Follow-up 100
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Applying Lean Practices To Sales And Marketing

Partners in Excellence

Not long ago, the folks at Openview Labs in Boston interviewed me on Lean Sales and Marketing. I thought I’d share this short video with you. (Don’t let the frightening face on the “opener” scare you away. I think it was some of their Halloween humor). Lean is really about value–how do we create and deliver the value our customers want and needs.

Sales 117
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Customer Don’t Buy from Sales People they Like

A Sales Guy

Yes, the old addage that a customer buys “you” and not your product is true. But, it’s not why you think. Customers don’t buy because of your witty sense of humor or because your fun to go to lunch with. They don’t buy because they like you and your popular with the team. Yes, your customer buys “you” and not your product, but for different reasons.

Customers 114
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My Top 14 Articles on How to Make More Effective Cold Calls

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Yesterday I posted this article about why cold calls are so bad. One of my readers asked what I would recommend to make the calls more effective. I've written a lot of articles about making cold calls more effectively so I have linked to 14 of those articles below. A new book on sales, How to Close Deals Like Warren Buffett , was launched today.

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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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Why Bad Salespeople Attract Bad Customers

The Sales Hunter

Have you ever wondered what types of customers are attracted by certain types of salespeople? Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit hundreds of companies and dig deep into their business. Without a doubt, I can say the reason some companies wind up with more bad customers than others is because they have more bad salespeople than others.

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3 Absolutely MUST HAVES for High Performing Sales Teams

Anthony Cole Training

I am reading the blog of Insideview's recent post is about building a "Rock Star Team of Sales Hunters". They highlight a research paper by one of their partners Vorsight that has identified a hunting sales model - (DEPT)^T. The "D" in the formula stands for DNA. In this instance the author of the research paper is suggestion that "DNA" is defined as the genetic code for sales hunters.

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Don’t Lose Customers With Bad E-Mail Habits

Score More Sales

What is the best way to worsen a relationship with a prospective client, a customer, or an invaluable referral partner? Answer: Only communicate through email. Never pick up the phone, and be guilty of two other bad email habits that happen every day, all over the business world. Situation: A friendly, optimistic relationship is struck by two business services providers who do different services.

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Your Ideas Are Worthless!

Partners in Excellence

For that matter, so are your plans and strategies! We spend a lot of time focusing on these activities. We’re proud of our creativity, we’re proud of the work we have done to generate the ideas, plans, and strategies. We’re even protective of them (particularly pundits, consultants, and gurus who go to extremes in “protecting” ideas.).

Consult 117
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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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Don’t Set Goals, Master Your Skills

A Sales Guy

David is on his third book this month. He’s noticed a change in how his buyers are buying. He can’t put his finger on it, but he senses there is a change and he’s determined to identify it. Traditionally in the top 5% of performers, David is a student of sales. He continually evaluates and assesses his approach to sales and each sale in general.

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My Top 14 Articles on More Effective Sales Cold Calling

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Yesterday, I posted this article about why sales cold calling is so bad. One of my readers asked what I would recommend to make the calls more effective. I've written a lot of articles about cold calling more effectively, so I have linked to fourteen of those articles below. A new book on sales, How to Close Deals Like Warren Buffett , was launched today.

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Cheap Prices Create Cheap Customers

The Sales Hunter

I think this is a chicken and egg type of question. What came first? Cheap prices or cheap customers? I’m a firm believer that a huge by-product of cheap prices is cheap customers. You might say what’s wrong with cheap customers, but I’ll challenge anyone on that comment and here’s why. People who argue with you on price will tend to be ones who will argue with you on everything else.

Price 93
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Do prospects lie? How does the answer impact sales success?

Anthony Cole Training

I first heard this when I attended a workshop I attended years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. The speaker was the one and only David Sandler. Many years have passed since that day and I've had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of prospects and sales people about their prospects. The answer to that question is: YES! Here is a guest blog from Sales Development Expert, Author and Highly Recognized Leader in Sales Force Evaluations - David Kurlan.

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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