February, 2013

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The "Bell Curve" Dilemma in Sales Management

Anthony Cole Training

I'm not sure if the word "dilemma" or "problem" best describes what I'm trying to say. It's like trying to compare the words commitment and resolution. I'm reading the book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" , and on page 54, Lincoln is quoted as saying: "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.".

Sales 212
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Social Business Is Not About Technology!

Partners in Excellence

It’s hard not to be drawn into a conversation about Social Business. Everyone seems to be talking about it. Usually, one to two sentences into the conversation the focus is on, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Piinterest, LinkedIn, how many followers, how do generate likes, and on and on and on…… We also seem to think social business is “new.” I think it’s because whenever we talk about social business, it seems to be so closely intertwined with technology and soc

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How to Get Traffic That Converts

ConversionXL

It’s not unusual in our line of work to see the exact same landing page convert at 11% one month, and 55% the next – without making any changes. How so? Your conversion rate is mainly determined by the quality of traffic. The right traffic with the right expectations makes all the difference. This post will tell you how to get traffic that converts. .

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Do You Know What Your are Selling?

A Sales Guy

What are you selling? Before you say a word about your product, you have to know what you’re selling. If you don’t know, then keep digging. What you’re not selling is your product. You’re not selling some cool feature your product has. You’re not selling the convenience of your product. You’re not selling how inexpensive it is, your not selling what you get commission on, so stop it!

Sell 126
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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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Dan Pink Hits and Then Misses the New Key to Sales Performance

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan You probably haven't read this article by Dan Pink (Thanks to Craig Ruhland for sending me the link). Pink points to research showing that extroverts and introverts are not as successful in sales as ambiverts, the people in the middle of the scale between both extremes. Our research at Objective Management Group (OMG) would support this "discovery".

Sales 104
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Are You a Salesperson or a Customer Service Person?

The Sales Hunter

The title on your card says “sales.” Your job description says “sales” and you’re part of the sales team. If that’s the case, then why are you acting like a customer service person? I’m not bashing customer service people. They play a key role in the sale process, but I believe strongly salespeople and customer service people are to be doing two different tasks.

Service 100

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Stop Basing Your Probability Of Winning Based On Where You Are In The Pipeline!

Partners in Excellence

Yeah, yeah, we all know it’s how we’ve “always” forecasted probability and weighted our pipelines. Yes, for some reason all the CRM vendors “out of the box” implementation of the pipeline ties probability of winning to where you are in the sales process. But when are we going to stop this simplistic and flatly wrong thinking about the probability of winning a deal?

Pipeline 127
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6 Smart Ways to Capture Emails

ConversionXL

Email lists are key assets for any company. any 4-year old knows. The bigger your list and the better your relationship with the list, the more money you make. . Growing your email list starts with a great lead magnet – without it no tactic mentioned here will work. You should also have a kickass email capture form – here’s how to design a good one.

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10,000 Hours in Sales

A Sales Guy

I was riding the lift today in my teaching blues when a visitor from NY asked how long I had been skiing. During the conversation the concept of 10,000 hours came up. My gut reaction was I was getting close. I started to to do the back of the napkin math and I realized, I was no where close to 10,000 hours. I skied about 40 days before I moved to Vail in 1989.

Sales 117
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To Salespeople, Demos and Presentations are Like Snack Food

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Prior to learning about healthy eating, I believed a bagel was a healthy alternative to a donut. After I was shown that a carbohydrate converts to sugar in the blood and there wasn't much difference between bread, bagels or rolls; and donuts, cake or pie, I changed the way that I ate. Most people have not seen the light, are not aware that sugar causes disease, believe that pasta, rice, grains and potato are healthy, and continue to gain weight.

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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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Best Time to Call a Hard-To-Reach Person: Top of the Hour

The Sales Hunter

Without a doubt, the best time to get a hold of the hard-to-reach person is between :58 and :02 each hour. The reason this is ideal is because it is the one time when a busy person is most likely to be between meetings. If the person also is one who spends a lot of time on conference calls, then they are likely to answer the phone at the top of the hour in anticipation of a conference call scheduled to start at that time.

Technique 100
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Sales Coaching - Are You Stuck in a Groove & Rewarding Participation?

Anthony Cole Training

Some of you are old enough to remember LPs (long playing microgroove records) and record players. Back in the day, that is how we listened to music. The sound was, and still is, incredible. And like almost any medium used to record and replay audio, there were pluses and minuses. One of the negatives of the LP was the scratch. A scratch on the vinyl would cause the needle to skip back or skip ahead.

Sports 185
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I Don’t Care How Much Time You Spend Selling!

Partners in Excellence

Sorry, I have to admit, I’m letting off a little steam on this post. I just got off of ”one of those” weekly review calls. You know the one’s I’m talking about. We are going through the pipeline, looking at each person’s territory, how they’re doing and getting a mid quarter look at what the end of the quarter will be.

Sell 126
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How Your Customers Actually Read Your Emails

ConversionXL

This is a guest post by Chris Hexton from Vero. Have you ever thought about how your customers actually read your emails? As in, how they approach them… mentally? How important is the subject line? Do headings in emails matter? Which links are customers most likely to click? Are links in body content distracting? Are images important? By considering questions like these and really investigating how customers actually read emails we naturally put ourselves in a better place to write emails that c

Customers 114
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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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No Problem, No Need

A Sales Guy

As sales people we are taught to find a need and sell to it. Needs based selling is what many of us have been taught from the early days. In almost every conversation I have with sales people on how to sell, the word “need” comes up. It’s without a doubt the most common term I hear sales people use when discussing how they sell and what sales is all about.

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Top Mistakes Using LinkedIn for Sales – Impersonal Requests

Score More Sales

If you are active on LinkedIn and using it to grow your business, you probably get these requests all the time. I have written about them before – the generic or “slightly modified” request to connect on LinkedIn. We teach sales professionals about the “Big 10″ items you need to pay attention to and do correctly for success on growing your visibility and your revenues using LinkedIn as a tool.

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Strategic Salesperson vs. Tactical Salesperson

The Sales Hunter

Too many salespeople are what I refer to as tactical salespeople. Opportunity, however, lies in being a strategic salesperson. I believe the difference is huge! And it can be the difference between selling at a low margin short-term and selling at a high-margin long-term. A tactical salesperson is focused on the features of what it is they sell. The questions they ask are all geared around getting the customer to think and see why they need what it is they’re selling.

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Performance Management - Building Successful Sales Teams

Anthony Cole Training

Performance management is generally considered to be the 2nd step in building successful sales teams. Some would argue it's the 3rd. I'm not here to argue, however, based on my experiences and what I've learned, I believe there IS another important step that must come before performance management. Let me take a moment to define performance management: www.successfactors.com : Performance management - includes processes that effectively communicate company aligned goals, evaluate employee perfor

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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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Marketing And Sales–Nimbleness, Agility, Flexibility

Partners in Excellence

My post, Marketing Displaces Sales , created a lot of comments and discussion. It’s clear, our customers want to be engaged in different ways. They don’t care about the title on someone’s business card, they want timely, relevant, high quality information. They want relevant discussions about their business and goals–regardless of whether it comes from the sales person, account manager, marketing, product management, customer service, or the receptionist (they sometime

Gaming 126
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How to Use Personalized Content and Behavioral Targeting For Improved Conversions

ConversionXL

500 different people go to Amazon.com. Each one sees a different version of the home page. How come? It’s personalized! It’s no secret why Amazon does that: content personalization makes money. A new survey by Adobe and Econsultancy finds that 52% of digital marketers consider the ability to personalize web content to be fundamental to their online strategy.

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Be Closer to your Customers Than Ever Before

A Sales Guy

I am sick as a dog and have been for 3 days. I’m in Florida with a client and except for working with them, I haven’t been able to get anything done. I’ve been in bed for 14 hour stints and not getting any better. It sucks. Because of the “crud” the blog has been neglected, I just haven’t been able to think. To avoid another day with out a post I’ve asked Kyle Porter , CEO of Sales Loft to do a guest post.

Customers 113
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View From the Top - When Salespeople Call on Purchasing

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan The single question that salespeople ask more than any other is, "When I'm with purchasing, they don't seem to have a compelling reason to buy and don't care about our value add. What can I do?" I'll answer that question shortly. First, an analogy to help you see it from my perspective. Take an elevator up at least 20 floors in Manhattan and you'll immediately notice that the view from the top is mostly yellow -- a sea of taxis -- with some limos and

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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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PowerViews with Bob Perkins: Inside Sales is Here to Stay

Pointclear

My guest today is Bob Perkins, Founder of AA-ISP and Vice President of Inside Sales at Merrill Datasite. Bob shared his perspective on how inside sales strategies have grown in popularity as companies strive to improve customer service and boost sales as efficiently as possible. Below, you can read highlights from our discussion or use the links to start the video from different parts of the conversation.

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The Sales Coach - Lessons from Lincoln (Part I)

Anthony Cole Training

Even though I recognize there is a lot of excitment over everything Lincoln as of late, I am not tying Lincoln to sales coaching as part of a marketing or search ploy. It is truly a coincidence that I find myself writing this today on Presidents' Day 2013. I've been reading a book - A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin - on which the movie "Lincoln" was based and I felt compelled to share my observations.

Sales 164
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Marketing Displaces Sales!

Partners in Excellence

Customers are self educating, they don’t want to see sales people until they have completed the majority of their buying process! We all know this–much to the chagrin of sales. Companies are responding, as they should with great content strategies. Marketing is providing rich content and relevant information for customers and prospects.

Sales 126
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Top Social Selling Tools

Score More Sales

Be sure to listen to the great “10 Ways to Utilize Social Selling in 2013″ webinar that Linkedin and DocuSign hosted today if you missed it. (if the link is not here, it will be added when ready). Check out our Social ROI calculator. Contact us if you have questions. The Postwire page (one of my favorite tools for curation) has all ten of the tools mentioned, plus links to the presenters, moderator, and sponsor pages.

Sell 95
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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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Who Hit Quota?

A Sales Guy

Did you make your quota for January? By how much? What do you attribute your first months success to? Let me know in the comments if you made quota and by how much. If your willing, share what worked. I think the community would benefit from hearing some good success stories. One month is in the books, was it a good one for you? Let’s celebrate making the number every month, it’s what we do right?

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Missing on the "Secrets to Developing Successful Sales Managers"

Understanding the Sales Force

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan An interesting article, Secrets to Developing Successful Sales Managers , by Xactly's CEO, Christopher Cabrera, was posted on Selling Power's 2/19/13 blog. I suggest that you read it first, returning to this article for the analysis. I thought that the first half of the article was spot on. I thought that the second half was as bad as the first half was good.

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Why Your Customer Won’t Pay More

The Sales Hunter

It’s an issue that has been around for years and it isn’t going away anytime soon. The problem is the customer won’t pay more because the salesperson spends too much of their time convincing the customer they shouldn’t pay more. Yes, I believe salespeople work against themselves way too much and wind up encouraging the customer to actually pay less than they would be willing to pay.

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Sales Coach - Lessons from Lincoln

Anthony Cole Training

'Even though I recognize there is a lot of excitement over everything Lincoln as of late, I am not tying Lincoln to sales coaching as part of a marketing or search ploy. I''ve been reading a book - Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin - on which the movie "Lincoln" was based and I felt compelled to share my observations. Mathew Brady (first Lincoln Photograph).

Sales 134
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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