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There are, of course, right ways and wrong ways to respond to buyer objections. This blog post doesn’t go into that. Instead, this post focuses on a fundamental first step that most sellers forget when responding to an objection. Unless you take this critical step, no response to the objection will really be adequate. You’ll lost valuable time and blow “hot air” no matter how eloquent and technically correct your response may be.
Color is an essential part of how we experience the world. But do colors really matter for conversion optimization ? Can a button color guarantee better performance for a call to action (CTA)? No single color is better than another. Ultimately, what matters is how much a button color contrasts with the area around it. This post explains what really matters for website CTAs and button colors.
. Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Bro Culture , . Lack of Coaching. . Too Product-Centric. Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales. Too much reliance on selling tools. Not enough training in the industry/space. Too much activity management. Little respect for prospects and buyers time. Not enough humility. I tackled the Bro-Culture in the first of this series because I feel culture is critical to change.
GLC Minerals is a 5th-generation family-owned company selling a product literally as old as the earth: Pure calcium carbonate. Operating in business as old-school as mined and processed minerals, and with a 75-year track record of profitability, it would have been easy for the company’s leadership to rest on its laurels and continue business as usual.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
How do we create sustained results as sales professionals? After all, our jobs are: Create differentiated value with our customers. Execute our company business strategies with our customers. Achieve/exceed our goals and objectives. There are thousands of “experts” providing advice to sales people on how to best do our jobs. Thousands of posts and books, give the latest insights, techniques, principles to “help” sales people.
User flow is the path a user follows through your website interface to complete a task —make a reservation, purchase a product, subscribe to something. It’s also called a user journey. And it has a massive impact on conversions. To maximize your conversions, you have to get the user flow right on your site. Do it by building a user flow that matches user’s needs.
Have you ever “Nailed it!” when interviewing for a sales position? All the stars aligned. Your answers were spot on, and the rapport was effortless. Chances are, you went beyond just “answering questions” if you ended up getting the job. You answered the sales interview questions in a way that made you look like a winner. Now, some people may feel that nailing an interview is a hit-or-miss proposition.
Have you ever “Nailed it!” when interviewing for a sales position? All the stars aligned. Your answers were spot on, and the rapport was effortless. Chances are, you went beyond just “answering questions” if you ended up getting the job. You answered the sales interview questions in a way that made you look like a winner. Now, some people may feel that nailing an interview is a hit-or-miss proposition.
One of the most common reasons why apparently promising B2B sales opportunities get derailed - often at a late stage in our sales cycle - is that we have failed to identify all the key stakeholders or to understand how to get them all to support our approach.
In any given year, I may be involved in doing 100’s of deal or opportunity reviews. Inevitably, I end up asking many of the same questions: What are the most important things the customer needs to do next in moving through their buying process? How will you help them? What are the next most critical things you need to be doing on this opportunity?
The concept of “economic moats” came from a 1999 Fortune article by Warren Buffett: The key to investing is [.] determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors. Economic moats remain tethered to investing: A bigger moat makes a stock a better bet.
Sales AI will replace some salespeople. No doubt about it. Want proof? I bet you’d HATE talking to a salesperson to buy a book on Amazon. You’d rather buy with “one-click” and be done! An Amazon book rep would introduce friction to an otherwise seamless buying process. It’s a simple buying decision and people want to get through it. Without another person.
Today’s buyers expect more than generic outreach–they want relevant, personalized interactions that address their specific needs. For sales teams managing hundreds or thousands of prospects, however, delivering this level of personalization without automation is nearly impossible. The key is integrating AI in a way that enhances customer engagement rather than making it feel robotic.
Not many people dream of having a career in sales. Let’s be real here: sales was probably not your first choice. For many of you, although afraid to admit, sales wasn’t even your second, third or fourth choice. Some of you reading this are thinking to yourself, “Mark you’re smoking something funny.” Calm down. Although I used to live in Oregon, I haven’t smoked anything.
Yet Another Marketing Buzzword? Every few years there is a new buzzword in B2B marketing. A few years ago it was “Inbound Marketing.” The inbound philosophy advocates publishing content through digital channels to entice qualified individuals to consume the content and enter the sales cycle. Then, there was “Account-Based Marketing.” The ABM approach advocates for targeting a predefined and limited set of companies and running campaigns to engage all individuals at these companies.
Your ecommerce checkout flow is where the money is at. Think about it. Random visitors leave the site before ever entering the checkout funnel. Motivated buyers come here to finish their order. Any small design improvement in your checkout UX usually has a direct impact on how much money your site makes. An ecommerce site that I analyzed recently had a payment page in which 84.7% of the traffic proceeded to buy.
No one loves practice. No medals are won on the practice field. But all around the world, the brightest and best make time for it. They push themselves to be better every day and strain against their perceived limits –– all to make their performance as close to excellence as possible. Many of these people make their living playing sports… but sales isn’t so different.
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.
In early 2019, HubSpot Research partnered with SurveyMonkey to conduct new research on social media preferences and buying preferences. We used SurveyMonkey Audience to ask over 2,700 consumers in Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the U.S. questions on how they buy. This report highlights the fascinating differences we've discovered in buying preferences worldwide.
It’s never remotely easy until you have a steady stream of leads and a decent 1.0 revenue team. But here are some things that can help in the early days: Always hire at least 2 reps to start. If you just hire 1, you won’t really know what is working, and not working, and why. Don’t expect a sales magician. You ideally need to close the first 10–20 customers yourself, and then hire sales folks to help.
The number of people browsing and shopping on mobile devices continues to grow. During the past 10 years , smartphone and tablet browsing has increased to more than 50% of all web traffic. As for ecommerce, projections forecast mobile sales to reach 54% by the year 2021. And, for their part, Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, pulling ranking signals from the mobile version of websites.
I get hassled for this all the time, but I am proud to admit that I am a cost evaluating, penny-pinching, profit-margin-analyzing geek to the core. Early in my career, I saw firsthand how a $20M funded company went from startup to NASDAQ IPO to being delisted in the span of three years due to frivolous spending (but that’s a story for another day). My cost-conscious lens (plus our proven outbound sales program) has served my company, Leadium, well.
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.
In today’s e-commerce universe, Amazon is a behemoth.We all know it, and we all use it … whether we want to admit it or not. But today’s consumers don’t just use Amazon to buy stuff. They also use it to check prices ( 90% of consumers use Amazon to price check a product), discover new products ( 72% of consumers visit Amazon for product ideas), and start product searches ( 56% of consumers visit Amazon before any other site).
We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc. We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out. This post was pretty controversial originally, but I think most folks now agree with its conclusions: If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days.
What kind of content should you have on your site? How should you structure the menu? What should be the first-level menu items? One or two menus? What should the menu links be called? This post gives you answers. Website information architecture is no joke, yet the overwhelming majority of businesses structure their site using the IMO method (“In my opinion…”).
ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!
Social media is an instrumental component of any business's marketing strategy. But for users, scrolling through the mass amount of branded content across every social media platform can be exhausting. However, there's one social media site where users actually embrace branded content -- Pinterest. Pinterest can be an incredibly useful tool for attracting consumers to your products.
Closing the deal can be challenging—but it doesn’t have to be. In most cases, sellers lose deals because they don’t make the right connection with the buyer, leading to buyer apathy, indecision and stalled progress. Often, this happens because sellers have simply taken the wrong approach: one that doesn’t speak to their particular buyer. Admittedly, it can be difficult to hone in what the right approach should be.
Recently I interviewed Luke Goetting, Director of Puffingston Presentations for an Engaging Presentations video series I did with Prezi. His expertise is in "transforming stale business presentations into visually engaging stories." That's why I asked him to share his thinking with you.
Apparently, Duracell 9 volt batteries are the picture of consistency. Last night, all 7 of our upstairs smoke detecters starting squawking within about 30 minutes of each other to indicate that their batteries needed to be replaced. Given that the Duracells were installed in those units on the same day 4 years ago, one would hope that there are more things that we could rely upon to be as consistent and predictable.
AI is reshaping marketing and sales, empowering professionals to work smarter, faster, and more effectively. This webinar will provide a practical introduction to AI, focusing on its current applications, transformative potential, and strategies for successful implementation in your organization. Using real-world examples and actionable insights, we’ll examine how businesses are leveraging AI to increase efficiency, enhance personalization, and drive measurable results.
Growing up as a first-generation Asian American, I lived between two cultures. One was the East-Asian culture my parents brought from Taiwan, which prioritizes the needs and desires of the family and emphasizes academic excellence. The other was the Western culture that surrounded me outside the house, which prioritizes the needs and desires of the individual and emphasizes extracurricular activities.
A sales pitch , no matter how perfect, can quickly be ruined by poor objection handling afterward. Everyone has questions, no matter the industry, no matter the product. It’s a rare day when you pitch someone and they simply submit and ask where to sign. Indeed, a recent HubSpot survey shows 36% of respondents cited closing as the most difficult part of the sales process.
Henry David Thoreau once penned: “goodness is the only investment that never fails.”. I’m thrilled to announce one such investment today. It’s my pleasure to share SalesLoft has finalized our Series D financing. This $70 million investment will benefit revenue generation for decades to come. This is bigger than us. This capital will empower companies to deliver the ultimate prospect and customer experience and generate the most revenue for their business.
As a recruiter, I hear from many founders and sales leaders regularly about how many salespeople they need and how quickly they need them. I know the pressure is on – many are handed very aggressive targets (I would actually say some are unrealistic ). But they often miss a critical component in the middle of their urgency. Growth is so much more than just getting more bodies in the door as fast as you can.
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
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