A Sales Guy
FEBRUARY 20, 2019
Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Bro Culture, Lack of Coaching Too Product-Centric Not enough sales people 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. Sales is the greatest profession in the world in my opinion.
Anthony Cole Training
FEBRUARY 21, 2019
In this article, we discuss and identify the three main reasons why salespeople get duped into believing a specific opportunity will close and why some deals are not worth chasing. They are: Weak pipeline. Failure to ask tough questions. Afraid to pull the plug.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Gong.io
FEBRUARY 12, 2019
Looking for a list of the BEST sales blogs to read in 2019? Then look no further. If you want to level up your sales game, your best bet is to read the best sales blogs the pros are learning from. BUT, instead of making a list of my own favorite sales blogs, I did something different: I asked over 50 sales leaders and professionals which sales blogs THEY rave about.
Speaker: Jady West, VP of Hospitality & Chris Bennett, Head of Sales & Engineering
The modern hotel room is no longer just a place to stay—it’s an experience to remember. Today’s guests expect seamless 5G connectivity, personalized comfort, and high-tech convenience. From AI-powered smart room controls to in-room entertainment and app-based services, technology is redefining hospitality from the inside out. In this new session featuring industry pros Jady West and Chris Bennett, we’ll explore how high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity powers the innovations that are enabling
ConversionXL
FEBRUARY 18, 2019
Social media isn’t a perfect source of market research: It’s not a representative sample and, for small businesses, it’s simply too small of a sample. But for large organizations, it’s still a critical one. Why? Because it includes your most passionate fans. It’s also a rare source of candid consumer opinion: 80% of social media posts are about ourselves, and those opinions and beliefs—expressed individually and within a community—are not interrupted or biased by participation in a formal
Partners in Excellence
FEBRUARY 10, 2019
I’m often asked the fastest way to improve sales productivity. The answer is simple and should be obvious, “Stop Chasing Customers/Prospects You Can’t Help!” That statement is likely to elicit a resounding “Dugghhhh!” The reality, however, is that sales people waste too much time chasing customers they can’t help or worst, customers that don’t want/need their help.
Technology Sales Today brings together the best content for technology sales professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Anthony Cole Training
FEBRUARY 13, 2019
In a business world filled with an abundance of technologically advanced CRM tools, there are 5 tools that salespeople must use and sales managers must implement throughout their day-to-day activities and agendas, in order to be successful.
Gong.io
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
If doing a product demo FEELS easy and intuitive, watch out. Even if you have lots of product knowledge, doing a product demo persuasively is hard and counterintuitive. That’s right, COUNTERINTUITIVE. What do I mean? I mean that what feels right during a product demo usually causes failure. For example, it probably feels right and intuitive to do a “ramp up” product demo.
SaaStr
FEBRUARY 24, 2019
Recently for the SaaStr Annual, we were “the largest customer” for 3 vendors. All 3 lied to us: One vendor was a friend of a departed contractor. This is a pretty common way deals are done, even today. The champion’s favorite vendor. They misled us in terms of scale and capabilities. One vendor was a well-established software vendor, but misrepresented their experience at scale.
ConversionXL
FEBRUARY 13, 2019
U.S. companies spend billions on training each year. What about marketing departments? How much do they spend? What are they getting out of it? And what are they struggling to solve? We surveyed 462 marketing leaders—CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Marketing Directors—to find out. Respondents completed a 10-question survey that covered: The perceived skill level of marketing teams.
Speaker: Frank Taliano
Documents are the backbone of enterprise operations, but they are also a common source of inefficiency. From buried insights to manual handoffs, document-based workflows can quietly stall decision-making and drain resources. For large, complex organizations, legacy systems and siloed processes create friction that AI is uniquely positioned to resolve.
Partners in Excellence
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
This post is another of my learnings on my personal learning journey on micro improvements. There are two habits I’ve realized are critical to my productivity that are enormously simple, but it’s taken a long time to recognize them. One is hugely simple to implement–it really focuses on my mindset. The other is theoretically easy, but takes a lot of practice to make it real.
Women Sales Pros
FEBRUARY 2, 2019
There is an infamous Superbowl commercial for some of us that played in 2015 called #LikeAGirl and in honor of Superbowl weekend I’d like to share a great blog post sales strategist and best-selling sales author Jill Konrath wrote about that commercial. With no further ado, please enjoy, I Sell #LikeAGirl. Lori Richardson is President of Women Sales Pros and is working to see more women in sales and sales leadership in companies where there are male-majority sales teams.
Anthony Cole Training
FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Typically, when a salesperson doesn't win an account it's due to a few different factors; the prospect didn't have a compelling reason to make a change, the salesperson didn't do enough to uncover their capacity to invest, or the incumbent wasn't properly eliminated from the running. In this article, we discuss the 3 Rules every successful salesperson must follow in order to eliminate stalls and objections during the sales process.
Membrain
FEBRUARY 17, 2019
Based on much of the press, much of it created by vendors of AI solutions, AI is the answer to all the problems we have with sales and marketing. We are presented a brave new world where we can engage the right customers, say exactly the right words at the right time, making sure we ask no more than 4 discovery questions, that our opening pitch (?) is no longer than 9.1 minutes, that….
Advertisement
B2B marketers face a number of challenges, including: continuously generating great leads converting leads to active sales prospects finding vendors that deliver real results Aggregage has proven content syndication, webinar, online advertising and intent signal marketing programs that deliver higher-quality leads. More than 700 companies have already benefited from our programs.
SaaStr
FEBRUARY 28, 2019
I remember the first time I tried to do the Old Price-Raise-Without-Notice tactic. We’d closed Qualcomm in Year 1 for the grand total of $10,000. Not all of Qualcomm, but a nice division. It was a great logo in Year 1, and our champion and buyer did 3 webinars for us, an external case study — and an internal case study at Qualcomm. They were magic, these pieces of content.
ConversionXL
FEBRUARY 20, 2019
You invest in your employees—mentoring, conferences, training. Yet over time, unused knowledge fades. Employees take other jobs. How do you protect your investment? Marketing had the highest turnover rate (17%) of any profession in 2018. It isn’t the only cause of knowledge loss. Retirements, promotions, intracompany transfers, and “the forgetting curve” all play a role, too.
Heinz Marketing
FEBRUARY 22, 2019
Editor’s Note: What started as an email string complaining about bad sales emails became… this. It’s a stark comparison to say the least, but a handful of B2B buyers we showed a draft of this to agreed wholeheartedly. Special thanks to Marilyn Cox , a B2B marketing veteran and recipient of a constant barrage of sales pitches, for writing this for us.
Women Sales Pros
FEBRUARY 8, 2019
I never aspired to enter a career in sales, but I had a natural gift for connecting with people, which made sales a natural fit. My non-traditional path to sales started early in my professional career when I lost my first marketing job in NYC. It was during this challenging time that I became fascinated with what motivates people, what keeps some moving forward in times of great stress and what makes others fold under pressure.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
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.
Anthony Cole Training
FEBRUARY 6, 2019
Part of being a highly successful and effective salesperson is having the ability to walk away from an opportunity. After numerous attempts to contact a prospect and close a deal, there will be a time when you as a professional must determine when and how to call it quits.
Membrain
FEBRUARY 13, 2019
According to the Sales Education Foundation, on average, graduates of academic sales programs ramp up 50% faster than their peers without a sales-specific educational background, and experience 30% less turnover. Yet colleges and universities have been slow to meet the need, with only a few leading universities offering dedicated sales majors.
SaaStr
FEBRUARY 14, 2019
Here’s what I look for to try to get a sense if they’ll perform: Do they call out top performance with metrics ? The best reps are often quite precise. E.g., hit 152% of Quota last year, 143% year before, etc. Maybe they are exaggerating, that’s besides the point. The question is, do they love to win and have a history of it? Metrics are a good indicator here.
ConversionXL
FEBRUARY 6, 2019
The classic graph for the product lifecycle is a sales curve that progresses through stages: a sharp rise from the x-axis as a product transitions from Introduction to the Growth phase; a sustained, rounded peak in Maturity; and a gradual Decline that portends its withdrawal from the market. Each stage of the product lifecycle has implications for marketing.
Speaker: Jesse Hunter and Brynn Chadwick
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.
Miller Heiman Group
FEBRUARY 28, 2019
Wouldn’t life be easier if the only stakeholder a seller needed was the main point of contact? If only. Stakeholder management is complicated—because it involves an ever-expanding number of roles who influence purchase decisions at an organization. According to CSO Insights’ 2018 Buyer Preferences Study , the average salesperson must now navigate six or more buying influences to close a single deal (which can take five months or more).
Women Sales Pros
FEBRUARY 22, 2019
Strategies to Increase Retention, Expand Relationships and Drive Referrals This week I moved my business from one of my long-time vendors – hired someone new. The new vendor is not any less expensive, does not have a better product and is actually slightly less convenient to work with in terms of availability and response time. So why did a move? Good question and an important one to know the answer to if you want to know how to succeed in today’s marketplace.
Partners in Excellence
FEBRUARY 19, 2019
One of the biggest issues we hear from everyone involved in sales and marketing is capturing the customer attention. Whether it’s that first communication, an email, text, or social engagement, that first phone conversation, or that first meeting. Getting that first contact or engagement is something nearly everyone struggles with. Given the difficulty we have with these first contacts, one would expect we would be driven to create the very best first impression we possibly could.
Understanding the Sales Force
FEBRUARY 6, 2019
Hiring the right salespeople has always been problematic for most companies but with the shortage of quality sales candidates, it's more difficult than ever. The pressure to fill a role often causes sales management to hire the best of the pool of candidates instead of the right candidate. What's the difference you ask? The difference is huge, especially if you have a complex sale, a long sales cycle, or a lot of competition.
Advertisement
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.
SaaStr
FEBRUARY 16, 2019
Cash collections is a topic we haven’t discussed much on SaaStr, but boy it can be important all the way until you have a CFO. And often after. What’s the issue? The issue is that most SaaS start-ups are terrible at collecting cash that doesn’t come from a payment gateway. Just terrible. – terrible at collections. start-ups without an A/R function often have $250k-$500k in uncollectible receivables. – metrics that break and don't make sense. starts to harm yo
ConversionXL
FEBRUARY 5, 2019
Years ago, when I first started split-testing , I thought every test was worth running. It didn’t matter if it was changing a button color or a headline—I wanted to run that test. My enthusiastic, yet misguided, belief was that I simply needed to find aspects to optimize, set up the tool, and start the test. After that, I thought, it was just a matter of awaiting the infamous 95% statistical significance.
Sales Hacker
FEBRUARY 26, 2019
Here’s the scene: you’ve worked hard (really hard) to get a deal to the “verbal yes” stage. Then, your prospect drops this on you: “We like you, but you need to do something about that price.”. Or this: “We’re ready to go, but I just need to make little revision to the contract…”. Think about how you’d respond. What would you say that could help you win at this point in a negotiation?
Membrain
FEBRUARY 10, 2019
Every established sales methodology attracts its own fan base. Some are fans of SPIN®, others Challenger®, Miller-Heiman, Sandler, Solution Selling® and so on – the list goes on for ages. I’m particularly but not exclusively attracted to "value selling" myself.
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.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
150 
Let's personalize your content