Iannarino

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

First impressions are everything.

Cold Call 262

Cold Call Prospecting 262

Membrain

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

Over the past two weeks on this blog, I have laid out a simple framework for using win/loss analysis to massively improve your sales effectiveness, including how to collect the right data and how to supercharge your sales strategy.

Sales 115

Sales 115

Spiro Technologies

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Sales is, at its core, about making people happy. A happy prospect is more likely to buy from you, and a happy customer is more likely to refer you to friends and family. But far too often, salespeople focus so much on convincing people to buy, that they forget they should also aim to make people happy. While human interactions are complex, you shouldn’t necessarily overthink the seller – prospect relationship.

Prospecting 105

Prospecting Sales Customers Conversion 105

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

For the past several years, news gets tougher and tougher. First the pandemic, we and our customers had to discover new ways of working, engaging and moving forward. “Virtual” became the watchword for how things got done–whether it involved internal collaboration, partners, or customer engagement. Just as we started to learn how to manage in the pandemic, we start seeing supply chain challenges.

Pipeline 147

Pipeline Sales Sell Customers 147

Speaker: Andrew Regan, Managing Partner at BlueSeed Retail Ltd.

Did you know that 70% of new retail technology fails to deliver expected benefits and can often decrease customer value, service, and experience? With that in mind, how can we empower our store associates to leverage new technology to optimize the customer experience and boost productivity? This exclusive webinar with Andrew Regan will dive into strategies to empower retail associates for success with new technology.

Retail

Search Engine Land

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

Even in boom times, marketing budgets are divided among a range of teams, channels, and initiatives. Going into 2023, with a shaky economy likely to cap many budgets and headcounts far below optimal levels, it will be especially important for marketers to articulate a compelling case for why their area of expertise should get a fair share of resources.

Growth 138

Growth CTR Start-ups Clients 138

The 5% Institute

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Qualifying a lead in sales conversations is one of the most important tasks of the sales process. The reason qualifying a lead in sales conversations is so crucial, is because by doing so correctly you’ll save a ton of time, energy, and potentially money. In this guide, you’ll learn the importance of qualifying a lead in sales conversations, how to do so, as well as a list of qualifying sales leads questions to help you with the task.

Conversion 138

Conversion Sales Clients Service 138

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

It's not just FTX. Every VC I catch up with has a quiet story of fraud in their portfolio. Numbers that were sort of made up usually. Most won't ever be discussed or end up public. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 10, 2022. I’ve had the privilege to invest one way or another in about 35 SaaS companies, both as a VC and as angel. 6 have become decacorns and unicorns, and 3 have sold for $1B+ cash.

Start-ups 137

Start-ups Growth Engineering Customers 137

Heinz Marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

By Lisa Heay , Director of Business Operations at Heinz Marketing. We’ve been in a tough economy in recent months. Companies are wary of an uncertain market and budgets are tight. Deals may be taking longer to close, and as a result, maybe you find yourself planning your next campaign without the benefit of paid ads and digital marketing—instead relying on the old stand-by—email.

A/B testing 131

A/B testing Start-ups Clients Closing 131

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

Selling is about creating value… Well, yeah, … but we have differing views of value, which often focuses on us and not the value customers need… To most sellers, it’s fitting the customer’s budget and winning because we might have a few more features than the alternatives, or are cheaper. The customer is very knowledgeable, they know what they need and want, our goal is to get them to choose us.

Customers 141

Customers Sell Process B2B 141

Search Engine Land

NOVEMBER 21, 2022

As a marketer, SEO or web developer, you know how important it is to keep your WordPress site secure. From using strong passwords and updating plugins to installing a security plugin and monitoring traffic, these tips will help you keep your site safe from hackers. Why security matters for SEO. Website security is often overlooked. However, site security is essential for SEO and digital marketing.

Follow-up 135

Follow-up Referrals Process Closing 135

Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

There are plenty of great authoring tools for developing eLearning, but the one you select could directly impact your course's outcomes. Depending upon your learners’ needs and your organization’s performance goals, you could be overlooking considerations that impact the both effectiveness of your courses and how long it takes to finish them. From general capabilities to specific workflow structures, some aspects are critical when it comes to learning objectives and deadlines.

Price

The 5% Institute

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Sales as a beginner can be daunting at times, which is why we’ve created this list of selling tips for beginners. In this article, we’ll be looking at eight selling tips for beginners to help you win more sales and serve more people, in a consultative and non-pushy way. Selling Tips For Beginners – 8 x To Win More Sales. Selling Tips For Beginners #1 – Have A Road Map.

Sell 137

Sell Up-sell Prospecting Sales 137

Iannarino

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

The close rate, also called the win rate, is a common statistic for measuring sales effectiveness. The average close rate for outside sales professionals is commonly identified as 40 percent. Other statistics suggest all salespeople combined have a close rate of less than 20 percent. I am unaware of any international governing body requiring all sales organizations to upload a file with their wins and losses to include in their annual “State of Sales” report.

Closing 260

Closing Sales Outside Sales Government 260

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Bessemer Venture Partners had added a nice newsletter, Parting the Clouds , that’s very metrics dense. A few stuck out this week as helpful ways to summarize just what’s happening with SaaS public companies. Two big take-aways from this week: 53% of the BVP Cloud Index is trading under 6x ARR , representing 40 companies. The top tier of public Cloud companies is trading at 12x ARR, but they are growing 50%+ at $500m+ in ARR, with importantly, 15%+ Free Cash Flow margins.

Growth 133

Growth Represent 133

Martech

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

We’re wrapping up our series on getting started with Google Analytics 4, with a Q&A with Russ Ketchum, director of Google Analytics. Here he talks about migrating from Universal Analytics and shares some GA4 power user moves. MarTech: What is the most important thing to know about migrating from UA to GA4? Russ Ketchum: GA4 is truly different from Universal Analytics at its core — and that’s intentional.

Start-ups 131

Start-ups Customers Education Process 131

Speaker: Susan Spencer, Principal of Spencer Communications

Intent signal data can go a long way toward shortening sales cycles and closing more deals. The challenge is deciding which is the best type of intent data to help your company meet its sales and marketing goals. In this webinar, Susan Spencer, fractional CMO and principal of Spencer Communications, will unpack the differences between contact-level and company-level intent signals.

Contact

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

We spend lots of time and money focusing on onboarding new sellers. We provide training, tools, content to reduce their ramp time. Managers spend time helping them become productive. Ironically, we provide very little in the way of onboarding new managers, particularly new front line sales managers. Typically, the process is: “Lisa, congrats on moving into the front line sales manager role…… I need an updated forecast by Tuesday!

Sales 138

Sales CRM Pipeline Process 138

Search Engine Land

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

Google Search Console is an amazing tool that provides invaluable search data by real users directly from Google. While the charts and tables are friendly to work with, a large part of the data is not accessible from the UI. The only way to get to this hidden data is to use the API and extract all that valuable search data that is available to you – if you know how.

Follow-up 127

Follow-up Start-ups Product Clients 127

The 5% Institute

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

In this article, we’ll detail our consultative selling approach that work perfectly for Sales Professionals and Business Owners in service based and consultative industries. Learning, implementing and following a sales process is one of the most important things you can learn in sales. This consultative selling approach will give you consistency and will be a simple to use framework to guide your potential clients towards the sale.

Consult 137

Consult Sell Sales Up-sell 137

Iannarino

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

There are a lot of books and programs about negotiating, and you can learn something useful from any of them, but many of the strategies and tactics are not designed for sales negotiations. In B2B sales, we do not find ourselves in high-stakes geopolitical affairs that would require Henry Kissinger, or hostage rescues that might require Chris Voss. Most of the time, our sales negotiations center on the price of what we sell, with occasional negotiations around indemnifications.

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Negotiate Sales B2B Sell 251

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

When economic headwinds pick up, sales leaders are the first to sound the alarm — and chart a new course. Longer sales cycles, larger buying committees, increased price pressure, and smaller teams can quickly combine to reduce your margin for error and increase the urgency to find a solution. To thrive in a challenging environment, sales teams need a rock-solid grasp of the fundamentals and the biggest force-multipliers they can get their hands on.

B2B

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

My summary of Venture Markets in Nov 2022: Series B and later even worse than looks in data: 85%+ of investing here has simply ceased. Seed and Early Series A: Deals take longer but off about 40%. Some have slowed down but most vets don't care too much about today's macros. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 2, 2022. So we’ve talked about it often here at SaaStr, but things are just so … odd right now in SaaS.

Growth 132

Growth Closing Customers 132

Martech

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

Podcasts are now a top channel for B2B content , with 43% of decision makers saying they use them to get business related content, according to a new study. That puts them into a tie with email newsletters, webinars and social media as the most preferred channels for buyers. Second place went to industry-specific newspapers (39%), according to the study by Sapio Research, a market research firm.

B2B 131

B2B Niche Commission Retail 131

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with a client. We talked about something I rarely hear managers discussing, and something I don’t see pundits commenting on. The topic was, “What kind of career path options do we want to develop for our people? How do we challenge and retain our people longer? How can we enable them to contribute at higher levels?

Sell 138

Sell Up-sell Sales Growth 138

Search Engine Land

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

It’s hard not to be anxious about the macroeconomy right now. Unless you’re a brand marketer in a thoroughly recession-proof industry or an agency marketer with a portfolio of clients in recession-proof industries, you’re working against an undercurrent of stress and performance pressure. These emotions may help some marketers achieve hyper-focus.

CTR 125

CTR Campaign B2B CRM 125

Advertisement

Contact and company intent data both have their advantages. Contact-level intent leads can be acted on immediately to reach active buyers, while company-level leads improve outcomes for account-based marketing and other programs. This infographic unpacks the advantages of both contact and company data and gives details about how B2B marketers can benefit from both.

Contact

The 5% Institute

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

If you’re in sales, you’ll eventually come across a gridlock situation – this is where these negotiation strategies and tactics can play a hand and create a win, win situation. These negotiation strategies and tactics can help you get to your ideal outcome, and also help your client walk away from the deal as a winner. In this article, we’ll share ten negotiation strategies and tactics to help you close more sales, in a consultative and non-pushy way. 10 x Negotiation Strategies And Tactics For

Negotiate 137

Negotiate Sales Objectives and Key Results Up-sell 137

Iannarino

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

My competency model for B2B sales includes more character traits than sales skills. Much of the time, a lack of certain character traits prevents salespeople from producing better results. It can also make it more difficult to develop the sales skills a person needs to succeed.

Sales 250

Sales B2B 250

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

“So we're seeing some slowdown in certain sectors and, frankly, acceleration in others, things like low-code, no-code environments, productivity, cybersecurity to protect the enterprise …. So am I seeing a broad slowdown across our platform? No. Are we seeing some pockets? Yes.”. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin ? (@jasonlk) November 8, 2022. So those of us who know Vista Equity Partners (and many of you may not) think of it as one of the largest Private Equity firms buying SaaS companies.

Represent 131

Represent Growth Product 131

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Going from professional ballet dancing to running an AI startup may not seem like the most intuitive career trajectory…but when I share that body language and nonverbal communication is what brings this all together, things start to make a bit more sense. When I retired from the Boston Ballet in 2016 due to an injury, I didn’t think body language would ever play as much of an important role in my life again.

Sales 126

Sales Up-sell Real Estate Trust 126

Speaker: Deniz Olcay, Senior Director of Product Marketing, and Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Modern Sales Content Management (SCM) platforms have become table stakes in the world of sales enablement. Sellers need one-stop access where all of their sales content is stored, organized, deployed, and measured. Today’s modern SCM platforms achieve just that. However, these various platforms also have key differences. In this value-packed webinar, Deniz Olcay and Jake Miller will unravel and debunk the top three SCM myths and explain how to get the most from your SCM solution.

Sales

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Everyday I read articles about how to conduct sales conversations. They get into topics like, “do you start with ‘How are you…,'” They extend into the exact sentence structure, use these words, don’t use these, counter with this, use these pattern interrupts, here are the sequences. There is discussion about authenticity, which often seems to be faux authenticity; sometimes accompanied by recommendations on mirroring, facial expressions, and so forth.

Conversion 137

Conversion Sales Technique Prospecting 137

Gong.io

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Visibility is everything in sales. If you can’t see where each deal is in your sales process and how long it’s been there, you’ll struggle to improve it. . That’s why building and managing a sales pipeline is so important. . A well-defined sales pipeline makes your sales process transparent, allowing you to see your deals in the sales funnel, where they’re getting stuck, and how long the entire process takes.

Pipeline 118

Pipeline Sales Objectives and Key Results Prospecting 118

Martech

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

Many discussions lately have been about how complex the martech stack has become. In my last article , I referenced a recent survey saying more than 60% of B2B marketers described their martech stack as too complex, with one in five saying it’s “more complex than a black hole.” Martech is simply a tool. Part of the argument is that the martech stack does not adequately serve the marketing organization or the business due to its complexity.

Campaign 122

Campaign Technology Technology Customers 122

Iannarino

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

The sales industry is shifting. In 2007 it took an average of around four calls to reach a prospect. Today, it takes eight. Social selling dominates sales think pieces, and email seems to struggle more each year.

Sales 244

Sales Prospecting Sell 244

Speaker: DeAnna McIntosh, Retail Growth Strategist

The past three years have forever changed the retail landscape. Companies of all sizes were forced to welcome change with open arms and surrender to total flexibility in order to be agile in the ever-evolving economic environment. In 2023, we are navigating inflation and its impact on consumer spending, various lasting side effects from the pandemic, and a looming recession in the back half of the year.

Retail