August, 2013

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The Truth About Sales People #2 - They Need To Change Their Focus

Anthony Cole Training

'Your sales people are probably focusing on the wrong thing(s) when meeting with new prospects. But.it isn''t their fault. From the time they join your organization, you teach them, or reinforce with them, that in order to persuade a prospect to buy, they must be able to effectively communicate a unique selling proposal, a competitive edge, or a dazzling 30-second commercial.

Sales 206
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There are a Too Many Bad Sales People

A Sales Guy

'I’m going to interrupt the normally cheery, uplifting, feel good nature of this blog with a black cloud observation. I suspect, like many of my posts, this one is going be controversial and going to p**s a lot of you off. However, my thoughts on that are, if this post pisses you off, it’s your subconscious telling you something. Therefore, you might want to listen to it.

Quota 128
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11 Low-Hanging Fruits for Increasing Website Speed (and Conversions)

ConversionXL

'Website speed matters. Fast-loading sites perform better on all fronts: better user experience, higher conversions, more engagement, even higher search rankings. If you’re after mobile traffic (everyone is), site speed becomes even more important. No one wants to download a 4MB website on their smartphone, but most sites are that way. Yours can be different.

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“Problem Talking” Is Not “Problem Solving”

Partners in Excellence

'As sales people, we build the greatest value for our customers by helping them solve problems. Stated differently, customers value sales people who are problem solvers. However, too often, I encounter sales people who think they are problem solvers, when really they are problem talkers. There’s a huge difference. We know what problems our products and solutions solve.

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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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Get Sales Compensation Right to Recruit Winning Salespeople

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Sales candidates, especially good ones, are exponentially more difficult to attract than they were just two years ago. We regularly observe clients struggling when it comes to getting resumes from quality candidates. One of the reasons is compensation. 1. True or False: The higher the compensation, the better. 2.

Extrinsic 107
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3 Ways to Boost Your Confidence as a Salesperson

The Sales Hunter

'What will it take for you to not only feel confident, but also for others to view you with confidence — to trust that you genuinely are there to help them? It doesn’t take long for us to discover that confidence plays a significant role in the world of sales. Interestingly, the assumption is often made that if someone has chosen selling for their profession, they are “naturally” confident.

Price 103

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How to Know if You’re Bringing Value – Note to Sales People

A Sales Guy

'How do you know if you offer enough value in the sale to close it? How do you know if you have enough leverage to not compete on price? How do you know if the client needs to make the deal? Ask this one question; What’s the impact to the customer or prospect if the DON’T buy my product or service? Your answer to this question tells you everything you will need to know.

Contract 123
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Give Your Advertising ROI a Serious Boost by Maintaining Scent (11 examples)

ConversionXL

'Want to know how to deal a serious blow to your landing page conversions? Have it look different from the ad they saw before landing on the page, and have it contain different words. In other words, one of the best ways to improve landing page conversions is to maintain scent: make pre-click and post-click message + look & feel match. There needs to be “scent” The ad they see or the email they read needs to smell like the landing page they land on.

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Do You Really Know Your Sweet Spot?

Partners in Excellence

'Maximizing sales success, market penetration, and growth requires knowing your “sweet spot.” The sweet spot is that set of customers having problems that we are the best in the world at solving. These customers are likely to be our best, most loyal, and most profitable customers. The biggest drain on sales performance is selling outside the sweet spot—trying to get customers whose problems we aren’t the best in the world at solving to buy.

Launch 127
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Why Sales Leaders and Salespeople Get Frustrated

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan OK, so you do get frustrated with sales or you wouldn''t have clicked the link. Why? Do you get frustrated with: Salespeople? Prospects? Results? Effort? Forecasts? Effectiveness? Focus? Discipline? Consistency? Growth and Improvement? Pipeline Velocity? Change? Behavior? Attitude? Sales Selection? On Boarding?

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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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The Power of Short Questions in the Sales Process

The Sales Hunter

'The best way to engage your prospect or customer is by asking short questions. When you do, you will tap into opportunities that long questions will never reveal. Short-questions are truly an amazing tool most salespeople never seem to grasp. The vast majority of salespeople love to show how smart they are by asking long complicated questions. Problem is that questions of that type do little to help the sales process.

Process 100
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The Truth About Sales People #2 - Their Sales Approach is Not Remarkable

Anthony Cole Training

'Your sales people are probably focusing on the wrong thing(s) when meeting with new prospects. But.it isn''t their fault. From the time they join your organization, you teach them, or reinforce with them, that in order to persuade a prospect to buy, they must be able to effectively communicate a unique selling proposal, a competitive edge, or a dazzling 30-second commercial.

Sales 121
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6 Killer Individual Sales Stats to Measure Your Sales Reps

A Sales Guy

'In baseball, there is the batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, HRs, ERA, WHIP, RBI’s and a whole gang of other stuff. In football, there is completion percentage, TD’s, YAC (yards after the catch), QBR (Quarterback Rating), yards per carry, yards per game and more. In basketball, there is field goal percentage, blocked shots, steals, free throw percentage, points per game, efficiency and, as with the other two, a whole slew of other individual stats.

Sports 121
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Work Your Referral Network – It Is a Sales Bounty

Score More Sales

'If you were hungry and had a refrigerator full of fresh, just-picked fruits and vegetables delivered right from a local, award-winning farm, would you reach in and grab some of that goodness? What if you were hungry and forgot to look in your refrigerator – you were just too busy dealing with issues that have come up, and helping existing customers, calling prospects, and looking for prospects?

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Insight Is Not The End, It’s The Beginning

Partners in Excellence

'There has been so much good discussion on Insight over the past few years. Everyone tends to have a different point of view–or twists what Insight is to support their own point of view (and I am probably guilty of that). But in reading a lot of the discussions, I get a feeling that Insight is becoming the destination. If we, sales people, just had the right Insights, pitched/messaged the right way to the right customer, we’d have the answer to ever B2B sales person’s dream

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The Key to Powerful Sales Conversations

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Earlier this week I wrote this article about the importance of using specific words and phrases at specific times. That article discussed some of the milestones in the sales process where just the right word or phrase can make a such a huge - make or break - difference in the direction that the sales call takes.

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4 Quick Tips for End-of-the-Summer Prospecting

The Sales Hunter

'Don’t lose momentum now. If anything, you need to pick it up while your competition is still on vacation. August is a huge vacation month and that means it’s easy to think there is zero business to be had. Don’t worry about August being a poor month. Instead, race like mad to set yourself up to win big from September to December. Here are 4 quick things you can do now to set yourself up for a big finish: 1.

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Good Reads for B2B Sales - 99 Prospecting Tips from Sales Experts

Pointclear

'Keeping up to date on the latest innovations and opinions in sales can be time-consuming, especially in the the digital space. Sales Sphere features relevant blog articles from PointClear''s online B2B sales circles. The Rise Of Inside Sales Is Shaking Up The Sales Pipeline. “The most successful organizations are realizing the vision of sales 2.0, by using the data, metrics and predictability that inside sales has always been known for,” says Anneke Seley, CEO of Reality Works Group.

B2B 89
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1st, 2nd, and 3rd Party Intent Data: Which Is Right for You?

How do 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party intent data compare? 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data each have specific advantages and disadvantages. It comes down to four factors: accuracy, cost, control and quantity. This infographic explains the pros and cons of each and helps you understand which one is best for meeting your business objectives. Intent data can be a great way to fill your pipeline and close more deals.

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There are Too Many Bad Sales Managers [Yeah, and Sales Leaders Too]

A Sales Guy

'I’m here to drop another dark cloud observation on this community. It’s a follow up to my post which, in a nutshell, I said sales people suck. Not very surprising, it got a lot of attention. I expected most people to jump down my throat calling me a sellout (which I expect to get from this one too). It didn’t happen, well not entirely.

Quota 121
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Inside Sales Power Tip 129 – Get More Leads

Score More Sales

'Do you want more and better leads when reaching out to potential buyers? This is definitely one of the top requests I hear when meeting with those prospecting for net-new business. It seems that no matter what data services your company subscribes to, it is still difficult to find those leads you know could become more probable prospective customers.

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Knowing More Than Our Customers

Partners in Excellence

'I get disturbed by much of the hyperbole around Insight Selling and Teaching Our Customers. We are supposed to know more than our customers. I think in many cases that’s true and an important part of value creation. Certainly, we know more about our products and solutions–but that is probably meaningless to the customer until very late in their buying process.

Customers 121
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Which Industries Need the Most Help to Get Sales to the Next Level?

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan The lumber and building products industry is notorious for having weak salespeople (compared with the population of salespeople in all industries) who call on distributors and retail lumber yards and take orders. They could be far more effective, much more efficient and experience exponentially better results.

Retail 94
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The Battle of the Authoring Tools: A 10-Point Comparison for Picking the Right One

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.

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VIDEO SALES TIP: Would You Buy From You?!

The Sales Hunter

'I run into salespeople all the time who say they believe in their product and price, but a true test is this: Would you buy from you? Do you believe in your material enough that not only would you buy, but at the price you are asking? The most successful salespeople are willing to dig into the depths of such questions. Check out the below video to better understand what I mean: Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. .

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'Gold Calling' Is Alive and Well

Pointclear

'More musings on the premature death knell for outbound sales. S. Anthony Iannarino wrote in a blog that “All generalizations are lies.” One of the biggest and most damaging is that cold calling is dead. One article espousing the theory that cold calling doesn’t work anymore states that making cold calls creates the perception that you have nothing better to do; or worse that you are desperate and needy.

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I’m Black. Thanks!

A Sales Guy

'I’m black. I was born in 1968. My mom gave me up for adoption. I was adopted by a white family in 1968. I grew up in several interracial neighborhoods (OK, semi-interracial). I was accepted to college in 1987. I have a college degree. I became a proud first-time home owner in my early 30′s. (the late 90′s). I have friends who are black, white, asian, hispanic, gay, jewish and everything in between.

Promote 119
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Inside Sales Power Tip 127 – Share Stories

Score More Sales

'It’s too easy to sit in a chair all day making dials and reciting a script. Scripts sound canned, and they ARE canned. If you spend part of your day calling prospective buyers, you must find a way to connect with them on some level in order to earn ten or fifteen more minutes of their time. Building trust takes time. It differentiates who moves forward with a buyer and who does not.

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How to Leverage Intent Data for Better Outcomes

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.

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Belief And Confidence, Critical For Sales Success

Partners in Excellence

'To be successful as sales professionals we have to believe in ourselves. We have to have confidence in working with our customers, in our abilities to bring value to and influence our customers. We have to believe in our products. If we don’t believe in our products, we can never present them with confidence or credibility. We can never defend our solutions in the face of competition.

Pitch 120
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Specific Words are So Crucial to a Sales Conversation

Understanding the Sales Force

'Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan. I just returned from a speaking engagement in Athens and had to stop at passport control several times during this trip. They always ask "what kind of business?" and over the years I''ve used them all: Consulting, speaking, training, business adviser, author, coaching, etc. I''ve learned that if I want to be interrogated, "speaker" would be the answer of choice.

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Do Customers Lie Intentionally to Salespeople?

The Sales Hunter

'Recently, I posed the question, “ Is your customer lying to you because you’re lying ?” I want to explore further about whether customers are intentionally lying. When a salesperson asks me if I think customers have a tendency to lie or want to lie, I always reply with, “Have you given the customer any reason to lie to you?” I feel salespeople sometimes do give the customer a reason to lie.

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PowerViews with Nick Stein: The Role of Games in the Sales Office

Pointclear

'Mobile and social technologies have radically changed the way people buy. Buyers are increasingly savvy and willing to shop around, and salespeople have to recognize how the landscape has changed and how the interaction with potential customers continues to evolve. Companies must take the lead and make sure their sales people are familiar with the new paradigm, says my latest guest on PowerViews, Nick Stein, senior director of marketing and communications at Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud

Gaming 85
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5 Inspiring B2B Marketing Campaigns to Take Yours to the Next Level

Your next big B2B marketing idea starts here. Get inspired with these five successful B2B marketing campaigns. Ready to generate more leads, interest, and revenue with your B2B marketing? In this comprehensive eBook, you’ll get: In-depth studies of five successful B2B marketing campaigns spanning a wide range of industries Key takeaways and lessons from each story to implement in your own strategy Resources to help your own B2B marketing thrive By submitting this form, you agree to have your con