June, 2015

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Sales Habits – Coaching Bad Habits Out of Sales People

Anthony Cole Training

Let’s start with the premise that we all have at least 1 bad habit. As I stated in a previous article about habits, a bad habit is one that takes you away or keeps you from accomplishing your objectives and goals. We all have at least 1. With that in mind, let’s assume that even your best sales people have a habit or two that, if identified and corrected, would help them sell more, be more productive or more effective.

Sales 197
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#SocialSelling at The Hangar with The Andrew Westlund Group

Closing Bigger

Thank-you to the Andrew Westlund Group for inviting me out to The Hangar today to address your group of companies for you monthly meeting. Social Media and sales were once thought of as separate disciplines yet today they are inseparable tools for business. Here are some quick links for you: The 2014 Sales Quota Attainment Study by A Sales Guy Inc. and Kitedesk.

Quota 135
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The Great Create, The Good Consume and The Poor Ignore

A Sales Guy

I was reading this killer post the other day, and it got me thinking. The post addressed what we do in our free time, but it was this quote that got my synapses firing: Decide when you are consuming and when you are creating. As I read it, I was struck by the simplicity of the statement, but even more by the power of its implication. It implies that everyone creates or consumes, and it’s this assertion that had my mind going crazy.

Represent 124
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My Favorite Sales Books

Partners in Excellence

I hate starting posts with an apology. Particularly to a group of outstanding people, many of whom are friends–authors of sales books. There are a lot of awesome ideas out there by experienced and thoughtful people. At this moment, I’m writing “blurbs” for several soon to be published books, by friends, on selling and sales management.

Sales 121
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Welcome to the Future of Hospitality: Smart Rooms Start Here

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

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Are We Wasting Our Time on LinkedIn?

Understanding the Sales Force

Copyright: 123RF Stock Photo. It's the place to be. Join 50 groups. Ask questions. Answer questions. Connect. Like discussions. Contribute comments. Is it a means to an end or is it all a huge waste of time? LinkedIn is a tool that I use more than some and less than others. As busy as I am, I'm unable to spend an hour on LinkedIn each day, but I do visit daily.

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10 Rules for Using Social Media to Prospect

The Sales Hunter

1. Don’t think social media is going to replace traditional prospecting methods. View social media as another tool to help you prospect. Most of all, never allow yourself to take the quality time you devote to prospecting and spend it doing social media. Biggest mistake you can make is thinking all you need to do […].

More Trending

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Your Test is Only as Good as Your Hypothesis [Video]

ConversionXL

ConversionXL Live 2016 is coming up next March (get on the list to get tickets at pre-release prices ). We’re going to publish video recordings of the previous event, and here’s the first one. You run A/B tests – some win, some don’t. The likelihood of the tests actually having a positive impact largely depends whether you’re testing the right stuff.

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This Is The Only Thing Sales Leaders Need To Coach

A Sales Guy

When I teach skiing, one of the most difficult expectations I have to set with my clients is, Rome wasn’t built in a day. There is only so much they can learn in a day or a week. In spite of my efforts to set their expectations, they almost always want massive gains. They want to ski moguls like a pro. They want to control their speed on blacks.

Sales 115
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Figuring It Out, Critical Sales Competency!

Partners in Excellence

I spend a lot of time in group meetings or 1 on 1’s with sales people trying to understand how they do their jobs and trying to understand what they need to be more effective and drive bigger numbers. To be honest, most of the time I have to bite my tongue as I listen to the litany of things they need to be successful. It always starts with more and better products–along with the lowest prices.

Sales 110
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Do Top Candidates Find You Attractive?

Engage Selling

Get creative. That’s my advice for any business owner or sales leader about to embark on a new phase of recruiting. Far too many leaders stick to the same old, same old when it comes to their recruitment process and trying to find great talent to join their team. It’s surprising to see how many […].

Process 105
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Automation, Evolved: Your New Playbook for Smarter Knowledge Work

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.

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10 Traits of High-Performing Leaders

The Sales Hunter

What does it take to be a high-performing leader? You don’t have to look very far — the word LEADERSHIP broken down says it all: Listen Empower Attitude Driven Encourage Relate Simplify Helpful Imagine Passion Listen: Leaders take the time to listen to what is being said and, more importantly, to what is not being […].

Sales 109
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Sales Success – It’s a Function of Beliefs, Habits and Skills

Anthony Cole Training

I’m going to skip over beliefs and skills today because, when I started thinking about this post, I decided I wanted to write about habits. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle. About 6 weeks ago, maybe longer than that, I developed a new habit – not blogging. It was an easy habit to develop. One day, I didn’t post a blog, and then I didn’t post one the next day, or the next, or the next and, the next thing you know, it’s June 1 st.

Negotiate 190
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Why Some Great Salespeople Produce and Others Don't

Understanding the Sales Force

Earlier this week I wrote an article on how to get sales selection right. Once and for all. Forever. If you didn't read it, please give that a quick read before reading this article because I used the earlier article as a starting point for this one. Earlier today I was talking with someone who wanted his farmers - salespeople who are assigned to a single enterprise account - to hunt.

Sales 104
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#heykeenan Take 2 What I Look For In A Killer Sales Person

A Sales Guy

Alright, #heykeenan Take 2 is up and I’m answering a question from Gene Carr , CEO of Patron Technology. Gene wanted to know what I look for when I hire salespeople. It’s a great question and my answer might surprise you. Get my take on anything, ask your questions at #heykeenan on Twitter.

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Get Higher-Quality B2B Leads That Convert!

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.

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Did You Write The RFP?

Partners in Excellence

I was asked to participate in a deal review. It was one of those “mega” deals, the one you dream of, the one that will make your year–or at least give it a significant boost. In preparation, I started to review the opportunity in the CRM system. I discovered my client was pretty late in the cycle. Apparently, the customer had been thinking about this problem for some time.

Clients 108
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The Hard Life of an Optimizer – Yuan Wright [Video]

ConversionXL

Here’s another presentation from ConversionXL Live 2015 (sign up for the 2016 list to get tickets at pre-release prices ). While optimization is fun, it’s also really hard. We’re asking a lot of questions. Why do users do what they do? Is X actually influencing Y, or is it a mere correlation? The test bombed – but why? Yuan Wright, Director of Analytics at Electronic Arts, will lead you through an open discussion about the challenges we all face – optimizer to optim

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Customer Service is a Product of Your Company’s Culture

The Sales Hunter

It’s easy for people believe they offer customer service. It’s another thing to do it. Challenge is customer service is a moving target. What it means to one person may not mean anything to another person. The hospitality industry is built around customer service, and yet even within this industry, there are wide ranges […].

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5 Steps For Hiring Better Sales People

Anthony Cole Training

For additional information, please go to hirebettersalespeople.com. Sign up for our next workshop in the Extraordinary Sales Manager Series – Hire Better Sales People. Get a free pre-hire sales candidate assessment.

Sales 179
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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

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.

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12 Proven Sales Hacks to Increase Sales

Understanding the Sales Force

It seems that these days, things are changing faster than we can recognize. Cosby is finally out of the news, but the Marathon Bomber is back in. The terrible winter weather is in our rear view mirror but now we are dealing with droughts and tornadoes! And in our world, Sales 2.0, a term we haven't heard in a while, is making the rounds again. In today's article, we'll talk about the sales improvements that readers are most interested in.

Sales 100
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Wisdom Goes Out The Window When Emotion Comes Through The Door

A Sales Guy

You ever wonder why deals can go south so quick, for no apparent reason? Have you ever had a deal that seemed like it was cruising along perfectly when boom, it falls apart. Objections start flying from leftfield; the prospect becomes erratic, they stop meeting commitments, they keep changing their mind and deadlines start slipping. This craziness is usually the result of too much emotion getting into the sales cycle.

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Prospecting—Sweaty Palms And Picking Up The Phone!

Partners in Excellence

Last week I was having a conversation with an executive. This executive had an incredible background. He had built and sold several very successful start-ups. You would recognize their names. Currently he served on the boards of several large companies, was involved in another great start-up, was part of a venture company. This individual has just an awesome background, filled with success–and is just wickedly smart.

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How to Set Your Outsourced Lead Generation Program Up for Success (pt 3)

Pointclear

In the first 2 parts of this series we discussed the role of executives and best practices for planning and preparation when outsourcing your lead generation program. Now as we wrap up, we’ll address appropriate expectations for a program and two essential components for ongoing success: a shared lead definition and accountability between marketing and sales.

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The Intersection of AI and Sales: Personalization Without Compromise

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.

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What You Shouldn’t Expect When You Leave a Voicemail

The Sales Hunter

I have been looking at 5 ways voicemail can work for prospecting. You can check out the first 3 ways here, here and here. Now we come to #4: Don’t expect your single voicemail message to be returned. That’s right! Your single voicemail won’t be returned! Instead, view your message as one of a series of […].

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Sales Habits, Sales Managers and Changing Habits

Anthony Cole Training

As I continue to think about habits of sales people and the role of the sales manager in identifying, assessing and “correcting” habits, I keep looking for additional information that might be additive to this string of articles. I came across an old email sent to me from Ike Jablon. Ike is a media relations specialist at SoftwareAdvice a company that helps businesses find sales software.

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How to Finally Get Sales Selection Right

Understanding the Sales Force

Before I share some crucial sales selection tips, I need to begin with some baseball. My apologies to all of my cricket and soccer obsessed readers. My team, the Boston Red Sox, just lost their seventh consecutive game. They are in last place and heading for their third last place finish in the past four years. The outlier year was 2013, when they won the World Series.

Sales 98
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The Difference Between What You Do And How You Do It

A Sales Guy

Everyone is a salesperson, or a teacher, or a doctor or a truck driver, or mechanic, or a waiter, or a recruiter, or a Vice President, or a developer or a something. Everyone is something. That’s obvious. When we first meet people, one of the first questions we’re often asked is; “What do you do for a living?” We always seem answer it right too.

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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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Providing Clarity

Partners in Excellence

Regardless of our role–customer, sales person, sales manager, executive, we face similar issues. Overwhelming and conflicting information and data, rapidly shifting priorities, time and space compression, dizzying complexity, more choices yet fewer realistic alternatives, ever accelerating change, continual disruption, increasing confusion. We are expected to do more, with fewer resources, in less time, with more-but perhaps not the right information.

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Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in.'

Pointclear

This title is a quote from Ronald Reagan. The status quo—that marketing management doesn’t understand the definition of a qualified lead—is nothing new. Here’s the problem. Salespeople consistently say that they do not get enough qualified leads. Qualified leads, according to sales, are based on criteria they understand but marketing is in the dark about.

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10 Ways to Make Prospecting on the Phone Effective

The Sales Hunter

1. Make the call about the prospect not about you. The reason for the call must be based around providing the prospect with information or insight they will find of value. 2. Speak with energy and believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself and speak with confidence and energy, why should you […].

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Two Other Patterns that Set Breakthrough Companies Apart from the Crowd, Pt.2

Anthony Cole Training

A guest post by Tony Scelzo, President of Stringcan. Tony Cole of Anthony Cole Training, LLC has been advising and training for 22+ years in banking, insurance and investment verticals. We asked him about his experience with domino companies. He explained: “I’ve had a chance to see a lot of companies go from small, flat, non-growing organizations to organizations where something happens and they really begin to kick into gear and they start to grow.

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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.