Sat.Jan 19, 2019 - Fri.Jan 25, 2019

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Bringing Clarity to Ambiguous Conversations

Anthony Cole Training

In selling, properly qualifying a prospective buyer is crucial in order to move an opportunity through the pipeline and ultimately close in your favor. Highly effective salespeople do this through the art of asking great sales questions and not fearing the outcome if they challenge a prospect’s statement, or question, in order to gain clarity. In this blog, we cover the 3 things to remember about all prospects and how to fully understand and qualify their motivation to make a change.

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Business Apologies: What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Do

ConversionXL

You start your day with a check-in on social media. You spot a negative review on your Facebook page. Do you: Ignore it and hope nobody sees it? Respond? Spoiler alert: Your answer should be the latter. And it’s not just because 88% of consumers are less likely to purchase from companies that leave complaints unattended. Apologizing is a human behavior that acknowledges and resolves an issue.

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Corporate Promiscuity and How to Avoid It | Sales Strategies

Engage Selling

?????There’s an expression floating around these days that I love: corporate promiscuity. What exactly is that and how does it relate to us as sales leaders?

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Top Line Tips

Women Sales Pros

It’s Sales Kick Off (SKO) Season…Again (Must read for those on the SKO planning team!) It’s sales kick off season again and you want a high impact, memorable event. The agenda content should serve to kick-start sales for the year. Easy, peasy – right? Not so fast. It turns out that you have quite a diverse sales audience with varying levels of sales acumen.

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Smart Tools & Strong Teams: A People-First Approach to AI in Sales

Speaker: Matt Sunshine, CEO at The Center for Sales Strategy

AI isn’t replacing salespeople—it’s empowering them. The most forward-thinking sales organizations are using AI to enhance human performance rather than eliminate it. From coaching and messaging to prospecting and pipeline accountability, artificial intelligence is giving managers and SDRs the new tools they need to work smarter, sell better, and close more.

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6 Strategies for “Magical” Sales and Marketing Alignment

Sales Hacker

Last week, I got a marketing email announcing a major promotion (three months free) about a product I had just purchased and paid full price for. When I contacted my Sales rep to ask about the promotion and see if they could grant me the discount, he said he knew nothing about it. Needless to say, this made him look bad in my eyes. I mean, why did I know more about his company than he did?

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How to Raise Prices for Existing Customers

ConversionXL

Your current customers will never be excited about paying more. But that’s not why raising prices is so difficult. Instead, poor planning is to blame: Companies neglect to plan a price increase until there’s a financial squeeze or, for the thirtieth time, a customer confides that, “You know, you really ought to charge more.”. What typically follows is a hasty price bump that’s detached from product value and communicated incoherently.

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Attention Sales Leaders…These Three Blind Spots Could Be Holding Back Your Sales Team!

Openview

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on LinkedIn here. . “Who knows, you may be that close. You could be uncovering a blind spot or two away to take your career to the next height…” Assegid Habtewold , The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership. Blind spots, we all have them and they have the potential to be damaging.

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5 Tips To Minimize “Churn and Burn” Behavior in Your Sales Team

SaaStr

As you scale your salesteam, unless you are very careful whom you hire and how you train them, incentives being what they are in variable compensation, some negative behavior will creep in. Prospects will be … if not lied to … then told half truths. Told that the product does something it doesn’t quite do. That a use case makes sense, when it doesn’t.

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Workflow Automation Explained, and 5 of the Best Workflow Automation Software For 2019

Hubspot

Manual data entry might be one of the most tedious and inefficient tasks in the working world. Not only does it put you to sleep, but it also wastes precious time and resources, slashing your productivity to bits. In fact, data entry wastes over 10 hours per week for certain sales teams. Fortunately, there’s technology that can automate these mind-numbing tasks, eliminating human error and letting you focus on the work that actually matters -- workflow automation.

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Three Ways to Conduct a Great Sales Kickoff

Women Sales Pros

Take a look at the word “kickoff.” It’s charged with excitement, anticipation, and energy. Now ask yourself if your upcoming sales kickoff will demonstrate that or fall into the “just another meeting” category. As a former vice president of sales, I can confidently say we held some great sales kickoffs. They were a combination of entertainment and education that made salespeople excited to be part of a great sales organization.

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How to Coach Reps on Overcoming Sales Objections with Confidence

Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Global Sales and David Phelan, Account Manager

In a world where buyers are more informed and objections are more nuanced, confidence isn't optional—it’s a competitive advantage. In high-stakes conversations, knowing how to handle pushback can make or break the deal. Join industry experts Brendan Sweeney and David Phelan for a behind-the-scenes look at how teams are transforming sales coaching with real-time feedback, objection-handling role plays, and pre-call preparation that actually sticks.

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Core Competencies of Successful Sellers

RAIN Group

There are common competencies every organization needs to build a truly successful sales organization. At RAIN Group, we organize these competencies around the Sales Competency Wheel SM.

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Do the Least Informed Salespeople Have the Loudest Voices

Understanding the Sales Force

Do the least informed among us have the loudest voices? This article is about salespeople but to set the stage, we'll start with the news. When I listen to and watch the news, it seems that those on the fringes and representing special interest groups get the most attention, benefit of the doubt, dictate how everyone else should think and act, and cause tremendous tension and stress.

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How to Post on Instagram: a Step-by-Step Guide

Hubspot

With over 800 million active users , Instagram is undoubtedly one of the most far-reaching social media networks you can use for marketing purposes. Instagram has proven a viable advertising option for businesses today, and shows no signs of slowing down -- in fact, eMarketer estimates worldwide Instagram ad revenues will exceed $10 billion by 2019 , an exponential increase from 1.86 billion in 2016.

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How to win more deals with 3 storytelling techniques

Membrain

Once upon a time, my youngest brother - who wasn’t very tech savvy at the time - worked with me selling enterprise IT automation software. He was very successful, far more than seasoned IT salespeople on the team, and I couldn’t quite explain why.

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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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5 Surefire Tips for a Successful Sales Kick Off

Women Sales Pros

Sales kickoff events are learning events. And even with online learning gaining prominence in sales organizations, these live, in-person events are still critical to skill development and sales results. Your annual sales kick off needs to serve as a learning experience, providing the content and connections that sellers need to win more business. These tips are focused on how to create the right learning environment for your sales teams.

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7 Things to Look for When Hiring Sales Reps with No Experience

CloserIQ

Hiring candidates for entry-level sales positions can feel like a perilous endeavor. Most candidates lack sales experience, and that tends to make hiring managers nervous. But while selecting inexperienced candidates may seem like a gamble, it’s not. Even if a candidate doesn’t have a sales record, there are still plenty of ways to evaluate his or her potential to sell.

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The Best Programming Languages to Learn, According to HubSpot Software Engineers

Hubspot

When Liam Harwood , a Software Engineer at HubSpot, was in elementary school, he loved playing video games. But unlike most kids his age, he also created them. As a 10 year-old, Liam would spend hours hunkered over an old computer in his basement, coding simple games in QBASIC or Quick Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Liam quickly mastered QBASIC and created the most advanced games he could in the rudimentary language.

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7 Steps to Building Stronger Sales Relationships with Human-Centric Problem Solving

Sales Hacker

Building strong sales relationships is all about trust and demonstrating how the product/solution will make the customer’s life better. But is traditional selling getting you where you want to go? If you’re looking to close more business and feeling stuck, try injecting some human-centric problem solving into your sales process. What is human-centric problem solving?

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Breaking The Commerce Bottleneck: Your SAP Exit Plan Starts Now

Speaker: Jason Cottrell and Gireesh Sahukar

Retailers know the clock is ticking–legacy SAP Commerce support ends in 2026. Legacy platforms are becoming a liability burdened by complexity, rigidity, and mounting operational costs. But modernization isn’t just about swapping out systems, it’s about preparing for a future shaped by real-time interactions, AI powered buying assistants, and flexible commerce architecture.

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Hiring the Right Salesperson

Engage Selling

Hiring the right salesperson for your team can be a hassle. They can have all the right experience, results and seem like an ideal fit during an interview.

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Transactional Versus Complex Selling

Partners in Excellence

We glibly toss around phrases like “We have a transactional selling process,” or, “Ours is a complex selling process.” Often, there is some preening around those making the latter statement, thinking “Real sales people do complex deals!” Recently, I lurked in a conversation, suddenly realizing, while we glibly talk about these types of selling processes, there’s a lot of misunderstanding of them.

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13 Businesses With Brilliant Global Marketing Strategies

Hubspot

Guess what? Global marketing is no longer reserved for brands with deep pockets, nor is it a huge hassle for already over-burdened marketing managers. In fact, a global presence is possible for any business with a creative strategy and an understanding of world markets. What Is Good Global Marketing? Global marketing is the act of focusing a product on the needs of potential buyers in other countries.

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Great News! The Latest Data Shows That Salespeople are Improving

Understanding the Sales Force

Some really terrific news came across my desk this week when John Pattison, Objective Management Group's (OMG's) COO, showed me two graphs he had created. For the first time in recent memory, salespeople as a profession GOT BETTER! That's right, when we compared the results of the 85,000 or so salespeople that were evaluated in 2018 to the 80,000 or so salespeople that were evaluated in 2017, there was a measurable improvement in overall scores!

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New Research-Backed Strategies to Empower Managers as Culture & Engagement Leaders

Speaker: Beth Sunshine, SVP, Up Your Culture

When culture isn’t consistently lived out across the organization, engagement suffers—and it often starts with a disconnect at the top. In this session, Beth Sunshine, SVP of Up Your Culture at The Center for Sales Strategy, will reveal how HR and executive leaders can close the gap between vision and execution by equipping frontline and mid-level managers to become culture carriers.

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Do These Five for a Best Sales Kickoff – SKO

Women Sales Pros

With so many underperforming sellers, why put on an annual “rah rah” event only to turn everyone loose to go back to what they did before that hasn’t worked? Take the SKO as a time to regroup and re-focus on the priorities of the sales team’s mission. LEADERSHIP SETS THE STRATEGY Leaders – from CEO down set the stage for what is important for sellers to focus on this year.

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Why Are You Calling Now?

Partners in Excellence

This morning, I’m doing work in a rare day in the office. A sales person calls. He’s actually pretty interesting, but I pause him mid-pitch, asking, “What caused you to call me now? Is there something that caused you to think it’s critical for us to talk about the issue this week, versus in 6-9 months.” I have to credit the sales person, he was at least honest with me, “Your company is on my call list for today, but I don’t know what you might be interes

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9 YouTube Channel Ideas to Help You Choose Your Own

Hubspot

Starting a YouTube channel is a lot of work. Not only do you have to spend time scripting, producing, and editing videos, but you also have to find a topic you’re passionate about and make sure it resonates with people. To help inspire you, we found nine popular YouTube categories that you can start a channel about. Read on to learn why viewers love to engage with these types of YouTube videos, and start ideating your YouTube channel today.

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The Future Seller of the 2020’s - The “Integrated Seller”

SalesforLife

Assuming you’ve been reading our blogs, you know I whole-heartedly believe and execute towards helping the modern, digital sales organization.

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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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Are You Maximizing the Yield of All Leads that Enter Your Funnel?

InsightSquared

Whether your sales and marketing teams are crushing their numbers or they are struggling to generate sufficient pipeline, there is always a desire for more leads at the top of the proverbial funnel. As the head of an inside sales team or a demand generation leader, you’re probably having frequent discussions about increasing lead volume or improving lead quality.

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There Are No Secrets In Selling!

Partners in Excellence

I am flattered that Brandon Bornancin wants to interview me for his upcoming book on the secrets to selling. I fear that I may be a little disappointing. When Brandon and his team first asked, my response was, “The real secret is there are no secrets. You have to do the work!” I’ve been saying this in this blog, in keynotes, on LinkedIn—wherever I have the opportunity.

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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Venture Capitalists

Hubspot

There's no doubt about it -- startups are expensive. If you're looking to validate a market, prove out a pricing model, or put together the right team, you'll need resources. Time and money are the most common resources for startups -- and the more you have of one decreases the amount you need of the other. Businesses with a small burn rate often don't require much funding to get started because they're cash efficient.

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Is Cognitive Strain Hindering Your Sales Process?

Jeff Shore

By Jeff Shore. ?Decision-making is really an exercise in how to process uncertainty. Where there is no uncertainty, there is no decision. I’m hungry – should I eat? Not much of a decision, right? There is certainty in the facts (I’m hungry) and so the outcome is fait accompli (I eat!). But what should I eat? I’m at a Cheesecake Factory and I have literally hundreds of options in front of me.

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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.