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There are two ways to describe what a sales manager does. One is to look at the outcomes they are responsible for creating. Another is to look at the individual tasks that deliver those outcomes. There are several things that make it difficult for sales managers to reach their goals, and much of their work aims to overcome these challenges.
I want to share with you the ten principles on which we developed our platform. These are also available as a download in my Sales Effectiveness Manifesto.
When qualifying sales leads , the first lens to look through is the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). We discover whether potential prospects are the right size, in the right industry, and are located in the right geographical location. We might also have additional qualifying information, such as marketing data, like digital footprints from websites, and white papers they downloaded.
The sales profession often drives people away because its training methods need updating. Too many salespeople are taught to rely on pushy and spammy tactics. And these tactics make those salespeople — not to mention their prospects — uncomfortable, decreasing any successful outcome. The desire for authenticity in sales. More than ever, people want to do work that’s personally meaningful and connects with their values.
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.
Lifetime value is what you expect a client to spend with you over the course of your relationship. Let's assume a large client has a lifetime value of $1,000,000. To reach that number, your client could spend $100,000 with you each year for 10 years. Avoiding churn is one way to achieve this with their clients; however, it is just the first step in maximizing lifetime value.
Still wondering if Facebook marketing is worth your time and money? Consider this: Facebook remains the most active social media platform , with almost 3 billion active users. What does this tell us? More than a quarter of all the people on Earth are active Facebook users, ready to become potential audiences for advertising reach. Building brand awareness , enhancing customer service, boosting ROI, and fostering meaningful relationships with your customers – are just a few of the many bene
Here’s why you should think twice before you lay off salespeople, cut sales training, and lower investments in sales strategy, process, and technology.
Here’s why you should think twice before you lay off salespeople, cut sales training, and lower investments in sales strategy, process, and technology.
It is an important distinction in sales – understanding the salesperson who can sell versus the one who will sell. A recent post by Dave Kurlan, on the Difference Between Selling Skills and Effectiveness does a great job of illustrating that difference. Think about your own business and those who consistently produce beyond the expected. There is something more than just their skills that drive their behavior and success.
A trigger event is something that forces a company to change. For example, at the time of this writing, the Federal Reserve has raised the Fed Fund rate to the highest level in many decades. This is a trigger event for real estate agents, mortgage banks, and title companies. Real estate agents will have to change how they find potential buyers, mortgage banks may have to develop new lending programs, and title companies may be forced to take a little more time off.
This blog is part of our Mission Critical Success Series, where we dive into the strategies leaders are using to execute on mission critical sales objectives during times of economic change. Each week, we will cover a different essential area of sales effectiveness. Check our blog next week for the newest installment, or subscribe for updates straight to your inbox.
The CEO and CMO are talking about investing in the marketing team to develop their skills. The CEO asks, “What if we invest in our people, and they leave?” The CMO replies, “What if we don’t and they stay?” Legend has it that this conversation is real and may have even happened at your company. Marketing is about people.
Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Global Sales and David Phelan, Account Executive
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.
In this article, you’ll learn how to have a selling advantage, by learning proven sales tips and techniques that you can start implementing straight away. These successful sales techniques are centred around consultative selling. This means that you’ll take a question based, and solution approach rather than purely presenting up front or using any old school and gimmicky techniques.
At the start of each year, the sales manager is given a sales quota, which is the total of their salespeople's individual quotas. For example, a sales manager with 10 salespeople who each have a goal of $1 million has a $10 million quota. A sales manager can only reach their sales quota by ensuring each member of their team reaches their targets.
This article, first published in the International Journal of Sales Transformation , leads to the conclusion - which I suspect will come as no surprise to regular readers - that we need to stop talking about the "value" of our so-called "solutions" and start focusing on the value of our customer's outcomes.
I’ve always had a contrarian opinion about the roles of SDRs and AEs. While these roles can be very important, often, I think we have our ideas about these roles backwards. As a result, we set both up for failure. First, let me focus the discussion. For highly transactional, inbound buying. Perhaps the current approach works. It might work better, though.
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
A lot of CS teams are just gap fillers. A gap opens up when: – Sales abandons the customer the moment deal is closed – Support too reactive & slow to solve real issues – Deployment harder than should be. An important gap to fill, and a full-time job. But the best do more. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 9, 2022.
Pricing power refers to a company's ability to set and increase prices without significantly reducing demand for its product or service. It also suggests the ability to withstand competitive pressure and maintain margins. Sometimes a company has pricing power, and other times it’s difficult for them to raise prices.
It’s October – the month of ghouls, goblins, and Halloween. Scary stuff, for sure. There is an old Indian saying that speaks to the criticality of knowing the truth about the frightening things we face – “In the dark of the night, every cat’s a leopard”. In our world of selling, the point is that understanding your adversaries is nothing short of a survival skill and these sage words allude to the criticality of having meaningful insights into the competitors we face on a daily basis.
Although 60% of B2B marketers report budgets being cut or staying flat 2021 through 2022, more than half (52%) claimed to be optimistic, or very optimistic, about their team’s performance. 21% were pessimistic or very pessimistic. The data comes from a survey of 539 B2B marketers conducted by research and advisory firm Demand Metric for Integrate, the precision demand marketing platform.
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.
Over the last three years, the United States economy has shifted drastically. The economic landscape of today differs greatly from what it was even a few short months ago. From a venture capital perspective, there’s now a premium on driving efficient growth rather than growth at any cost. . “Sales and marketing alignment is a terrific place to figure out and improve efficient growth.” .
The salesperson working for a small company may worry they have too little sales collateral, while those who work for very large companies have so much sales collateral they must organize it to make it useful. When organizations include all the information on the internet in their sales collateral, the resulting link or stack of documents can surpass the length of Tolstoy's War and Peace (928 pages).
You’ve probably never heard the term professional loneliness , but many of us have experienced it–and felt it. I define professional loneliness as not having someone “at the ready” at work. There isn’t someone to roll your office chair over to share an idea, question, or frustration. There isn’t someone to provide on-the-spot feedback. Or maybe there is no one who “gets you” and what you are trying to do with your business.
Marketing is a requirement for growing organizations. It’s not optional. And it makes sense to have a savvy individual in the driver’s seat to ensure that your marketing efforts dovetail together, connect with your KPIs and overall business goals and move the organization forward. However, most likely, you don’t need a CMO. At least, not yet. . Why argue against hiring such a pivotal figure in your C-suite?
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.
20 years is a long time, especially in internet days and that is how old the original Google Webmaster Guidelines are. Google has done a major refresh of those Webmaster Guidelines today, and with that, also renamed it to Google Search Essentials. Why the change. Outside of it being two decades old, Google said “a lot has changed since 2002” with the internet and Google Search in general.
In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below. Stop Feeling Guilty About Delegating. In this article for the Harvard Business Review, Dina Smith explores the common guilt around delegation.
Q: Dear SaaStr: How Do VCs Verify a Startup’s Revenue? It varies based on the stage: Many pre-seed investors sort of take the founders’ word for it that their financials are accruate. At SaaStr Fund, we also generally do a bank account cash flow test. We make sure the bank statements tie to the financial statements given to us. If they do, the financials and revenue are likely at least 90% accurate, which is good enough for seed stage.
Retail is an ever-changing industry, but the last few years have been particularly disruptive. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered dramatic shifts in consumer behavior that left many retailers struggling to keep up. These factors, combined with the growing influence of Amazon, increasing consumer privacy regulations and deprecating third-party cookies, are only exacerbating the need for transformation in retail that emphasizes customer relationships.
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.
We have a Speed Queen washing machine and we love it because it is so darned simple! There are no stupid touch screens with a bunch of silly options. There’s no smartphone app. It’s just a reliable and easy to use washer.
By Maria Geokezas , Chief Operating Officer at Heinz Marketing. When remote work stormed the scene, we had no choice but to accept it. Now, it seems there’s no going back. A recent survey reports that 87% of employees would opt for a flexible work arrangement. So, if you’re hoping to snag and retain top talent, you have no choice but to learn to manage a remote workforce.
Recession. Inflation. Stagflation. Stockmarket Free Fall. Energy Crisis. Supply Chain Crisis. Political Divisiveness.War. We are living and selling in a time of deep volatility. It is more challenging to close business, objections are harsher, and qualified buyers are becoming more scarce. On this special episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount delivers a powerful message about what it takes to outsell this crisis.
Breathes there the email marketer who never had to send an “Oops!” email? So you say your marketing team never had to send an “Oops!” email? Don’t be too smug. Maybe your turn just hasn’t come yet. . Conventional email wisdom says every marketer will have a medium-to-epic fail sometimes. A campaign goes out with broken links or images, the wrong offer or an expired code.
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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