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It is your responsibility to create value for your contacts and stakeholders in the sales conversation. Almost everything you have been taught and trained to do works against this critical outcome. Talking up your company to gain credibility, to talking about your solution as the best in class, to telling stories about your clients fail to create value for your contacts, unless you believe they want you to remind them of what they already read on your website.
Build trust before your big sales meeting by doing this. The post Making this Costly Sales Meeting Mistake? first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.
Years ago, one of the lead execs from our client KeyBank shared an article called, “What it takes to be a Coach”. It began with: You must understand the game.
Many people fear negotiations, while others get into heated arguments. Sadly, neither achieves the outcome one anticipates. The worst outcome is never to accomplish set goals and harming relationships. For these reasons, it is vital to reexamine our behaviors and approaches when differing perspectives arise and reflect on whether our actions help us to conclude negotiations successfully.
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.
I created the Negativity Fast for myself because I was angry and wanted to feel better. Part of my negativity stemmed from several traumas I'd experienced, including two brain surgeries. I lost part of my right lobe, a fact I learned only after the second surgery. At the time, I didn't recognize this as trauma. My negativity might also have been exacerbated by the anticonvulsants my doctors had prescribed to prevent grand mal seizures.
Are you feeling stuck in a sales slump? Trust me, I know the pain. But here’s how you can bounce back and hit your stride. The post Struggling with a Sales Slump? first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.
What a question. A very brave question to ask yourself. And here’s a few more questions to reflect on: What’s in the way of you having the level of success that you want? What stands in the way of you working with the people who you want to serve? What stands in the way of you earning the income necessary for yourself and your family? What’s standing in the way of you feeling good about all the work that you’re doing?
What a question. A very brave question to ask yourself. And here’s a few more questions to reflect on: What’s in the way of you having the level of success that you want? What stands in the way of you working with the people who you want to serve? What stands in the way of you earning the income necessary for yourself and your family? What’s standing in the way of you feeling good about all the work that you’re doing?
As we cruise towards the end of Q3 in our 2023 selling year, many of us are staring at a Dec. 31 number that will end up south of 100%. We’ve had some promising deals this year that, if won, would have insured a great end to the year. But we came up short on all of them. And unlike the Olympics, silver medals don’t get you on the podium. Sure, you’ve had some nice wins but the whale has eluded you.
One office store used the “easy button” in their promotions. They even had easy buttons available for purchase in their stores. While there is nothing wrong with making things easy for your clients or customers, in B2B sales most attempts to make things easier make selling difficult. When one tries to cheat nature, nature cheats back.
Recently, there was a boat show at a dock near our home and I decided to pop in and take a look at what’s new and exciting. It’s fun to amble down the dock and look at the many options, from motorboats to sailing boats and everything in between.
Elon Musk is planning to make X (formerly known as Twitter) a paid-for platform for all users. In a bid to tackle the issue of rampant bot activity, he unveiled proposals to roll out small monthly subscriptions during a live conversation with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Musk did not specify how much the plans would cost or what features would be included at the lowest tier.
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.
In the intricate labyrinth of our minds, decisions are the threads that weave the tapestry of our lives. Each choice, whether monumental or mundane, is a ripple that resonates through time. In this article, we embark on a thought-provoking journey into the fascinating realm of decision-making, guided by the illuminating insights shared in a recent podcast episode.
Success in sales requires you to be a good communicator. Most salespeople agree that they need to speak well, but they don’t believe that listening is an even more important skill. In a sales conversation, much of your contact’s communication means more than the words indicate. To fully understand your contact, you need to speak fluent client.
What business problem is your customer solving? Hopefully, it’s the problem you are the best in the world at solving. If it isn’t, you are wasting your and the customer time. If I pose this question to sellers, the responses I get are usually about what their products do. Mostly it’s descriptions of features, functions, capabilities.
Google has rolled out automatically created assets (ACA) for general availability. The search engine has also expanded the feature to seven new languages: Dutch French German Italian Japanese Portuguese Spanish Previously, ACAs were only available for advertisers running campaigns in English in open beta. What are automatically created assets? Automatically created assets is a campaign-level setting that enhances the relevance of your Search ads by generating custom headlines and descriptions ba
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
Ever wondered how to prepare for a sales pitch without going down the rabbit hole of 'analysis by paralysis'? Join us as we explore the world of sales with Alison Fell , Practice Partner of SalesStar UK. Alison is a seasoned professional who's mastered the art of effective communication and customer-centric selling in diverse sectors.
Your team isn’t doing the work they need to succeed in sales. You hired people who have experience in B2B sales, and you believe they should know what to do—and do it. Eventually, you might believe there are no good salespeople. According to David Hackworth, author of Steel in My Soldiers’ Hearts , there is an old saying in militaries that addresses this idea: “There are no bad troops, just bad officers.
It’s no surprise to anyone that generative AI and the foundational models that support it are currently to be found at the very summit of what Gartner calls “the peak of inflated expectations” in the latest iteration of the “Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence.” That means they’re teetering on the precipice that could plummet them into the “trough of disillusionment.” We spoke with Afraz Jaffri, director analyst at Gartner with a focus o
Google has admitted to quietly tweaking advertising auctions to meet revenue targets. The search engine “frequently” changes the auctions it uses to sell search ads, increasing the cost of ads and reserve pricing by as much as 5% for the average advertiser. For some queries, the tech giant may have even raised prices by as much as 10%, according to Google Ad executive, Jerry Dischler at the federal antitrust trial.
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.
Building and maintaining robust/healthy pipelines is a problem with most organizations. Virtually every organization seems to be struggling with this. And if my social feeds are any indication, filling anemic pipelines is the number 1 problem facing organizations. My email is filled with endless outreaches. I get texts from people/numbers I have never encountered.
One reason to love criticism is that it means someone disagrees with you. If everyone loves what you do and how you do it, you have something wrong. An idea will never gain traction unless someone opposes it, even if you know it is true and reliable. Publishing articles each day and a book every year, I want to help readers that need information and value creation strategies.
There’s a lot of talk these days about how generative AI could put people out of work. Not as much thought is given to how people could put generative AI out of work. But they could — and quite possibly will. GenAI and the foundation models on which it rests are currently at the dizzying peak of the Gartner hype cycle. If Gartner’s model is sound, those tools may be about to plunge into the “trough of disillusionment” before emerging a few years hence on a plateau of usef
Assessing and researching what people want and need is one of the most important SEO tasks. However, traditional SEO tools can’t always capture the diversity of a query. Often, keywords, questions and phrases can be asked differently and SEO tools can all report them as “zero volume” keywords. In reality, these keywords have high engagements on other platforms such as Quora, in the form of likes, reshares and upvotes.
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.
So tougher times aren’t over for everyone that has had them. But we’re lapping tougher times for many, and for many others, it’s just plain time to hire again. So many Cloud and SaaS leaders kept hiring flat for the past 12-18 months, and yet still grew. That works for a while, but you end up with not enough headcount if you do freeze hiring but still want to grow.
Every person has an IQ, your intelligence quotient, which is misunderstood by many. We also all have an emotional intelligence (EQ), which is how aware we are of our emotional states and those of others. People interested in integral theory might measure their moral intelligence (MQ), providing an idea that would say a lot about what it might be like to work with someone, including whether they can be trusted.
HubSpot’s August releases include additions to its AI tools, numerous reporting and forecasting improvements, commerce updates and more. Many updates were beta-released in preparation for HubSpot’s annual conference. Save time and prevent errors with AI HubSpot released many AI capabilities in 2023. The releases for August include generative AI additions but also AI-powered data tools.
Google’s Gary Illyes fielded several questions during an AMA at Pubcon Pro in Austin this afternoon from moderator Jennifer Slegg. Here are some of the highlights of the interview. 1. Does Google use user click data in ranking? “Technically, yes,” Illyes said. This is because historical search data is part of RankBrain. 2. Unlaunches happen ‘a lot’ Things change a lot (emphasis his) in search ranking at Google, Illyes said.
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.
For those who have worked with me, you know the importance I hold Competency Models. These are critical, both for recruiting, but also onboarding and ongoing development. Without these, we don’t know whether we are recruiting and hiring the right people, or developing them to achieve their full potential. What is a Competency Model? An easy way, at least for sellers, is to think of it as your organization’s ICP–Ideal Customer Profiles.
It’s unthinkable for any company, anywhere, today to not have a robust website and mobile presence, right? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it’s becoming similarly unthinkable for AI-based intelligence to not be baked into every product and service. “This will be a big shift in how we interact with the world and technology,” said Altman, whose company created the wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Google Ads has launched a new feature to assist advertisers in optimizing their YouTube campaigns Known as Creative Guidance, this innovative tool is now available through Recommendations and has been integrated into Video Analytics within Google Ads. Creative Guidance leverages AI to evaluate your content and offer best-practice feedback. For example, if critical information is missing from your video ad, Creative Guidance will notify you, ensuring that your campaigns are as effective as possib
Do you know when you’re being manipulated? Most of us get the ick around used car salesmen and high-pressure tactics, but subtler persuasion techniques can be far more powerful. Consider the unassuming Google Ads interface. Though it seems like a benign management tool, its crafty design subtly shapes user behavior, contributing to $224 billion for the tech giant last year alone.
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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