Getting prospects to talk to you

By / / Call Reluctance, Education in Sales, Prospecting, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Do you take time to really think about why you are calling a prospect or a client?  Do you reflect on how effective you have been post the call?

Making prospecting calls to new prospects and existing clients is still one of the most important sales and business development activities you can do on a daily basis.  Even with all the electronic communication and marketing options at hand most businesses still need to have someone prospecting for them to build and forge real business relationships. Top performing salespeople make sure prospecting is part of their daily repertoire.

Prospecting …

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2016 Sales Trend 11 – The Renaissance Sales Manager

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 11 for our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is The Renaissance Sales Manager.

The logic follows that senior executives determine the Grand Strategy for the entire business, divisional executives determine what strategy they need for the segments they service so as to make the grand strategy work, and then sales managers need to deploy, direct and control the sales resources to make the strategy(ies) happen. Sales managers should play a pivotal role in making strategy happen and delivering results.

Yet, for some time now where big data has been, and still is, a big focus …

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What is Social Selling? And does it work?

By / / Marketing, Social Sales

Social selling is not a new phenomenon as many might think.

Social Selling has been around for many years in various forms and is the process of developing one-on-one relationships as part of the sales process. Today, this often takes place via digital social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; however, it can take place both online and offline.

Social Selling is most widely used in B2B selling, especially in complex sales, but it is also used in more complex B2C sales environments, e.g. financial advisory services, automotive, real estate.

Social Selling is sometimes confused with social marketing but they are …

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Why we need Progressive Approximation to design an effective sales strategy

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Strategy

In the world of big data, the abundance of information, complex systems and the need to use good judgement to make sound decisions, many people, often overwhelmed by too many variables, default to single moments of truth, black and white solutions, and the promise of the ‘right’ answer in an attempt to solve the challenges they face.

It’s understandable that we want simple answers. Our brains love ‘simple’ because it is energy efficient and comforting. Once we have ‘the answer’ we don’t have to think, we can just do.

Looking for ‘simple’ in business is at best lazy and, at worst, very …

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What you need to drive your sales strategy

By / / Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Culture, Sales Strategy, Strategy

The frequently used business model of having sales under marketing, and therefore not having a separate sales strategy is no longer effective in today’s complex market place.

Sales strategies developed by non-sales driven executives tend to be little more than tactical ways to support the marketing drive, brand equity, corporate philosophy and/or the value/volume targets. Most organisations could have survived like this in a product focused 20th century world, but not anymore.

Today, selling is much more complex than just getting business (new or incremental).

Sales now has to re-examine its mission. It has to unshackle itself from marketing, …

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Sales Trend 10 – The evolution in sales incentive plans

By / / Sales Results, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 10 from our  12 Sales Trends for 2016 is ‘The evolution in sales incentive plans’.

With the growing complexity in many markets and the rise of selling in complex solutions this sales trend tells of the shift towards more customised variable Sales Incentive Programs (SIPs) taking into account team selling, complex solutions, longer sales cycles, and so on.  Whereas ‘Lone Ranger’ commission schemes, which have an extrinsic appeal because they are simple, are primarily on the way out as they are only suitable in very limited circumstances these days.

Sales incentive programs (SIPs) constitute a major cost …

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How to give every salesperson the best start to their sales career

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Strategy

This is how most salespeople are inducted into their sales careers:

“Welcome to our team, Rebecca. It’s great to have you on board. Here is your list of ABC accounts and the products brochure which outlines all the products we sell. I also want you to meet our best salesperson, Ben. He is awesome. As part of your induction I want you to go out on the road and learn to be just like Ben.”

That’s it, give or take a few iterations.

Rebecca is thrown in the deep end and at best asked to mimic Ben with no real context, no reference …

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Sales Trend 9 – Marketing technology for better sales results

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, CRM, Marketing, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Guest co-author: David Hubbard CEO, Founder and Revenue Growth Expert for Marketing Outfield, New York, USA

Sales Trend 9 from our  12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is about using Marketing technology for better sales results.

Sales and Marketing Technology – Which Trends Should You Pay Attention To?

No wonder we are confused. The number of vendors providing Advertising, Marketing OR Sales technology “solutions” has exploded in the last couple of years with it becoming a large multi-billion dollar industry with revenues growing at double digit percentages annually. There are now over 3000 vendors (and more in …

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Are sales teams driven by greed and desperation dying out?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture

The other week one BDM from my sales team called the sales director of a business that sells advertising in industry magazines to speak to him about his priorities for his telephone sales team. We had been referred to this sales director by the managing director of the same company.

After a brief introduction and explanation about the reason for the call, the BDM from Barrett asked the sales director about his priorities in the ‘selling better’ space to see if Barrett could help them. The sales director hit back saying “Listen mate, I run a tight sales team here. I …

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