Nostradamus was a man of many predictions.
Unfortunately for sales and marketing teams, he wasn’t in their field. As such, any hypothesis that can be made about sales can be retraced to hard facts that underpin the predictions. In 2011, you can expect a lot of changes to the sales process and customer experience. Other alterations that put extra emphasis on closing sales will be seen, too. Reinventing the buyer experience will be a priority in the new year. By giving the buyer more expanded options and services, you’re putting them at ease. And…
Rainmakers: making the impossible happen, wherever, under any circumstances. It can happen with your sales team. For your team to reach the high performance sales goals set by your company, there are four personality traits needed: Optimism Ego Greed Empathy It’s odd seeing #2 and #3 in there, but Rick Phillips explains: On ego: “The rainmakers have so much pride that they are never willing to believe that they can be outsold or defeated. They really believe that nothing is impossible for them.” On greed: “Rainmakers are all motivated by something…
It seems like the economy is getting better—but that doesn’t mean that sales managers are out of the woods. In fact, 2011 may bring with it more threats to the sales cycle—and the salespeople engaged in it—than ever before. Paul McCord delves into The 3 Major Issues Facing Sales Management in 2011 on Eyes on Sales. One of the issues is that while the market is improving, the sales budget is not growing accordingly. Here are some solutions: Cut out extraneous activities and “busywork” Time management is the key to saving…
How much can a poorly designed sales compensation plan hurt you?
If your sales team doesn’t take to it or doesn’t believe it’s – above all else – fair, you may be in trouble. The purpose of a sales compensation plan is to motivate your employees. If it falls short of accomplishing this task, then it doesn’t meet its purpose. Your staff’s performance and employee development is going to hinge on their motivation, and that is directly influenced by their pay. As part of building a sales team, you need to make…
High performance is a term used to describe uncanny success in sales.
Salespeople reminisce of times when they were – just for a glimpse – able to enjoy such a feeling. But for the average salespeople, it’s a rarity. There are the exceptions, but most people have to overcome hurdles to reach such a plateau. In the linked article, an analogy is used to describe achieving high performance. It goes like this: a football player launches a historic and improbable comeback thanks to high performance. He was focused, so he…
Most companies have integrated the sales call report into the sales process without much thought.
It’s just been a staple of the most rudimentary functions of the sales department and nobody has ever questioned it. In premise, it seems simple enough: it’s a report designed to track the work of your salespeople. But does it accomplish what it sets out to do? What about all of the potential oversights in most sales call reports? How are these documents contributing to employee development? Most sales professionals simply view the reports as a way…
Boiled down, sales is about a few key factors. First and foremost, sales is underpinned by the motivation of those that are executing the sales process: the salespeople. Their motivation will directly determine the effectiveness of the sales methodologies. Over the years, sales beliefs have evolved from very basic approaches to now incorporating advanced sociological and psychological elements. To be sure, a single sale is now more complex than it ever was before. The factors that remain the same are the ones that actually drive sales. You need to be motivated, yes, but you always need to be focused on…
Sales professionals are all too intimately familiar with roadblocks and failed deals.
But how do salespeople arrive at this grim fate? They fail to follow the telltale signs from the prospect. Obvious warnings get ignored and the wrong approach is used, resulting in failure. Imagine, for an instance, that you’re Google in its early stages, looking to sell your pay-per-click service, a
lead generation system. What will your sales process be like? It’s likely that you’ll follow a typical dialogue, arriving at that unfortunate conclusion most of the time. You know you…
As years tend to go, 2010 was emblematic of change in B2B companies and markets.
With the recession on many people’s minds, it’s hard to exactly pinpoint the spenders, savers and sellers. But they were all well-represented. In the next year, 2011, much of the same can be expected. Tony Zambito, the author of this article, contends that new buyer and sales trends will emerge in the coming year, which will a widespread impact. What exactly will change? Here are some of Zambito’s predictions: Buyers will look to get more for…
With the litany of distractions available to throw you off track, you’ll need to ignore your surroundings if you want to be productive.
All of the things we utilize as tools during the work day – Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. – can actually cost us valuable time and focus. Say you’re trying to work on a project, for example, and you keep encountering message prompts, one after the other. You’re going to get bogged down and the project will suffer. When it comes to your sales process, this can…
