In a post for Eye on Sales, Kendra Lee explains why a short sales cycle can adversely affect return on investment. “It’s an issue we see with many of our clients,” she writes. “In their haste to close a sale, they try to gather all the information needed to write a proposal in just one meeting. Then they send the proposal and try to close.” Lee says this approach is ineffective for a variety of reasons, particularly in high-stakes sales, as is the case with this client who sells IT services. (See Secret…

 

In a post for The Inside View, Kevin Baldacci explains how focusing on people, not contacts can increase your revenue and offers up a few tips on how to do so. Shift the mindset from a contact to a person Baldacci says people are looking to be acknowledged as individuals and as a sales professional, you need to be utilizing social media to its fullest potential to get your emails and phone calls to stand out. (See Stop “Selling” and Start Building Relationships) Integrate the people approach across the organization Marketing…

In a post for the Sales Hunter, Mark Hunter offers up several prospecting ideas that produce results. Give away prospects to others. “What I mean by this is help other salespeople develop leads,” Hunter writes. “When you meet someone who might benefit from what another person sells, match them up.” By helping others, he says, you’ll feel better and receive leads from others as well. (See Want More Sales? Be like Ichiro Suzuki!) Have a “customer satisfaction” phone blitz. Hunter suggests contacting each customer you have sold to and ask them…

Not every sales department can afford to let inside sales reps maintain a flexible schedule.

The leads themselves need to dictate how the inside sales reps should work them. If they’re not time-sensitive, then a flexible schedule can be an option. If you’re dealing with inbound leads that get staler by the second, you need to ensure that your salespeople will be around when they come through the sales pipeline. Without your reps at the ready, writes inside sales expert Ken Krogue, you’ll be missing out on valuable sales opportunities. Minimizing your…

Less enlightened companies still believe that customers are easily replaceable. This thinking fails to account for one obvious problem: why the customers left in the first place.

If a company is hemorrhaging customers, it’s likely doing something very wrong (or a combination of things perhaps). When a business experiences a mass exodus, outdated practices can often be the culprit. Don F. Perkins of MindMulch looks at how companies fail to anticipate changing customer behaviors and what happens as a result. Following the crowd is easy; everyone can be susceptible to Cog Behavior. But when a company falls into this trap for too…

If you want your sales done right, you must show your team how to do it — don’t just tell them.

Consider the following sales scenario, which can afflict any company that bases their instructions on assumptions. Your sales team as a whole will likely have the fundamental skills they need to execute their assigned tasks with your guidance. That’s what they were hired to do. But too many companies give sales directions without guidance. John Doerr, president of RAIN Group, explores this problem in a guest post on The Sales Hunter blog. Doerr calls…

 

In a post for Sales Staff, Garrett Hollander provides five key B2B telemarketing fundamentals. Know what you are going to say and practice it. “Telemarketers need to be primed and charismatic,” he writes. “So practice and re-practice your delivery and be prepared for different responses. Record yourself.” (See Secret sauce of the greatest salespeople) Be precise and expedient. Hollander says it’s vitally important to get to the point quickly. “This gives the impression that you respect the prospect’s time,” he writes. Make your speech sound natural. Hollander suggests imagining that you are…