The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Recently I wrote a blog post about the importance of sales performance metrics and how keeping score makes sales teams more successful. After discussing this with colleagues and those in the sales performance industry, one thing became clear: you have to be using a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) in order to effectively track sales performance. Without it, you are just making guesses as to how your sales team is performing. If that’s you, you owe it to yourself and your organization to use one of the dozens of good CRMs you can choose from that works best for your organization.

Why a CRM Is Necessary to Measure Sales Performance

Measuring sales performance, by its very nature, entails gathering data about leads from multiple sources and being able to put that information into measurable, quantifiable and actionable information. In 2015, the year some have called, “The Year of Big Data”, there was an increasing interest in the ability to gather massive amounts of information about prospects and leads and use that information to make sales and marketing decisions. Regardless of how much data is collected on your leads or the financials related to your pipeline, without having a way to organize, track, and calculate your sales metrics, all is for naught.  

Having a CRM allows you to do many things that you could never do without—including tracking your leads' activities across your organization, calculating complex metrics, and the ability to add information to custom dashboards and management reports. Measuring sales performance isn’t an easy thing to do with the growing complexity of organizations. You'll need to track the performance of multiple salespeople, report different information to varying parts of the organization, and measure the overall performance of your sales team. Without a functioning CRM, all of this information is left to spreadsheets or disparate systems that don’t communicate with each other or have been abandoned by the sales team long ago.

As a parent of two small children, I've coached my share of soccer teams over the years. I like to think that my teams learned something from my coaching and leadership, but I am starting to think that I learned more from them.

Many of the lessons I have learned can be applied to sales and specifically sales management: the team that keeps score does best, practice like you intend to play, and you are only as strong as your weakest player.

“Co-branding, also called brand partnership, is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy.”

Who wants to be average? If you knew that the average webinar according to Clickmeeting.com had only 28 participants, wouldn’t you want to beat that average? (28 participants does not necessarily indicate only 28 people registered—this means that 28 people attended the webinar at the scheduled time. Many more probably registered, but those whose schedules don't allow live attendance will only watch the webinar recording.)

If getting 28 people to attend your webinar seems like a lot for the size of your company, or if you want to exceed that average number, you might want to consider some alternative methods to getting more registrants. One alternative to the common promotion techniques of social, email and advertising is to use some form of co-branding. 

Like many of you reading this, I would much rather read an email or visit a website to learn about a product or service than talk directly to a salesperson. And forget about meeting a sales representative in person. 

Nothing against salespeople—I was one myself at one time. We will truly never be able to replace salespeople in the sales process, but we need to adapt to the reality that most buyers aren't ready to talk with salespeople early in the buying journey. Yet we need to be present at the early stages of the buying journey. We need to give our marketing a real voice in order to build trust and deepen relationships that will lead to an in-person sales discussion.

It's often been said that people do business with people they know, like and trust, and I wholeheartedly agree. The challenge we have as marketers is how best to get people to know and like us and our company's products and services—and more importantly, how to trust us. 

Some of the most popular methods of communication that marketers use to help us get to know, like and trust a a company are videos, podcasts and webinars. 

Let's look at a few distinctions between videos, podcasts and webinars to see why webinars are becoming so popular.  

Fear of missing out (FoMO) is "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent." This social angst is characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing."

If you were sitting at your desk on Thursday, October 29th, at 2pm and felt like you were missing out on something important but couldn't quite put your finger on what it was, here's the answer. You missed the LeadG2 webinar, How to Get More Appointments, Waste Less Time, and Sell More!, presented by Dani Buckley.

Being a media sales manager in 2015 is not an easy job. Chances are your sales team and every other media company you compete with sell some combination of digital solutions (search, social, mobile, video, display, etc.) in addition to your core products. To further complicate the sales process, lead generation strategies that worked well 10 years ago are now obsolete—the B2B buying cycle has changed.   

That being said, there are new strategies and tools that can be used to make media sales managers' lives (and their salespeoples') much easier. These tools help waste less time and lead to increases in revenue.

Predicting what the future will look like has become a pop culture phenomena. Movies like Tomorrowland, Terminator, Wall-E and Back to the Future have each provided us with the writers’ take on what the future holds for us and what we can change today to impact tomorrow.

As a sales manager, if you knew the future, wouldn’t you want to make changes today that drastically change the future prospects of your entire sales team?

Over the years, as sales and marketing has become more automated, it’s become increasingly important for salespeople to differentiate themselves from others and to provide value throughout the sales process. With control of the sales process having shifted from sellers to buyers, the B2B buyer now holds the cards, and does approximately 60% of his or her research before ever feeling the need to contact a salesperson.

Some of the ways that a salesperson can provide value throughout the sales process is by being seen as a thought leader and credible member of the industry that they are a part of. Social media has come to play a big part in establishing yourself as an expert in your field and having your profile elevated.

Here are three ways that salespeople can stand out using social media:

You've spent weeks trying to get a meeting with an important prospect, you've gotten past the gatekeepers and have given him or her a valid business reason (VBR) to have a meeting with you. You're halfway through the presentation that you worked on for hours over the weekend, and your prospect stops you dead in your tracks with a question you have never heard before. What do you do? Do you fake it? Do you dance around the question and minimize it?

If you are truly looking to better yourself as a salesperson and to make a solid and lasting client relationship, you don’t do any of those things mentioned above. You stop and turn to your prospect and say, “That’s a great question and one I have never heard before. I don’t know, let me get back to you."

It might not work on a test in college or in politics, but admitting you don’t know the answer to a question in business can work to your advantage in 3 ways. The first way is that it gives you the opportunity to follow up with your prospect after the meeting with information the person is interested in receiving. Secondly, it gives you a chance to display your expertise in a well-thought-out manner. And lastly, it helps you build credibility and trust (especially if you follow up in a timely manner). Let’s look at how each of these ways can benefit you.

There's so much content published every week that a person can never read it all themselves. That's why we're here, bringing you the weekly wrap up.  

Here are the five articles that piqued our interest:

1. These 10 Tips From a CEO Can Take Your Career From Average to Awesome {Inc}

This question was answered by Nelson Wang, CEO of Collide on Quora: What is the single greatest piece of career advice you've ever received?