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The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Don't Delete Me! The Sales Email Subject Line

The Sales Email Subject Line

If you depend on email to grab a prospect’s attention and nail down that elusive first appointment, you should spend as much time honing the subject line of that email as you spend fine-tuning the entire body of the message.

Your competition is doing exactly that. Make no mistake: The big-time emailers out there may not be trying to make an appointment to sit down with your prospect but in the email inbox.

Topics: Lead Generation Sales

A Sales Strategy to Double Time Spent Selling

A Sales Strategy to Double Time Spent Selling

When a colleague conducted a "time spent selling audit" for one of her clients, the data showed the organization's best sellers spent slightly over 20% of their time actually selling. Keep in mind the audit included the best sellers in the organization!

Here are five reasons why this happens.

Topics: Lead Generation sales strategy

The Top 7 Sources to Find Leads

lead sources and ideas for sellersBefore choosing which prospects to target, it’s best to generate a long list of leads so you can narrow down to the best leads. Using the categories you’ve identified as a good fit your business, decide which sources on this list are right for you to generate your own list of leads.

Topics: Lead Generation prospecting account list management

3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Rely on Your Sales Team to Generate Leads

old_lead_generation_strategy-1.jpg

One of the first signs that a sales organization of a small company is growing and maturing is that they no longer rely on the sales team to generate leads.

In the early stages of development, a new company requires that everyone “wear multiple hats”. Consequently, the salesperson usually plays the role of Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Campaign Manager, and Business Development Specialist.

It’s quite simple really—if the salesperson doesn't generate leads, no one will. But as an organization matures, the various Sales and Marketing disciplines should be divided as soon as possible. Not doing so simply makes achieving growth objectives more challenging and makes your life tougher than it needs to be.

Topics: Lead Generation sales and marketing alignment

Lack of Leads Hurting Your Revenue? 5 Reasons Why You Need a Lead Generation Strategy

lead generation strategy

The Media Sales Report tells us that the hardest job in sales is getting an appointment with a new prospect.

As a sales manager, it's fairly easy to speak up in the sales meeting and tell your salespeople that they need to do a better job prospecting, or that they need to just commit more time and energy to getting appointments. But they already know those things, and they're facing huge hurdles that their counterparts of a few years ago didn't face.

Topics: Lead Generation

If You Forget About Lead Gen, You Can Forget About Growth

lead generation for sales growth

This article was originally published on Entrepreneur.com.

What’s the worst thing that can happen if you buy weak leads from a questionable source? New York City real estate broker Nathan Horne almost found out.

Like the thousands of professionals in his industry who collectively spent $10.5 billion on advertising in 2017, his employer, The Corcoran Group, focused on branding instead of strategic lead generation. So, when Horne called someone he thought was a hot lead, he got the surprise of his life. Instead of a potential buyer, the police detective who answered the phone made a veiled threat about having a gun and being willing to use it.

Topics: content strategy thought leadership Lead Generation sales and marketing alignment

6 Ways Inbound Lead Generation Provides ROI + 6 Key Metrics to Track

6 Ways Inbound Lead Generation Provides ROI

There’s no doubt — lead generation that is clear-cut, clean, and specific is ideal. When we picture lead generation working at peak performance, most of us envision the salesperson being handed a lead that is pre-qualified and only a small step from closing. Smooth and easy!

But don’t fool yourself into thinking that every lead generated by inbound marketing will be so straightforward. That’s not reality, and if you allow tunnel vision to influence your ability to measure your inbound marketing ROI, you'll miss out on a lot of critical information.

Topics: Lead Generation Inbound Marketing

Is Lead Generation a Top Business Objective? Here’s Why We Think It Should Be.

Lead Generation Efforts

Whether you call it cold calling, prospecting, or new business development, lead generation is critical piece for the sales success formula. In many current sales structures, the salesperson in charge of lead generation also oversees setting appointments, finding needs, selling solutions, and ensuring contracts are fulfilled.

Sales managers are great at tracking pending business and placing accountability on the average number of new accounts. While these are important metrics to track, they’re also narrowly focused on the middle and end of the sales process. What if we placed greater accountability at the beginning of the sales process as well? Imagine placing more focus on lead generation efforts, whether through a specialist role or an inbound marketing agency, where qualified leads are regularly handed off to Account Executives.

Topics: Lead Generation IMPACT

What's a Marketing Qualified Lead? What's a Sales Qualified Lead?

sales qualified lead vs marketing qualified leadWhen it comes to lead generation, when does the marketing department’s role end and the sales department’s role begin? Very specifically, when should a lead be passed from marketing to sales?

As with most marketing and sales best practices, it’s not always a black and white answer.

Every organization is different, and it’s important that your organization have it's own marketing and sales agreement plan that outlines in detail how you will qualify, distribute, track, and ultimately close your marketing leads.

Topics: Lead Nurturing Lead Generation Inbound Marketing sales and marketing alignment

A New Way to Solve the Revenue Challenges Facing Media Sales Organizations

iStock-468438195In the past media sales organizations employed a tried and true approach to solving dips in revenue. Here’s a summary of the approach: 

When revenue is down, develop a product, service, or tactic, and sell more!

Unfortunately, these days this approach is more tired and untrue than tried and true.

Selling more is not the solution to the current challenges faced by media organizations because it’s a new day, and it is not filled with rainbows and unicorns. The declines faced by media sales organizations today are consistent enough to be called the new reality!

Topics: Lead Generation sales process