The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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"Always do your best. What you plant now, will harvest later."

-Og Mandino

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These days, there's a quick fix for everything. From a 21-day diet to a 3-step skin care plan and a 24-hour credit repair, it's our natural instinct as humans to look for quick solutions to our problems. We’re impatient by nature, and we want the kind of solution that turns everything around now.

While some of these quick fixes may work in the short-run, most are not sustainable and they leave you in worse shape than you were before. Ironically, the quick fix delayed the real solution.

In our world of quick fixes for everything, we also expect a quick fix to be applied to sales. However, the best sales performance solutions combine a jump-start plan to deliver immediate results together with a long-term plan to assure sustainability. And, the long-term plan must include three fundamentals.

When it comes your bottom line, employee engagement is a powerful source you must have for growth and profit. 

Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, and a two-way commitment and communication between an organization and its people.  A strong company culture means employees are engaged.  In turn, there is:

• A reduction in regrettable turnover
• Increased productivity
• Increase in key customer retention

In part one of this three-part blog series, we'll address each attribute of a strong company culture, as well as tips on what you can do right now to lead the charge of increasing employee engagement at your own organization.

Why is sales enablement important? Because buyers are more informed, and selling is more challenging than ever before. Our 2019 Media Sales Report found that some of the major challenges in sales today are that sales reps’ time is not actually spent selling and salespeople are simply not equipped with relevant materials.

Sales enablement is a strategy that aligns marketing, sales, and operations while lowering costs, increasing revenue, ensuring brand integrity, and ultimately closing more deals. Even the most talented sales reps can benefit from the right support, structure, and technology.

So, why did nearly 1 out of 4 sales managers feel that they don’t have the right sales collateral pieces to help their sellers in all stages of the sales process?

You’ve secured the appointment with the decision maker. You’re excited and feeling positive about the sales call. You’ve prepared for the meeting and think you have all the right questions. You move in for the close and just when you think it is about to happen, they throw you a curveball, “I need to talk this over with some other people in my company, can I get back to you next month?”

Other people? But aren’t you speaking to the decision-maker with the power to say yes? Of course, but you didn’t conduct the due diligence on the prospect’s decision-making process to uncover any possible decision influencers.

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"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."

-William Jones

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Unfortunately, our team at The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) won't be sharing a Thanksgiving Day meal together, but if we were, there would be a lot of thankfulness passed around the table, such as:

• Our incredible company culture 
• Our proven set of services that continue to empower B2B sales organizations 
• Our growing list of clients and organizations we serve 
• The amazing growth CSS has experienced within the last year 
• Our people

As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., we reflect on the good things in our lives and enjoy the precious time with family and friends. And since we can't carve the turkey together, we're taking this opportunity to virtually say 'thank you' to our team and to brag about our company culture and our clients.

Studies show that reaching out to leads within an hour of them contacting you makes you seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations, and up to 50% of sales go to the vendor who responded first. There’s also a tenfold decrease in your odds of making contact with a lead if you wait more than five minutes to reach out after they submit a web form.

Whether it’s from clients, management, or themselves, salespeople are under a lot of pressure to perform faster when it comes to their sales process. We live and work in a fast-paced, “want it now” culture that can feel overwhelming at times. Sometimes there’s only one solution to closing more deals, and that’s to SLOW DOWN!

World-class leaders understand improving performance is part art and part science. A recipe that includes the proper blend of both—art and science—is often what separates failure from success and exhibits the following:

• Outstanding performance (beating others in their peer group)
• High level of employee engagement and satisfaction
• Low turnover
• A culture of engagement
• A tribe that everyone wants to be part of

The debate on whether successful sales leadership is truly an art or a science has been running for decades. At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we know that it’s a perfect combination of both. When blended and configured correctly, the fusion between art and science results in a powerhouse sales team and business.

Want to know the secret to booking more first-time appointments with new prospects? It might surprise you!

In the recent Media Sales Report, we learned 93% of sales managers agree that salespeople should be averaging 4+ calls per week. However, 40% of sales managers believe that their salespeople are missing the mark at only 2 to 3 calls per week. 

Add to this the finding that 85% feel that appointments with prospects are harder to secure today than they were 5 years ago, and this leads us to the secret to booking more appointments.