The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

I think we can all agree that securing appointments is foundational to achieving sales goals.

However, findings from the recent Media Sales Report found a persistent gap between the expectations and reality of salespeople and their managers when it comes to the actual number of scheduled appointments.

When selling a product or service, not all outreach efforts should be directed directly at the decision maker, who has the final word on what will be bought.

Instead, it's more effective to engage with the people around them—influencers from whom they seek advice, people nearby who can speak favorably about your company, and sources of information they trust.

This is an even more vital strategy in B2B sales efforts. After all, the decision maker may not be the one using your product, adjusting workflows to accommodate it, or even engaging with the product directly at all. Instead, your sales teams need to develop a comprehensive approach for identifying and engaging with influencers who will ultimately lead you to decision makers (or lead the decision makers to you).

Start by clearly understanding the role of decision influencers in today's sales and buying experiences, how to reach out to these decision influencers, and, ultimately, how to leverage that connection to get in front of decision makers more effectively.

What worked a few years ago and helped gain successful sales leads might be outdated and could never work now. For instance, there were times when cold calling was king, but it can't help in this age of digital marketing.

Therefore, adjusting your strategies is incredibly crucial in ensuring you get quality sales leads. Here's a detailed look at some of the strategies you can use.

For as long as sellers have been selling, managers have tracked their activity. Over time, we've improved the tools we use to track that activity, from call sheets to spreadsheets to CRM.

But if all we do is capture the data and not study the data, what's the point? After all, the value is not simply in seeing how much activity we have but in understanding the trends within that data to help salespeople improve.

Studying the data allows you to identify where the bottlenecks in the sales process occur. It enables you to go beyond what you think is happening and confirm where that friction in the sales process lives. That confirmation allows you to develop specific strategies to improve your performance or the performance of your sales team.

Referrals are the lifeblood of sales success. They are the ultimate "social proof" because people trust friends and influencers more than any advertisement delivered by the brand.

A referral is someone who has a personal reason to check out your brand and who approaches your products or services with a positive-leaning curiosity. They may even be a pre-qualified lead if the referral itself was based on personal knowledge.

Therefore, inspiring and rewarding referrals is a process that every brand should master. In this post, we'll break down a five-step plan to consistently generate a high volume of quality referrals. Here's how to create a smooth-running referral machine.

Getting the first appointment with a qualified decision-maker of a target prospect can be one of the most challenging aspects of B2B selling.

The ability to set appointments efficiently can make or break a business's success. The good news is that today, sales professionals have access to a plethora of tools and resources designed to streamline the appointment-setting process.

We're tackling a crucial aspect of sales that's as important as your morning coffee: sealing more deals.

To close more opportunities, it's critical that we limit or completely remove as many objections during the presentation as possible. One way to do that is to remove the surprises. Surprises are great for a birthday party, but they can be devastating during a business meeting.

A good salesperson knows that success starts with making connections, building rapport, and creating a positive space.

Short and irritable prospects make it difficult to have any meaningful conversation and make your job much harder than it needs to be. 

Building rapport and making connections doesn't have to take long, and it's well worth the investment. Let's look at some simple techniques that you can use to improve a prospect's mindset so they're more comfortable and open to hearing what you have to offer.

There’s a whole lot more to recruiting the right person for your team than just matching resumes to job descriptions. It’s about cultivating experiences and creating an impression that goes beyond a mere transaction.

In today’s candidate-led job market, your company's reputation matters—a lot. Many of the people who have the power to influence your reputation are those you’re recruiting. It's not just about the role you’re filling anymore; it's also about building relationships.

But why should you really care?

Crafting a robust professional brand is paramount, particularly for sales professionals and leaders alike.

As a coach, I work closely with individuals at various stages of their careers, digging into their past and current experiences to understand the challenges they face and the solutions they bring to the table.

Through these discussions, I gain insights into their passions and aspirations, shaping their professional identity.