The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

If you are a history buff, you may know the story of Cortés and the burning of his ships. In the year 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived in the New World with six hundred men and, upon arrival, made history by destroying his ships. This sent a clear message to his men: There is no turning back.

Two years later, he succeeded in his conquest of the Aztec empire. 

As leaders taking our people into new territories as unknown and potentially hazardous as did Cortés, we need to ensure those we are leading that there is no turning back. He knew how to be a great leader. We need to be certain there is no off-ramp our people can use to avoid the challenges of our own new business worlds. We need to burn the ships.

What Does Burning the Ships Mean Today? 

We’re long past the days of conquistadors, but the story of burning the ships is as relevant as ever. I bet you’re already thinking of some aspect of your company that needs attention right now, that needs your leadership. If you leave the ships in the harbor, your people will see that you’re not fully committing to the transition needed. If you’re not fully committed, why should they be? By burning the ships, by removing any available path back to the previous way, your team will become as fully committed as you obviously are.

Last year, Harvard Business Review estimated the turnover in salespeople to be around 27%. In an industry that’s seeing almost double the turnover rate than the overall labor force, it’s essential for managers and leaders to not only know how to recruit great talent that’s an excellent fit for your team, but also how to retain sales talent and improve their performance over the years. 

"It's strange to me too, but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the game... the actual game when it matters... We're talking about practice."  - Allen Iverson 

It’s Memorial Day. A day to remember those who gave everything for us. For our country. For our freedom. Because of that, we’re able to celebrate with family, friends, and great food, as we kick off the summer season.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

As a proud partner of HubSpot, we at The Center for Sales Strategy, as well as our sister company that focuses on lead generation and sales enablement, LeadG2, naturally have experience with the HubSpot CRM, and it might be easy to think that we’re biased about this tool because of our relationship with them. However, it’s important to know a bit more of the context to better understand why we’re not biased and how that shows up in what we do and recommend. 

This post was originally published on Hubspot.

Despite its increasing irrelevance, the tired, old sales pitch still enjoys a large following. Unfortunately, that washed-up elevator pitch generally focuses solely on the seller -- the company, its capabilities, and its accomplishments -- and rarely highlights the prospect’s needs.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

Recently, I've had a few run-ins with bad email etiquette. Not just in a quick email thread from a co-worker (I'll admit, my email etiquette gets sloppy in this arena), but I've received emails from salespeople attempting to get me (the marketing manager) to subscribe to their software, utilize their platform, or allocate some of my budget to their product, and all had major email etiquette issues, misspelled my name, or included verbiage that clearly showed me we aren't on the same wavelength. I also received an email from a potential candidate for a freelance writer that included major grammatical mistakes... WHAT!? 

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

You have hired your next great seller. You have a strong on-boarding plan, a great training schedule, and amazing people in place to help with training. They are prepared to hit the street, right?

A simple question, right? Yes. But, very powerful. So many salespeople and sales managers have well-planned, beautifully-executed meetings, but inadvertently leave some of the most useful information on the table simply because they forget to ask this simple, shared-control question that can reveal the real priorities for the person with whom they are speaking.  

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

The Future of Sales: Predictions from the “Nostradamus's” of Selling — Hubspot

I just sat there and watched. I was too stunned to really do anything else. It was the best needs analysis that I've ever seen...