The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

As sales consultants, trainers, and coaches, we absolutely love it when the sales teams we work with shares successes they’ve had as a direct correlation to the advice, tips, and tactics we share. 

Our company culture encourages innovation and creativity, which allows us to discover new trends, and figure out what works and doesn't work so that we can share advice with our clients. Video is a tool and tactic that we've explored and had the opportunity to get creative with. 

If you're wondering how you can use video as part of your sales process, keep reading! 

It’s widely believed that the first Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software was introduced in the 1980s. Since then, businesses have made large investments in time and money to launch CRM initiatives, only to have their salespeople misuse them or not use them at all.

Over the years, business leaders have begged, threatened, bribed, and cajoled their salespeople to use these powerful tools. But in the long run, threats and bribes simply don’t work.

So how can you increase the adoption of your CRM by your sales team? How can you get them to actually use the tool you’ve invested in? Here are a few ideas.

As a sales manager, it’s important that you continually take new courses of action to help your team generate more sales.

Here are six practical methods you should consider.

A person needs many skills and qualities to be successful at business, including good organization, communication, leadership, and negation.

Business acumen is another necessary skill for those who are driven to succeed. But what is it? And how can you develop it?

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about business acumen.

- MOTIVATION -

"Refuse to make excuses or blame others. The leader always says, if it's to be, it's up to me."

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How many open positions are on your team?  Open positions are an opportunity to improve the talent level. You want to make your goals more attainable and hiring top-shelf people is the best way to do that. 

However, building a high-quality sales team isn’t easy. It typically requires a lot of time and money to assemble a team of top performers. What if we told you that there’s a proven system that would help you get a list of great people to interview? Would you be interested?

Being a great manager is tougher than being a great salesperson.

Think back to when you were a new manager, what was one piece of advice you wish you knew back then, that you now know?

Here’s what a few of our experts at The Center for Sales Strategy said.

Every organization wants to grow on some level – whether it’s more clients/customers, higher revenue, more locations, more product lines, etc.

There’s no one way to grow a business, but there are plenty of reasons it stops growing or slows down.

Here are some of the reasons companies stop growing.

Making a first impression with your potential clients is vital to getting ahead.

When you make that cold contact, you want to ensure that they'll want to buy from you. A part of this is using the right method to reach out to your contacts. Which is better, cold calls or sales emails?

- MOTIVATION -

"A person always going hir or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example."

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Nobody likes to feel used.

This is probably not a news flash, but salespeople don’t like to feel as though they're being used by their sales manager to hit their budget or bonus.

During an industry conference, I happened to be sitting next to two sales managers discussing their second-quarter budgets and how difficult it was going to be to hit them.

The manager doing most of the talking said to the other, “I just don’t know what I am going to do. Maybe I just need to get more bodies in here and get them out selling and hitting the streets. The folks I have in here right now just aren’t getting it done for me, and I don’t want to miss hitting my bonus in Q2.”

Each week, more Americans listen to podcasts than have Netflix accounts.

Since it began in the early 2000s, podcasting has grown drastically and steadily. Just from 2018 to 2021, podcast listeners have increased by 29.5%.

Thus far in 2022, 51% of the population has listened to a podcast, with over one-third of Americans listening to podcasts regularly.

With a variety of business-related podcasts available, how do you choose which to listen to first?

Successful social selling can lead to significant growth for your business. In fact, the right tactics can do more than sell products, but provide a foundation of credibility and confidence that will bolster your brand as a whole.

This all sounds very appealing, but how can you actually go about enhancing your own social selling efforts?

Let’s look at a few methods that separate the pros from the rest of the pack.

Perhaps as a sales manager or sales executive, you have pondered the question, "Is it time to restructure my sales operation?"

When you're not getting the results you need from your sales team, it's certainly tempting to consider restructuring how you're going to market.

- MOTIVATION -

"Anyone, anywhere, can make a positive difference."

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What do the best managers do to get their salespeople to pick the right prospects? They become the gatekeeper. No prospect should ever get on a salesperson’s Target list until it has been fully qualified against a set of objective criteria, a target business profile.

When helping a salesperson determine a high priority prospect, ask them the following questions using the following criteria: Dollar Potential, Access, and Fit.

Creating an environment where employees can develop is important to both their personal and career growth.

When you create a work environment that fosters a culture of learning for you and your employees, you will reap many positive returns.

Thank you! Thank you!  Really, Thanks. Please hold your applause until the end of the sales meeting. 

What? 

You mean that you haven’t been interrupted during your sales meeting by thunderous applause from your salespeople?  Really?

- MOTIVATION -

"True leaders always practice the 3 R's: Respect for self, Respect for others, Responsibility for all their actions."

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In 2022, we're challenging you to reconsider the way you're doing business to improve your sales performance.

The sales process is constantly changing and it's changing more rapidly than ever, yet there's a generation of salespeople still selling like it was any year before 2009.

Also in the mix are sales managers not adept to the evolving sales world, and therefore, might struggle to lead their team to good sales results.

Are you looking to expand your sales team?

There's no doubting that more sales, scales, and finding the right people are essential to a successful business.

From finding the right candidates to training them for success, we've got you covered. Don’t waste time and money on the wrong sales reps. Use this guide to find the best ones for your business. It will help you avoid costly mistakes and make the process easier for everyone involved.

To pick someone up has been used as slang, according to Dictionary.com, since at least the 1600s.

Today's pick-up line means a rehearsed remark to strike up a conversation with the goal of pursuing a more gratifying relationship later.

Many salespeople have a rehearsed line meant to initiate a relationship with a prospect to satisfy their need to make another sale. Even when you’ve tried to find a Valid Business Reason (VBR), you might still end up sounding like you’re using a pick-up line.

How can you tell if your VBR has value to the prospect?