<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=585972928235617&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Alina McComas

Alina McComas

Recent Posts by Alina McComas:

The Imperfections of Last Click Attribution

The Imperfections of Last Click Attribution

When it comes to digital marketing, there's a heightened focus on analytics to determine success.

Many businesses continue to place a heavy reliance on last click attribution models to determine which of their digital marketing tools are driving results. Last click attribution gives 100% of the credit for a conversion or a sale to the last click a visitor made before he or she arrived on the website to complete that action.

It's a model that has been used for years, but can be flawed if it's solely used to determine which digital marketing efforts are really driving results.

Topics: digital marketing sales performance

How to Use a Sales Playbook with Your Sales Team

How to Use a Sales Playbook with Your Sales Team

Before we get into the how to use a Sales Playbook, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to answering what is a Sales Playbook.

In its simplest terms, a Sales Playbook is a key piece to a winning sales enablement strategy that outlines your sales process and aligns it with the buyer’s journey. It provides salespeople with a collection of resources like best practices, insights into their buyers, how to approach specific sales scenarios, talk tracks, email templates, ways to handle objections, competitive intel, and more.

Topics: sales enablement sales playbook IMPACT

Answers to Common Sales Enablement Questions

Answers to Common Sales Enablement Questions

Google search data shows that in 2019 searches for “sales enablement” increased by 61.1% year over year, up from 51.2% in 2018.

What’s the reason behind the steady increase in interest around sales enablement? When implemented correctly, sales enablement moves the sales process faster and more efficently. It's the long-term solution that addresses each of the key priorities for sales productivity — to shorten the sales cycle, decrease onboarding time, and streamline the opportunity management process. Simply put, sales enablement provides a big impact on the bottom line. 

Still, there are several questions sales managers and salespeople want answered before investing in sales enablement. Let us help answer some of those questions.

Topics: sales process sales enablement

5 Ways to Nail the Needs Analysis Conversation

Needs_Analysis-1

Once you have an appointment with a strong prospect, it’s time to prepare for a successful needs analysis so all the effort you spent getting the appointment isn’t wasted. You want to make sure that you have a strong and thorough needs analysis—because understanding your prospect's desired business results, challenges, and expectations is essential for developing a solution that will achieve results.

Topics: Needs Analysis successful sales meetings Sales

5 Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Digital Marketing Efforts

content marketing metrics

As websites continue to become more important in the consumer journey, the need to measure the efficiency of digital marketing also increases. This is a shared burden between those selling digital media and business owners and marketers who are looking to maximize their ROI. We know that “clicks” provide an incomplete picture into the impact of digital advertising, as most users do not click on ads but still find their way to a business's website after being exposed to ads.  

So what should we look at? Here are five metrics to help give a more in-depth insight into the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.

Topics: digital marketing SEO Inbound Marketing

5 Google Analytics Access Questions and Answers

5 Google Analytics Access Questions and AnswersSenior Consultants at The Center for Sales Strategy are known for helping organizations grow their sales through training, the development of customized strategy plans, and coaching.

By facilitating digital training in many workshops, there are several conversations around Google Analytics and how it can be used to sell the results of a campaign – some are more in-depth and hands-on, while others are more introductory based on the workshop.

Keep reading for answers to the five most frequently asked questions and objections heard when discussing Google Analytics.

Topics: digital marketing selling digital advertising integrated media solution google analytics

Three Tips to Develop Stronger Campaign Recaps

Stronger Campaign Recaps

Presenting a campaign recap that clients understand can be frustrating because each individual has a different level of understanding of the process. Successful salespeople can easily generate new business while retaining and growing their existing accounts.

When it comes to using digital solutions to do this, a big part of the success is how effective a seller is at selling the results back to the client while their campaign is running and once it is completed. It’s up to salespeople to prove the value that the company can provide.

What You Can Learn From Losing The Sale

what you can learn from losing the saleOver the last couple of months, I have had a number of clients share with me that they lost out on a couple of large deals that they had felt pretty strongly about. In each of those scenarios, my first question was, "Do you know why?" More often than not, the answer to my question was, “I’m not sure.”

Anyone who has ever been in a sales position has received a “no” in their career – most likely more than they would like – it comes with the job. But, it is what you do with the “no” that separates the best from the rest. Diagnosing where you may have gone wrong in the sales process can help to minimize making the same mistake in the future.

Topics: Proposal sales process

Sell That Smoothie! (Successfully Selling Integrated Solutions)

sell-smoothie-analogyShifts in consumer behavior over the last 20 years demand that businesses use multiple platforms to reach consumers. As a result, most media organizations today understand the importance of selling Integrated Solutions – just take a look at all of the capabilities that they have to offer a business to help them achieve their desired business results!

Topics: selling digital advertising integrated media solution

Every Touchpoint Counts: Developing Authenticity and Setting Expectations

sales acceleration with authenticity in account-based marketingI recently attended a session at a conference that centered around incorporating authenticity into account-based marketing, also known as ABM. If you are not familiar with ABM, it’s simply a strategic approach to focus an organization's B2B sales and marketing efforts on a defined group of high-potential targets instead of everyone, in an effort to create more personalized messaging and content to increase engagement. 

Topics: setting expectations sales performance sales process sales playbook branding