The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

• You’ve worked with your marketing team to develop your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
• You’ve built a database of target companies that match your ICP characteristics.
• You’ve researched to identify the key decision-makers of your target prospects.
• You have a great solution that has helped other similar companies.

You have a great story to tell.

Now you have one last problem. You need a chance to tell your story.

You can’t sell anything until you first talk to a decision-maker. But you can’t get a decision-maker to pick up the phone or even open your emails.

How do you break through to seemingly unresponsive decision-makers?

As a sales manager, you know the frustration of watching your pipeline slow down to a trickle.

When you need a boost of new opportunities to drive revenue quickly, it's time to look beyond your typical marketing channels.

Here are five lead sources offering a "short route to revenue" to help fill your funnel quickly.

The most common frustration I hear from B2B sales and marketing leaders is their inability to secure first appointments with qualified prospects. The common sentiment that I hear over and over again is this.

“We do really well as a sales team when we have an opportunity to tell our story. But we’re just not getting enough at-bats.”

For several years, traditional outbound prospecting methods (cold calling and email) in B2B selling have become less productive. The average cold call success rate in 2024 is 4.82%.

This statistic includes efforts to call into all sizes of companies and levels of target contacts. As you call larger companies and higher-level decision-makers, this number can plummet to less than 1%.

And email isn’t much better. Over 60% of all cold outbound emails go unopened by the target prospect.

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.

"I spend all day making cold calls, and I'm getting very little to show for my efforts. Getting the first appointment is harder than ever. If I could just get my foot in the door..."

It's a common complaint from B2B sales reps nowadays. Traditional prospecting approaches like cold calling have become less and less effective over the years. Decision makers simply don't answer unsolicited sales calls like they used to.

What can you do about it?

Email continues to be a very effective way to engage with prospects and clients. However, consider these facts (Source).

• In 2022 there were over 330 billion emails sent and received per day.
• That number is expected to be almost 350 billion per day in 2023
• The average person sends and receives 121 business-related emails per day. Remember, that’s an average. That amount can easily be doubled for an executive-level decision-maker.
• Just because an email is sent doesn’t mean it’s opened and read. The average open rate for businesses across all industries is just 18%.

The digital revolution has changed how businesses operate, and the sales industry is no exception. In order to stay ahead of the competition, companies must deploy the latest sales tech stack to maximize their opportunities.

A comprehensive guide to leveraging sales tech stack can help companies identify the most suitable technology for their business and unlock bigger opportunities. It is essential to understand which technology can best support sales activities, automate mundane tasks, and provide valuable insights.

Here's an overview of the types of sales tech stack, the benefits they offer, and how to implement them in your business. With this  guide, you will be able to strategically maximize your sales opportunities and drive long-term success.

If three birds are sitting on a wire, and two decide to fly away, how many are left?

If you haven’t heard this riddle, you might answer “one. “ But the answer is that three birds are left on the wire. The two birds only decided to fly away, and deciding is not the same as actually doing.

Moving from deciding to doing is a common challenge in new business development. How many times in our sales career have we decided to do something but stayed sitting on that wire?

We’ve established short and long-term goals. We’ve even mapped out an action plan and a roadmap to follow that will lead to success. But we remain sitting on a wire. Our behaviors don’t change, and we don’t follow through with the plan.

Before you can close the deal you first have to schedule the first meeting with the prospect’s decision-maker. Often, that’s the most challenging element of the sales process. Many sellers express the same frustration. “We have a great story to tell, but we’re simply not getting enough at-bats.”

Here are five ideas to help your sellers get off the bench and into the game.

Having a robust sales pipeline may help the sales team, sales managers, and the C-suite sleep better at night. But if there’s little or slow movement of those deals through the pipeline, everyone will spend more time counting sheep than counting money.

After all, opportunities in the pipeline don’t pay the bills. Only closed/won deals produce revenue.

So generating leads is only part of the equation for successful sales and marketing organizations. Keeping those leads moving through the pipeline and shorting the sales cycle is equally important.