The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

“Back to School” is a highly anticipated event for both students and parents alike, albeit for different reasons… but highly anticipated nonetheless! As a kid I remember feeling a sense of nervous excitement the night before the first day of school. I couldn’t wait to see all my friends, share summer stories, wear my new clothes, find out if my best friends were in my classes, meet my new teachers, and since I grew up in the 80’s… show off my fabulous “big hair.” 

Anyone who’s ever participated in sports, coached sports, or watched sports knows the object of the game is to win! We keep score throughout the game, because when the game is over we want to know who played the best and who deserves to be crowned the winner!  Salespeople in B2B sales are pretty much the same. They keep score by evaluating their new business conversion rates, by regularly analyzing their budget vs. goal numbers, by measuring renewals, and by consistently making sure they’re meeting their customer’s goals and ROI. When all of these things are positive… they consider that a win.  

During the American Revolution, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved and signed by the Second Continental Congress setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom with the resolution of independence from Great Britain. Two days prior, John Adams wrote these words to his wife Abigail:

Recently, I was talking with a salesperson about his initial approach to prospective customers. He couldn’t seem to get folks interested in having a conversation with him. He was hearing the immediate brush off of “no thanks, not interested” soon into every cold call. While this is common, there are specific tactics that can warm up cold calls enough to get prospects to take your call, and even set aside time by scheduling an initial call.  My call with this particular rep was to share some of those tactics and best practices to help him experience more success during his initial approach.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I love my boss or I love my sales manager?” I would venture to guess you could probably count on one hand the number of times you’ve heard this proclamation. 

If you’ve come to realize that the amount of time you’re spending to “manage” an incessantly needy client far outweighs the amount of revenue they represent for your company… it's time to think about firing them. 

If you were to ask 100 salespeople why they hate sales meetings, and then take all of their reasons and put them in a giant pot, fill it with water, and turn up the heat… the myriad of responses would all boil down to one and only one reason; they believe they’re a waste of their time!

Referrals are like gold, it takes hard work to acquire them and they are extremely valuable! Most salespeople aspire to get them however, it seems as if this is the one area most would say they could greatly improve on…even high performing b2b sales reps.   

I was recently talking with a sales rep for a heavy equipment company. He sells agriculture and construction equipment, you know tractors, front loaders, bull dozers, excavators, forklifts…big machines most men (and all little boys) wish they had a reason to buy. He was telling me about a particular situation he was working through with a potential customer.

Generating qualified leads with inbound marketing is not complicated or difficult.  It’s a repeatable process that can be broken down in only 561 words!

• Create a blog and graciously share information that matters to your business and your customers – this means regularly share insight, expertise, real world scenarios and stories that will suck your readers in and keep their attention until the end of the post.  Give them information they can use and commit to providing valuable content. Keep it real...no nonsense here.