The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

When a fad reaches saturation, it’s often ready to start dying out, or at least transition into something else. Since it seems that everywhere you turn, someone is talking about the mistakes and must-haves for your personal brand, has this fad run its course? Are you a skeptic or fanatic for personal branding?

Where do you stand on personal branding?

• Do you read the hype about a personal brand and roll your eyes?
• Or are you an established thought leader in your industry?

A leader’s success or failure is dependent on the actions of those they lead. Good sales mangers understand that actions begin with attitude and motivate their team to direct their talents to selling and delivering effective solutions for their clients. The insights of military leaders often apply in business, which is why Sun Tzu’s Art of War is popular reading within the ranks of management.

Success or failure is a result of what people think, feel, and then do. Xenophon was an ancient Greek warrior and philosopher who observed that what soldiers think and feel will affect their actions.

Let’s look closer at three observations he made and how they apply to sales management:

The traditional ABCs of selling were "always be closing." Coffee was only for closers, and closing was a single, major event. The concept of "always be closing" is valid in that it’s important to always be moving the sale forward.

Too Many Pending Lists Give No Indication of the Last Move Forward

Before Google, LinkedIn, or social selling, Steve Marx, founder of The Center for Sales Strategy, taught that closing is a series of small yeses leading to the ultimate yes that confirms the sale.

There was a time when business people needed to be persuaded to get active online. Most of you are already active on social media. The big question now is how to use social media to build your business.

There are moments in every endeavor that will ultimately determine your success. In sales, we teach there are seven steps; three of those involve direct contact with the client or prospect, and those are the three tipping points in the process. While reading The Tao of Leadership, I thought about how this ancient wisdom might also be applied to the sales process.

The three tipping points in sales are getting the appointment, the needs analysis meeting, and confirming your proposal. Let’s look at these through the eyes of Lao Tzu and his ancient advice in the Tao Te Ching, for what he might say today to a salesperson at each step:

In 1996 Motorola introduced a cellular phone you could wear, email surpassed snail mail for the first time, and a computer named “Deep Blue” defeated the world chess champion. In the midst of this technological change, Al Ries published a marketing book entitled Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends On It.

Reis was already considered a marketing thought-leader, having coined the word “positioning” along with Jack Trout. Positioning was used to describe the perception of your brand relative to that of your competitors. 

Whether you’re positioning your company, your department, or just yourself, the wisdom of focus is important to revisit. 

Is it even possible to organize time? Let’s look at six ways we can focus our time on the things that are most important to us. 

1. Consider Current Commitments

Take a look at what you have already committed to doing. Look at each appointment on your calendar and each item on your latest to-do list. What result do you want to see from each commitment? How does each one make you feel when you think about that use of your time? 

We all want to listen better. So why do we find it so hard to do? We are often either thinking too much about what we want to say next or talking too much. 

Let’s look at 6 things we need to remind ourselves to do in order to be a better listener.

Content marketing is already strategic when it's “relevant and consistent" and designed to "attract and retain a clearly-defined audience.” Content marketing has the goal of building relationships and impacting the decisions people make about you.

Content marketing is focused on your target persona. Content strategy looks more at managing the lifecycle of the actual content. Strategy helps you increase your impact and reduce your workload.

The top three social channels being used most often by B2B marketers won’t surprise you, the ones they find most effective may. According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are still the top choices. YouTube and Google+ are also substantial for usage. Which channels on the top 10 list below are you using?