The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Buyer-first mentality is simply defined as it’s a buyer’s world, and sellers are just living in it.

In the past, traditional sellers could easily come in and build a case because they were a superstar, had great product knowledge, and were able to support the buyer’s organization. In essence, they were selling what they could accomplish for the client without ever knowing anything about them.

Technically, those days are over now. Buyers expect you to know more about what their company is all about, what they do, and potentially what they’re trying to accomplish.

When you’re doing it right, recruiting the best candidates for your open salesperson positions can take weeks or even months. That’s not even factoring in the costs of not having someone close new business while the position is vacant, the money lost during onboarding, and the risk of losing the new hire if they or your team determine they’re not the best fit for the job. 

That’s why it’s critical to both know your Employment Value Proposition (EVP) and make sure it’s clear to your candidates right from the outset, even if they’re not looking for a new job. 

With the holidays looming ahead and the new year not far behind, there’s no better time to start looking for gifts for your sales team that will show they’re appreciated. 

However, when considering gifts for your salespeople, some level of personalization can go a long way. Ditch the printed pens that are half broken and lanyards that can’t hold anything heavier than a single house key. Instead, consider these top gifts for salespeople that go the extra mile in showing you’re thinking about them.

We’re all guilty of throwing around the terms “thought leader” and “thought leadership.”  These days the terms are so often used that we forget what they actually mean.

In fact, Inc Magazine states that the term "thought leader" is one of the most misunderstood titles in business. Tied for first is the term "influencer." 

Is sharing content on social media considered thought leadership? Do you need 10K LinkedIn followers to reach the status of a “thought leader?”

The short answer is no. We all have the ability and opportunity to be thought leaders just by educating, improving, and adding value to our industry as a whole.

Scientists say music changes mood, motivation, cognitive processing, and the ability to retain information. Additionally, music just makes work more fun and time fly!  

Setting appointments is a common problem — in fact, the 2020 Media Sales Report found that 80% of sales managers find it harder today than just 5 years ago. Listening to music is just one small motivator that will help get the job done.

Effective sales prospecting is one of the most challenging — and most important —parts of the sales process. Getting it wrong means wasted time and frustration. Getting it right means a healthier pipeline and better performance.

When it comes to lead generation, when does the marketing department’s role end and the sales department’s role begin? Very specifically, when should a lead be passed from marketing to sales?

As with most marketing and sales best practices, it’s not always a black and white answer.

Every organization is different, and it’s important that your organization have it's own marketing and sales agreement plan that outlines in detail how you will qualify, distribute, track, and ultimately close your marketing leads.

Creating compelling B2B content is only half the battle when it comes to a solid lead generation strategy for your sales plan and your business. While your content must be grammatically correct, educational, formatted properly, and a good representation of your brand, it must also be strategically created following proven best practices that most inbound marketers and sales teams follow. These tactics are what help ensure your content isn’t just interesting or nice to read, but ultimately driving prospects closer to doing business with you and taking some kind of action or next step.

A research study by McKinsey Global Institute reported that salespeople on average spend less than 13 hours a week actually selling.

Considering that going out and selling solutions is what salespeople actually are best at, and what is most profitable for them and the company they work for, it’s a little disheartening that so much time is spent doing other things like office tasks, answering emails, researching leads, and internal communication (I’m guessing this includes one too many meetings a week).

However, I’m not so sure we can eliminate those other tasks and give salespeople back another 20 hours a week. And even if they had that extra time, I’m not sure they’d be spending it in the most effective way. It’s not about how much time we have to actually sell. It’s about how much time we waste on trying to get to that point of the selling process.

As a proud partner of HubSpot, we at The Center for Sales Strategy, as well as our sister company that focuses on lead generation and sales enablement, LeadG2, naturally have experience with the HubSpot CRM, and it might be easy to think that we’re biased about this tool because of our relationship with them. However, it’s important to know a bit more of the context to better understand why we’re not biased and how that shows up in what we do and recommend.