The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

GOOD NEWS: 80% of professionals prefer to use email for business communication. 

BAD NEWS: With over 269 Billion emails sent every day, there's a lot of fierce competition flooding your prospects' inboxes.

So how can you, the stealthy salesperson, craft a genius prospecting email that warrants a response? 

Even the best salespeople hear the word “no” from time to time.

You know how it goes; you did everything right. You built up some serious rapport, had that million-dollar idea, and presented a top-notch proposal. In the end, though, it just didn’t happen.

The prospect said “no.” NO! It’s never fun to lose, but how you handle these losses can make or break you.

For most sales reps, the benefits of employing automation tools are manifest. Who wouldn’t want to hand over humdrum tasks to digital systems so they could spend more time on activities that are fulfilling. Studies have shown sales professionals typically spend only 11% of their time actively selling, which is doubtless something many workers in the profession would like to change.

However, many of these same salespeople live in fear that reliance on automation will damage their ability to build deep and meaningful relationships with their clients.

It makes sense because often times we associate the word “automated” with the impersonal. Although it may sound counterintuitive, many of the processes facilitated by sales automation software actually make it easier for sales reps to dedicate additional resources to enhancing client relationships.

Case Studies and campaign recaps are powerful tools to help sell success. When managers share individual wins with their team, it boosts morale, sparks ideas, and motivates others to do similar work.

Salespeople value the real-life experience of their peers. After all, the best part of working in sales is celebrating your biggest wins after hours, weeks, maybe even months of hard work. Sales wins are a combination of strategies, tools, and content — doesn't other players on your team want to know what worked well for the salesperson who sealed the deal?

When you've been in the industry for a while, you realize the astounding similarities between sports and business. Like sports, sales is a highly-competitive field, and you must have the ability to think on your feet with rock-solid professionalism.

In both, success boils down to having a winning attitude that demands discipline and attention to detail regarding how you prepare and perform.

As an athlete, it’s vital to understand the basic concept of agility — the ability to change your body’s position by having quick feet. As a sales manager or consultant, rather than applying the phrase, “Move Your Feet” to your body, you must apply it to your mindset and tactics.

Once you present a solution to a prospective buyer or client, two things happen.

It becomes either Close Won or Close Lost. Close Won is obviously the ideal or desired scenario, but what happens when your pending deal is Close Lost? Is ALL lost? Maybe not. 

Ask yourself these three questions to determine if you can change a Close Lost scenario into a Close Won.

Someone once said that perceptions can’t be wrong because it’s a perception, an opinion and impression of someone else. However, perceptions are often wrong because if they were right, they would be called facts.  

Whether we deserve it or not, we’re judged by every person that we connect with. The words that come out of our mouth firmly establish an imaginary tattoo on our forehead as we stand in front of a quality prospect.

Perception is everything, and how you’re seen by your team, prospects, and clients is a key to success. New research shows that you have 27 seconds to make a positive impression and 1 minute to prove value in any given situation. Like it or not, how you look, dress, and speak helps people to form an opinion of you.

Social selling is a powerful part of the approach in our now transparent sales landscape.

By now, every salesperson should be embracing LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook, as they plan to approach and attempt to engage with new business prospects.

Whether you choose to use paid services or choose to navigate social media on your own, it’s a platform where you can earn trust and establish credibility with your very best prospects.

It’s also a platform that if used incorrectly, could damage your credibility with your very best prospects.

There are two poisonous mistakes that will kill a presentation: using jargon and using stock phrases.

Making either of these mistakes will drastically reduce the chance of getting a second meeting with a prospect.

Let's start with HOW NOT to start a presentation and finish with the HOW TO of communicating an engaging proposal.