The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

- MOTIVATION -

"To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resource — not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end."

-Daniel Pink

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Are you looking for ways to create a company culture that will help you accomplish your business goals?

If so, you may have read about Zappos corporate culture and its ten core values. You know that core values determine the priorities of the company, and they’re what support the vision of your company and help shape the culture.

Here’s why the most successful companies have core values in place and pay attention to culture fit when they hire new people.

Historically, the term sales collateral referred to one-sheets and brochures that often hung on a wall, and when the sales team met with a client or prospect, they would grab a one-sheet to help build their case—and it worked great! In the 21st Century, you need more.

- MOTIVATION -

"Become the person who would attract the results you seek."

-Jim Cathcart

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If you have—or have ever had—a veteran salesperson on your staff, you know they bristle at training. The mere suggestion of it can set them off—and for good reasoning! 

Most of us were once salespeople, and we were good at it. And we too would sound off on why training wasn’t for us, why we wanted simply to be left alone to perform. Here's a list of reasons why sales veterans hate sales training, can you add to the list?

The world of sales has rapidly changed as new technology evolved and became more accessible to businesses and sales teams. Over the last decade, the major trends in sales have included ideas like inbound marketing, social selling, and implementing sales enablement tools.

From companies becoming more intentional about building a culture of engagement to sellers mastering the art of shared-screen conversations, predictions in sales trends for the next decade take a slightly different approach. Improving sales productivity and the overall sales process are still top priority — but there’s more! Here are our predictions for the next ten years in sales, sales management, and sales marketing trends.

- MOTIVATION -

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

-Laozi

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A New Year's resolution is a tradition in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their life. The New Year brings a fresh start and the opportunity for sales managers and sales teams to set goals and intentions for the coming months. 

Perhaps you, or a salesperson on your team, had a lousy 2019 and are ready to make some changes in 2020. A resolution can help reset the compass — here’s a list of options to help kick off the New Year and improve your (or your sales team's) sales performance.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we addressed the overall power of employee engagement. In part two, we learned how transparency could be used to boost overall employee engagement. In a nutshell, workplace transparency helps set the stage for employee engagement — the essential element of a positive and productive workplace cult

In this final part of the blog series of how to improve your company culture in 90 days or less, you’re going to learn how to take your employees from feeling motivated about your company culture vision to acting on ideas that will increase employee engagement.

We often use sports to relate to management behaviors to avoid. 

Reflecting back to 2011, there’s How to Build a Winning Team for your Sales Organization, then there's, Do You Onboard New Sellers Like the Cleveland Browns Onboard New Quarterbacks? Both articles provide insight on how to learn from coaches and teams' mistakes and apply lessons learned to sales today.

In this installment, let's focus on leadership — specifically, how a leader should respond and react when they make a mistake. Warning: sports analogies are included in this post.