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The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Resources to Help You Get More High-Quality Appointments

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You probably have some ambitious sales goals for Q1 of 2017. And to reach those goals, you've got to get more high-quality appointments. If you aren't sure how you're going to get there, check out these free resources.

Topics: Sales

How to Use a LinkedIn Group to Attract New Business Prospects

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Attracting new business prospects is accomplished more easily by genuinely connecting with them and sharing your thoughts, rather than blindly spewing a product pitch. Think about it—if you were considering buying a product or service which of the following selling styles would you prefer?

  • Have a salesperson cold call you and drone on and on, spewing facts and figures about their product—and ultimately try to power close you (even if you are not ready to buy).

                                                                  OR

  • Get to know the product/service and a salesperson at your own pace—ultimately controlling when to get into a serious dialogue with a salesperson.

Providing insight into how you think—and what you stand for—is called thought leadership. It’s a great way to allow a prospect to ease into a relationship with you. Starting a LinkedIn group is an easy way to get into the thought leadership game and start a dialogue with new business prospects. Here’s how to do it:

Topics: thought leadership Inbound Marketing

Have You Chosen Your Professional New Year’s Resolutions?

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In this first week of 2017, most ofus are thinking about our New Year’s Resolutions and what we can change in the new year to make ourselves better. The usual list of suspects includes a promise to get into the gym more, quitting smoking, losing weight, spending more time with family and friends, getting out of debt, and getting organized. But what about your professional resolutions? Have you determined what commitments you plan to make to achieve your professional aspirations for 2017? 

Topics: selling digital advertising Sales branding

Traction… Whose Job Is It to Make Sure the Next Step Gets Taken?

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Maybe it's because I live in the great Pacific Northwest (the really cold part) that has me thinking about getting traction—both on the road and in sales. I talk a lot about traction when I'm coaching people through the selling process because it is the metric for how we move through the process.

If You Want Success, You Have to Take the Wheel

You can tell that you are moving the process forward when you get the traction to turn the wheels to move to the next step. Your prospects are not going to do this for you. You must take the wheel. They aren't going to be doing the contracting and partnering to move to the next step—that responsibility lies squarely on your shoulders. And amazingly it can be as easy as making sure you are at the same stage in the process and agreeing on what the next steps will be.

Take charge of the sales process with our How Selling Process.

Contract the Next Step

What does that sound like? How about this… "Thanks for meeting with me today Ms. Decision-maker. I learned a lot about what you do. I'm thinking my next step should be to review the information we've discussed and start to put together some preliminary ideas. I'll then bring those back to you so we can review them together. Would you agree that's the path I should take?"

Without clear contracting, you sit idle or even worse, start sliding out of control.

Download How Selling Steps

Topics: setting expectations sales strategy Sales

Speed Up Your Sales Cycle With Focus And Preparation

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You're only as good as your last great sale. Are you getting your next one fast enough to reach your goals? Many salespeople approach their next big win like it will take months. That's a bad assumption to make if you want to accelerate your sales cycle. With the right focus and preparation, one salesperson I work with got her "next great sale" in a short amount of time. Here's how:

Topics: sales strategy Sales

Balancing Time and Performance with Sales Enablement

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Today we have a guest post from Rachel Davidson. Rachel is a content specialist for Highspot, the sales enablement industry’s leading platform for content management, customer engagement, and analytics.


As sales teams grow, it can be challenging to make sure each team member has quick access to resources needed to do the job: case studies, email templates, product sell sheets, whitepapers, etc.

When huge amounts of content are fragmented and spread throughout multiple systems and platforms, reps can spend more time searching than selling. This is where sales enablement technology comes into play. By using a smart sales enablement tools that allow reps to access content and automate tasks, sales teams put themselves in better position to save time and engage customers more effectively.

At its heart, sales enablement creates more opportunities for reps to do what they do best: sell. Today we’re going to share ideas on improving the bottom line of your business by achieving faster conversions and higher sales via sales enablement.

Topics: sales enablement

The 5 Most Popular Posts from 2016

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We publish a lot of posts on our blog in our effort to help sales managers and salespeople get better results. Every so often, we look back at our analytics to see which posts were the most popular, so we know what's of interest to people (and what we need to focus on with upcoming posts). 

Topics: Sales blog strategy

Is it Wrong to be Friends with the People You Manage?

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This is one of the coaching questions I am asked most often, so chances are high that you’ve wondered the same thing. My short-and-sweet answer to this question? No, it is not wrong. Not even a little bit.

I’ll even go one giant step further by saying that in most cases, it is actually imperative that you are friends with the people you manage.

Topics: Sales

Are We Past the Personal Brand Thing Yet?

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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?
Topics: Social Media Sales personal brand

How to Cast the Net for Millennial Salespeople

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In an article in Time Magazine describing the new generation of workers, many summarizations were made. Here are a few quotes from that article: “They are thought of as the entitlement, me, me, me generation,” “Want to postpone growing up,” “Overly sensitive at best and lazy at worst.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Which generation do you think this article was about? You may be quick to jump on Millennials for your answer, but you would be wrong! This article was written about 16-year-olds and is dated from a 1990 Time issue on Generation X!

Every older generation views the younger ones with that “What is up with the kids these days?” mindset. Scary to say, but you have become your parents! Millennials are the new YOU!

We hear that word often, but who exactly are Millennials? Let’s look at a quick breakout of your workforce by category:

Topics: Sales