Jim Hopes, on October 10, 2017
Feedback. It’s powerful, right? The people who work for us crave it. You like to get it from your boss. Studies show that employees who receive regular feedback (as opposed to intermittent or no feedback) are TEN times more engaged. Yet most managers don’t provide consistent feedback to their direct reports about their skills and achievements. In fact, in most business scenarios feedback is mostly confined to infrequent, formal reviews or budget attainment numbers generated by a computer.
John Henley, on October 9, 2017
There are so many areas in life where balance is important. I believe a political view too far to the right or too far to the left is not healthy, and a workout routine that is exclusively power lifting will not make you as healthy as a more diverse exercise routine.
This is true in the sales profession as well. Great salespeople are generally hard workers and focused on the job at hand. But if you spend all your time focused on selling and not on understanding the greater business climate, you will not be as effective in your selling or as helpful to your clients.
LeadG2, on October 6, 2017
We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.
Interrupting will hurt you no matter what you do, but it’s especially detrimental in sales. Your success depends on positive interactions with prospects. You need to earn their trust and respect, as well as elicit key information from them. Here are five tips to help you.
Deborah Fulghum, on October 5, 2017
Do you love baseball? I do. As this season winds down and teams head to the playoffs, I am already thinking of next spring and the first pitch. I always wait with anticipation to see how the team will perform every year. Will we have a winning season and make the playoffs in the fall? Do we have the right players to be a winning team?
Alina McComas, on October 4, 2017
As a student of Florida State University in the 90’s, I fell in love with the sport of football. It has been great to see my alma mater be relevant again in the world of college football, but I have always been a fan of the sport—whether it is college, professional, or even just well-done football movies. One theme that flows through all football successes is strong leadership, talented players, and a vision/philosophy that every person must believe in, to be a part of the team.
Jim Hopes, on October 2, 2017
As a sales manager and a sales consultant, I have witnessed literally thousands of sales calls with competent and hard-working salespeople—professionals who have done their homework on the prospect, prepared thought-provoking questions that make it obvious they know something about the prospect’s business, and who pose questions with a genuine interest in hearing the answers. Sometimes it is magical and they help the prospect clarify a specific problem that needs to be addressed or an opportunity on which they would really like to capitalize. And, sometimes, all they do is get their questions answered and move on. Too bad.
What makes the difference between an interactive conversation that engages the prospect and one that is rote and turns into simply an information-gathering exercise? Follow up questions. Good follow up questions are never scripted. Good follow up questions show you were listening, that you are interested, and that you really need to learn more about the headline the prospect has just shared. Some simple open probes can reveal a lot of context and detail you need to know about a problem or opportunity—information you will probably never get if you simply move on to your next beautifully-crafted question. For example:
LeadG2, on September 29, 2017
We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.
Conversion funnels are complex. There are lots of pieces that need to be moved to create a system that consistently turns web visitors into leads and leads into customers. But opportunity lies in each element: landing pages, form fields, design, copy, etc. If you make some small tweaks to optimize these individual elements, guess what happens? They will come together to create a leaner and more efficient conversion funnel. Here are 10 key steps that will take you about 10 minutes each to implement.
Kurt Sima, on September 28, 2017
It is the time of the year for sales managers to finalize their business plans for the upcoming year. Plans will soon be approved by the cheese (boss) upstairs or the cheese (VP of Sales) in the tower miles away. Most agree that it’s smart to develop a business plan with details on how to exceed goals—some call them a roadmap to success.
By now, most business plans (encased in a binder) have made their way to a shelf, tucked away for safe keeping like a roadmap in a glove box. Roadmaps are pretty worthless these days, especially if they are tucked away in a glove box—kind of like a business plan in a binder on a shelf.
Travelers know there is a better way to keep from getting lost than a roadmap; it’s called a GPS. It’s about time managers figured out how to keep from getting lost by transforming their annual business plans from a roadmap to GPS. Following are 5 ways to help in this process...
LeadG2, on September 22, 2017
We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.
Consumers have come to trust the opinions of their peers or other online experts far more than brands. Here are three tips on how you can establish valuable social proof.
Kurt Sima, on September 21, 2017
Surprises are fun when they are part of a birthday; not so much when they are involved in selling. Salespeople should do their due diligence to minimize surprises during the sales process, especially when presenting and closing proposals.
Salespeople can improve their closing ratio and improve customer results using a no-surprise proposal (NSP) technique by clarifying these five things before they build and present a proposal:
