The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Raise your hand if you wish you had more quality appointments each week? My bet is that nearly 100% of you raised your hand. Almost every salesperson and sales manager that I speak to these days is talking about how difficult it is to get the quality appointment. Ironically, at the same time that getting quality appointments has become perhaps the most important activity for growing business, it has also become one of the most challenging parts of the sales process. The reasons for this are nearly the same in every market. They sound like some variation of the following.

Sharing insights as part of the sales process is getting a lot of press these days. It makes sense that prospects are looking for relevant insights that will impact their business in world of abundant information. 

But there are two mistakes I see salespeople making when sharing insights. Insights have to actually be relevant to the prospect and be truly insightful in order to speed up the sale. The mistakes I see most frequestly are:

1. Sharing a deck of random facts and thinking they are insights. 
2. Sharing an insight and not turning it into an interesting conversation.

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.

1. 5 Highly Effective Ways to Respond to Pricing Questions — HubSpot

You’re meeting with a hot prospect for the first time when they hit you with the dreaded price question. How you respond could make or break the rest of the conversation. Here's how to nail that response.

Okay, here’s the scenario. You’ve done your due diligence on a prospect and your extensive research tells you that:

Every week or two, in nearly every sales organization across the country, sales managers and salespeople sit down together for their regularly scheduled individual focus meetings.

You’re familiar with these meetings, so let me ask you... in your opinion, do your salespeople look forward to them? Are they anxious to share valuable information and discuss next steps in order to ensure they are moving business forward? For the most part, would you say they are a good use of everyone’s time?

Many will answer, “No.”

In my experience, both salespeople and sales managers often find themselves dreading these one-on-one meetings because they feel as though they are a waste of their time.

If you are in sales, you have to learn to effectively battle your fears. Fear of a big client leaving. Fear of a big deal falling through. Fear of your company making a change. Fear of the marketplace changing. Fear of the new boss.  

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.

1. Offline & Organic: The Two Rivers That Feed Modern Local SEO — Moz

Local companies that lack a basic understanding of how customer service works in the offline world won’t be fully equipped to consult with clients who may need as much help defining the USP of their business as they do managing its local promotion. This post shows how the two work together and howt o maximize them both.

It's time to pull out the fire pit and get those spring fires burning. You need the right wood to keep a strong fire burning, just like you need the right talent to improve your sales.

Every client I am working with is telling me the changes in business are creating a need for a new breed of salesperson. In this good business climate, there is opportunity everywhere, but taking advantage of that opportunity requires stronger talent than in the very recent past.

This has everyone looking for great new sales talent to bring into their organization, and this pursuit of talent has leaders evaluating their current culture. You need the right culture to attract top talent.

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.

1. How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really) — strategy + business

At their worst, meetings are like short prison sentences that have you counting the minutes until your release. Yet there are meetings that are useful and productive, and even invigorating and enjoyable. This article looks at three types of meetings that exemplify variations on best practices and are worth emulating.