The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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.

The average American social media user spends an average of 3.2 hours a day with social networks according to research by Ipsos. With that much time being spent on a social network, businesses who have not developed a social media plan as a part of their marketing strategy are missing out on a lot of opportunity.

What’s the solution? Use social media! Sounds easy enough, and building a page on social media is simple. But posting once a day and tweeting is not enough. To effectively use social media for marketing, marketers need to build an audience and create engaging content that resonates with that audience.

If you are currently using social media to market your business, or you offer digital solutions and are looking to help your clients build and enhance their social strategy, here are five things to consider:

1. Start by determining which social media network(s) is the right social network.

Social networks are not all the same. They all have different audiences that engage with the content in different ways. To understand which social network(s) you should be active in, first identify your target persona. Learn how they use social media, which networks are they most active in, and which content they engage with most on your website.

Top salespeople are often the veterans. They have deep relationships, and when there is an RFP (request for proposal) or a big contract up for bid, they know just how to zero in on that transaction and bring home the biggest share of the business.

The prospect has already decided they are going to spend that money for your product or industry. It's the "money on the table" or the low hanging fruit, and the issue was always about beating the competition.

Transactional business is critical to secure, and the big wins take hard work. But those successes can blind even the best sales reps from rocking the boat enough to look for more opportunities.

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. The #1 Way to Respond to Any Question from a Prospect— HubSpot

How do you respond to prospect questions? The most effective type of response isn’t an immediate one. Implement this technique, and you’ll stand out from your selling competition.

Effective marketing and sales alignment doesn’t happen without the dedication of determined leaders. When you consider that a lack of alignment between marketing and sales can cost companies up to 10% of their revenue each year, it puts the severity of the issue front and center. However, the importance of collaboration between the units isn’t limited to financial performance. It impacts the way your employees work with each other, and the way they demonstrate your value proposition to customers. Marketing and sales leaders must make a commitment to come together to better serve their customers, their team members, and the company stakeholders.

Have you played with a slinky recently? Probably not. But you remember how it moves down a staircase. Play that video in your head, and as you do that, think about how adopt a slinky style of sales management.

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 Tactics Smart Reps Use to Get Stalling Deals Over the Finish Line — HubSpot

It’s the end of the month or quarter, and you’re running out of time to hit quota. A deal you were counting on to close is stalling. What do you do? Pressuring your prospect to buy before they’re ready is never wise, unless you want to lose their trust and potentially their business. But there are several non-manipulative ways to increase the buyer’s urgency, like these five ideas.

In our consulting practice we often talk with salespeople who are frustrated because a proposal they have in front of a prospect seems to be going nowhere. Typically, the prospect has said positive things about the plans in the proposal and seems to indicate they have interest in implementing the plan at some point, but still the decision wallows and there’s no sale. So how does one best deal with this scenario?

Here are five ideas to help you activate lagging prospects: