The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Every sales manager has been there. You spend time and effort selecting just the right candidate. You get your “perfect” AE hired and trained, and they’re doing well. But then you get their two-week notice. Your heart sinks. You have invested time, energy, and most importantly money into this person, only to have them take their talent to another company. What happened?!

We have all heard the phrase, an employee joins a company but leaves a manager. So how can you keep your top talent? How can you become a manager whose people stay?

Blogging is no longer just for personal use. Businesses, including B2B companies, use blogs as a platform to connect with their target audience and increase awareness about their brands. If you are running or managing the sales department of a B2B company and you don’t have a blog for your business yet, you may want to consider starting one due to its various benefits.

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. Attention Marketers and Sales People: Take No for an Answer + More — Medium

Every time a salesperson contacts a potential lead, the salesperson is at an automatic disadvantage. The prospect always starts out on the defense. It’s not because they hate being sold to. They’re defensive because, in their experience, it’s going to take an enormous effort to make the salesperson accept a simple “No.” Here are five reasons why the best response is to actually take "no" for an answer.

A leader’s success or failure is dependent on the actions of those they lead. Good sales mangers understand that actions begin with attitude and motivate their team to direct their talents to selling and delivering effective solutions for their clients. The insights of military leaders often apply in business, which is why Sun Tzu’s Art of War is popular reading within the ranks of management.

Success or failure is a result of what people think, feel, and then do. Xenophon was an ancient Greek warrior and philosopher who observed that what soldiers think and feel will affect their actions.

Let’s look closer at three observations he made and how they apply to sales management:

You may have heard it said that the best way to approach selling is to make buying easier for the buyer. That saying has been around a long time. But a new twist on that is the notion of helping buyers navigate their journey. The journey in B2B buying has greatly changed over the last several years.  

Smart salespeople think about the “things” along the buyer journey—and consider how they can help the buyer navigate that journey.  

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 Email Time Management Hacks — HubSpot

Most salespeople spend hours in their inbox every day: Writing emails, scheduling them, reading them, and organizing them. If you could save just 10% of this time, you’d have more time for actual selling. To shrink your email investment by 10% (or more), try these five effective email time management hacks.

Sometimes the most revelatory meanings come from parables. Storytelling is an art and has been a part of the human experience since cave men started drawing pictures on cave walls, since troubadours roamed the countryside telling stories through their songs. Storytelling helps us make sense of the world.

One of the most effective ways of telling a story is through a parable. It’s a short, allegorical piece meant to teach a lesson. It’s told in words that convey images people can easily understand and often include animals and nature like "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Grasshopper and the Ant."

For those of us who are parents, we know that while we try to help our children avoid mistakes, we also want to give them some leeway to have learning moments of their own. Of course there is a time and a place for learning moments. The same goes for our teams when they are prospecting for new business. We shouldn't allow our newer salespeople as much leeway (like our younger children) as we do our more seasoned veterans (our older children) especially when it comes to prospecting. 

Here are 5 tips to help newer sellers determine their best prospects: