The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Our research shows that the very best salespeople out there are highly competitive, focused, passionate, and good at solving problems. So it would make sense that these same people would be excited about the opportunity to experience a virtual version of what it’s like to work for a company while scoring badges, earning points, and competing to win. It also stands to reason that highly competitive organizations would want to set themselves apart from the competition by turning to unique forms of recruitment to attract the most high-potential hires.

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. 7 Warning Signs Your Company Needs CRM Software — HubSpot

If you're currently evaluating whether to commit to using a CRM, look for these seven warning signs that may indicate you need one.

The traditional ABCs of selling were "always be closing." Coffee was only for closers, and closing was a single, major event. The concept of "always be closing" is valid in that it’s important to always be moving the sale forward.

Too Many Pending Lists Give No Indication of the Last Move Forward

Before Google, LinkedIn, or social selling, Steve Marx, founder of The Center for Sales Strategy, taught that closing is a series of small yeses leading to the ultimate yes that confirms the sale.

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 Write To-Do Lists That Make You Happier At Work — Fast Company

A sense of purpose brings happiness in your work, and a well-written to-do list can help impart it. A big part of seeing your job as a calling is recognizing the significant contributions you make over the days, weeks, and months that make up your career. So your to-do list should ideally make that easier to see, not harder. Here's how to create a better to-do list.

After spending over a decade helping sales organizations select highly talented employees and coaching those salespeople and sales managers to turn talent into performance, I have discovered what I believe are two undisputable truths:

• A shockingly high number of people are not engaged at work.
• Talented people who leave their jobs usually point to their manager as the problem.

The latest numbers from Gallup tell us that 70% of our employees are disengaged in their jobs and a recent study by SAP and Oxford Economics revealed that one in five of our top performers are likely to leave their jobs in the next six months!

This means it’s not enough to hire highly talented people into your organization and it’s not even enough to put them in the right positions so they can effectively use their talents (although both of these things are critical!).

Once hired, these talented people need much more from their manager in order to consistently feel engaged and fully realize their potential.

So what can you do to increase employee retention and maximize the performance of your people?

Today we have a guest post by Mikita Mikado. Mikita is the Co-Founder & CEO of PandaDoc, a platform helping sales teams create, deliver, and track intelligent sales content to close deals faster. To learn more about simplifying your sales documents, connect with Mikita and the PandaDoc team on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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. Why It’s Important to Update Your CRM During Lead Nurturing — Business 2 Community

Many salespeople are pretty good at entering new prospects into the CRM. But it's important to keep the CRM updated throughout the lead nurturing process. This article explains why.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Russian ballerinas. The film highlighted the rigorous training and selection process that these aspiring dancers endure to become professionals. The instructors and directors of the Russian dance companies have very specific attributes and talents that they look for when selecting dancers. They look for and identify these talents as they watch the dancers in action because they know these talents are essential and often difficult to find. Unfortunately for these aspiring dancers, most just don’t have the talent to become a prima ballerina.

Similarly, not everyone has the talent to be a successful salesperson.

It’s very smart to use a validated talent interview to uncover the innate abilities of your sales candidates and predict their future success in sales. It’s like the final auditions the Russian ballerinas must nail before they are invited to join the company. But make sure you are scouting for talent long before audition day! You have plenty of opportunities to discover potential all around you as you observe other people in action. With consistent practice, you can sharpen your eye to spot signs of potential in these areas every day.

We have all been there. The manager announces a new hire and someone says, “but they’re so YOUNG!” Or “Really?! They look like they’re 12!” As people are staying in the workforce longer, it's easy to have 30, 40, even 50 years separating Junior AEs from seasoned salespeople. So the question is, how can you get your team to all just get along?

It seems like a lifetime ago, but I was once the Associate Publisher at Competitor Texas magazine, a 80,000 circulation endurance sports magazine. Most of my clients were either running, cycling, or triathlon events or retailers and had a website but hadn’t started to build up a sizeable presence on social media. Most hadn’t even considered using digital ads to get visitors from related fitness websites to their own site.

It was a great time to be in the media industry, and we were just beginning to see the potential of integrating digital, social, email, event marketing, grassroots campaigns and print all together into one campaign. But we had one BIG challenge: how to effectively explain this new way of thinking to potential advertisers when many of these race directors still had event registrants filling out paper registration forms and mailing them in. They were certainly not embracing new technology or uses of media very quickly and were quite resistant to any change. So how to get through to them and show them how integrated solutions work? That’s where inbound marketing came in.