The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Let’s face it. If you are managing a business and you don’t have access to data regarding how your business is doing, you are essentially flying blind. Without benchmarks and numbers to indicate how you are doing, it’s tough to know what the score is and who is winning. That’s why analytics and data have become so important to business owners and marketers over the past few years. Knowledge is power, and the same now can be said for understanding and being able to analyze and interpret data.

HubSpot understands the need that businesses have to analyze large amounts of data for the purpose of making sound business decisions, and they have recently launched a new Research blog. The HubSpot Research blog provides in-depth insight and information for marketers and business owners that are looking to make data-driven decisions.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, so today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Selling to the Modern B2B Buyer — Salesforce

The ever-evolving B2B selling space and increasingly complex sales process present new challenges for B2B sales teams. In order to remain competitive and hit revenue goals, it is critical that sales reps understand the shifting landscape, why these changes are happening, and how to sell to the modern B2B buyer. Here are five factors that influence B2B buyer behavior and steps you can take to more effectively sell to the 21st-century B2B buyer and drive bottom-line results.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, so today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. The 7 R's That Turn a Negative Conversation Positive — HubSpot

When you work in a people-focused profession like sales, you’re bound to encounter conflict once in awhile. Trying to persuade people to part with their money, make a strategic decision for their company, or generally shake things up, dredges up a whole mess of emotion. There’s fear that a bad investment might incur company losses or hurt an employee’s personal reputation. Maybe there’s suspicion that you’re selling snake oil or aren’t being 100% truthful. There might even be anger if your prospect’s expectations aren’t being met fast enough. If you feel a conversation taking a negative turn, here are 7 ways to reframe and keep it positive.

I’ve been divorced and remarried. I’ve also lost and closed sales opportunities. As I think about the courtship of either kind of relationship, I’m reminded of how a marriage proposal simulates both really great and not-so-great business proposals. 

I work with a lot of sales teams and business development teams. Some perform well. Some perform not-so-well.

Happy Friday! Today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Spring Cleaning: Keeping Your CRM Organized — Insightly

‘Tis the season for spring cleaning! While that probably makes you think about your overflowing inbox on your desk (or your email), another area that can benefit from a bit of tidying up is your CRM platform. Why not use spring cleaning as your excuse to spend time in your CRM and ensure that everything is in tip-top shape so you can stay organized and efficient? These tips should help.

Recently I had a conversation with a manager where she was expressing concern about the language she was seeing in their proposals. In reading them over, the words were crisp and highly descriptive. The problem was, the language and terms were those they use in their own internal discussions—their industry jargon. This is a problem.