The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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. 

If you open an underwater door and let a fish out of an aquarium into the ocean, he is free. Free to swim around the sea! But if you let him out of the water completely, he is not really free. The fish needs water to live — this restriction is a good one. The fish also needs room to swim — the restriction that keeps him caged is not a good one.

We've come to the end of the 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 Not-So-Obvious Ways Sales Can Leverage Content Marketing to Close Deals — Content Marketing Institute

Content can be leveraged to not just create the potential for deals, but to actually help the sales team close deals. Here are five challenges that keep deals from closing that your content can fix.