The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

You've probably seen umpteen lists of ways to increase a sales team's performance. Trust me, I know. I have probably written a half dozen of those myself.  

But the more I work with sales teams, the more I've realized that what a sales manager needs is not another list of productivity tips and tricks, but an integrated process for increasing their sales team's productivity. This is particularly true for media sales, where custom solutions can require more involved sales funnels. Here's the process I've developed and implemented with success.

I recently had a conversation with a manager who asked me: “What do I need to keep in mind when I, as a highly-competitive person, am managing a seller who is also highly competitive?” He was concerned that because they both had highly-competitive natures, he may have a tendency to want to compete with his own direct report, which he instinctively knew would work against them both in the end. I gave an analogy to the manager that I would tell any manager, competitive or not.

Here we are at the end of another week! It's Friday, and it's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. 8 Small But Unforgivable Sales Email Sins — HubSpot

Getting a response from prospects is hard enough. If you add an annoying email habit to the mix, your chances of a reply are almost nil. So open your “Sent” folder, and make sure you’re not guilty of any of these eight email sins.

Oops. In your enthusiasm to close the sale, did you promise the car dealer or medi-spa owner that the advertising for their grand opening will bring so many people that they will be lined up around the block? In your energetic attempt to close the deal, did you tell the roofing or HVAC company that their phone will “ring off the hook”?

What happens when there aren’t lines around the block and the phone doesn’t ring off the hook?

Your credibility has been destroyed along with trust. How can this all-too-often occurrence be avoided?

Staying organized is one of the keys to productivity. If we're going to accomplish our important goals, we need to have a method for knowing what our priorities are and organizing our to-do list around them. 

By now, you have probably heard about Marie Kondo’s tiny turquoise book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. It has been published in more than 30 countries, and has spent the last 77 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. During that time, Kondo has launched a companion book, Spark Joy, which has joined her first book on the best seller list 15 weeks ago.

Perhaps you’ve read the books — or even been inspired to start your own decluttering binge! 

There is a certain freshness and energy that comes from sweeping away the unnecessary and unused clutter to reveal the meaningful, important items in your home and your life. The feeling of “a place for everything, and everything in it’s place,” is a reward unto itself, as so many have discovered through Kondo’s KonMari Method.

I was talking to a client last week who was feeling defeated because his team was not meeting every goal he had set out for the year. I get it, good sales leaders hate to lose and should be upset when they don’t deliver the number. But this is a very strong team, delivering strong performance. And they keep setting tough goals in lots of different areas. They have a big vision for where they are going! They aren't going to be able to hit every goal, every time.

It's Friday, and it's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Focus on Keeping Up with Your Customers, Not Your Competitors — HBR

It's tempting to focus on what your strongest competitors are doing. After all, you're competing with them! But too often, companies focus on the competition when they should be focusing on their customers. How can you keep up with your customers? You have to start thinking like them. This article shows you how.

We’ve been talking about the Millennial generation for years now. Discussing their behaviors, styles, and attitudes, we have debated how this group will likely affect our business moving forward and how we can best develop them to succeed.

This understanding is vital since they will soon fill half of our entire labor force, and Pew Research reports that 58% of them expect to leave their jobs in three years or less. That kind of turnover can be a killer to a sales organization, so we need to figure them out and connect with them in a meaningful way.

But how? It may not be as hard as you thought!

Thanks to technology that enables people to learn just about anything in a matter of seconds, the buying process has become more personal. Thanks to the fact that every online buying experience is customized to the individual, people are starting to expect the B2B buying experience to follow suit.

A salesperson who hasn’t done their research and isn’t coming to the first appointment with very specific ideas on how to provide relevant value to a prospect isn’t going to make a sale.

We've come to another Friday, and we hope you've had a good week! It's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Helping Buyers See Value — Salesforce

Stories are naturally visual, and allow you to help prospects see themselves in successful outcomes based on how you position what you deliver. The power here is that rather than “selling” you're sharing experiences of other similar scenarios, and helping them see the possibilities. This article shows how you can use stories to help buyers see value.