The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

For most sales organizations, your sales team most likely represents a wide range of personalities, experience levels as well as performance levels. Organizations typically have top performers or “all stars” as well as those that struggle each month to meet their sales quota or budget for the month. If your organization has determined there are some areas where your sales team can perform better and resources of time and money are available, where do you invest these limited resources? Do you focus on coaching up your bottom performers, do you bring in new talent, or do you focus on maximizing the performance of your top performers?

Here we are at the end of another week, 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. Are You a Data-Driven Leader? — Optimizely

What do you base your decisions on, as a leader? Opinions or facts? This post provides a quiz to help you determine if you need to use more data in your decision-making process.

We’ve seen many pictures posted that show that some people actually resemble their pets. That prompted a thought that I have noticed many salespeople with traits of either dogs or cats. And everyone knows how different dogs and cats are!

Cataloging repeatable behaviors that are part of the DNA of our pets can reveal how we view each other. Noticing behaviors that fire instinctively in humans and animals are guidelines to better understand their nature and each other. Here’s what I found that made interesting intersections between people and dogs and cats:

Which is more likely to drive strong sales performance: a focus on the numbers or great attention to the sales process?

I recently heard two people talking about the key to sales performance. One person started by saying that the key is to focus on sales process. Then a few minutes later, the other person described hearing a CEO of a very successful company saying he has learned that the key to driving top sales performance is to focus on the numbers. 

At first, this sounded like a conflict to me. But the more I listened, it turns out they were saying the same thing. It’s not either/or. The lesson is to focus on the numbers that are tied to the sales process. 

Content marketing is already strategic when it's “relevant and consistent" and designed to "attract and retain a clearly-defined audience.” Content marketing has the goal of building relationships and impacting the decisions people make about you.

Content marketing is focused on your target persona. Content strategy looks more at managing the lifecycle of the actual content. Strategy helps you increase your impact and reduce your workload.

We've come to another 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. How to Find Your Brand's Disruptive Opportunity — Moz

If you're looking to set yourself apart in a competitive market, you need to find your "disruptive opportunity". Finding your brand’s disruptive opportunity means you’re not competing in the same sandbox as everyone else, which means your chances of dominating the category are much, much higher. This post digs into how to find your own opportunity.

Salespeople who have mastered the art of “Big Game Hunting” start at the perceived top of the mountain. Too many salespeople start at the bottom—and stay there. Why can’t you call or email a CEO or CMO with a very Valid Business Reason? Why don’t you suggest a time to meet to pursue ideas that may possibly help their company/organization/mission achieve their current marketing objectives? You can!

What stops most salespeople is the start. They limit their own opportunities by being ill-prepared with a truly Valid Business Reason and with lack of confidence to reach higher. Unpreparedness has that effect. Let’s look at the Valid Business Reason which is the key to engaging your prospect: the reason that gets the target’s attention on why they should want to meet with you—not why you want to meet with them. See the difference?