The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

“Co-branding, also called brand partnership, is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy.”

Who wants to be average? If you knew that the average webinar according to Clickmeeting.com had only 28 participants, wouldn’t you want to beat that average? (28 participants does not necessarily indicate only 28 people registered—this means that 28 people attended the webinar at the scheduled time. Many more probably registered, but those whose schedules don't allow live attendance will only watch the webinar recording.)

If getting 28 people to attend your webinar seems like a lot for the size of your company, or if you want to exceed that average number, you might want to consider some alternative methods to getting more registrants. One alternative to the common promotion techniques of social, email and advertising is to use some form of co-branding. 

The holidays are the perfect time to show your team how much you appreciate them. But sometimes it's hard to think of meaningful gift ideas. We've got you covered this year! We collected ideas from our sales consulting staff here at The Center for Sales Strategy (each of whom was once a salesperson and a sales manager) to share with you. Here are 12 gift ideas you can't go wrong with.

More and more, I am hearing from our clients that the single toughest thing for salespeople to do these days is to secure quality appointments. Just so we are all on the same page, a quality appointment meets the following criteria:

• It's scheduled in advance
• It's with the decision maker(s)
• The main purpose of the meeting is to discover needs, get an assignment, or present ideas

Having salespeople cold call for hours upon hours is not efficient—it's expensive and it's very 1990’s.

Hope you all have had a wonderful week! It's Friday, and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Tired of Useless Meetings? 9 Ways to Make Them More Effective. (Infographic) — Entrepreneur

We've all been in those meetings: the kind that are a complete waste of time and that bore us to tears. But meetings don't have to be useless. This infographic offers nine ways to make them more effective.

Like many of you reading this, I would much rather read an email or visit a website to learn about a product or service than talk directly to a salesperson. And forget about meeting a sales representative in person. 

Nothing against salespeople—I was one myself at one time. We will truly never be able to replace salespeople in the sales process, but we need to adapt to the reality that most buyers aren't ready to talk with salespeople early in the buying journey. Yet we need to be present at the early stages of the buying journey. We need to give our marketing a real voice in order to build trust and deepen relationships that will lead to an in-person sales discussion.

It's often been said that people do business with people they know, like and trust, and I wholeheartedly agree. The challenge we have as marketers is how best to get people to know and like us and our company's products and services—and more importantly, how to trust us. 

Some of the most popular methods of communication that marketers use to help us get to know, like and trust a a company are videos, podcasts and webinars. 

Let's look at a few distinctions between videos, podcasts and webinars to see why webinars are becoming so popular.  

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

1. How Marketing Can Prepare Sales For Success in 2016 — SBI

One of the main purposes of the Marketing team is to set the Sales team up for success. This post digs into how to streamline marketing operations for efficiency and effectiveness.

Today’s sales leaders have to be much better at managing change than at any time in the recent past. It’s part of the job now. But just because change is more common and comes faster, doesn’t mean that people are suddenly much better at handling it. It still takes a gifted leader to help salespeople respond well.

How People Experience Change

I help a lot of companies manage change and I suggest 8 action steps leaders should take to help their team embrace change. Before I get to those, some thoughts on change:

There are several “change models” out there, but one that is familiar to most is:

• Denial
• Resistance
• Exploration
• Commitment

“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.” — Benjamin Franklin

One of the biggest issues salespeople have is time management. We all feel busy, but busy doesn’t always equate to success. Salespeople often have the best intentions of working smarter, not harder. They talk about wanting to spend more time prospecting, setting up new Client Needs Analyses (CNAs) updating CNAs with Key Accounts, pre-selling Key Agencies, and building relationships with important contacts. These are the best use of their time.

Unfortunately, these things often get pushed to the back burner because a client needs something NOW, a mistake needs to be fixed, a manager needs a report, a collection call needs to be made, or a co-worker stops by his or her cubicle to shoot the breeze. Next thing you know, a whole day has gone by without any IMPORTANT work getting done.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It's Friday, so it's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. 7 Signs You Need a Sales Enablement Solution — SalesForce

Only one-third of sales reps meet or exceed quota, and only 10 percent are consistently high-performers. Sales enablement software can help to change that. Here are 7 signs that you should see what a sales enablement solution could do for you.