The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The air is starting to cool, or at least we think it might soon, the leaves are changing, it's football season, and the kids are back to school. That's right, it's the unofficial start of fall! We talked about what to track, how to add tracking to stories, and the second round of how to spot sales talent without asking questions.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Tuesday, Matt Sunshine told us that if we only had to track four metrics for our salespeople, these are the four he suggests.

In a recent post, I observed how easy it can be for parents to see talents that are obvious (or conspicuous by their absence) in their kids. The article was inspired by a conversation with the proud father of three grown sons, two of whom were natural arguers as kids and became successful lawyers and the other of whom was the reserved, studious, analytical kid who became—you guessed it—an engineer.

Lawyers aren’t the only people who need to convince others and bring them around to their point of view. And engineers aren’t the only ones who need to find problems, pick them apart, and develop solutions. B2B salespeople need both those talents to perform at a high level. And they need half a dozen more talents as well (as we know from our research and our continuing success with our Sales Talent Interview assessment system). Let’s talk about these other six.

1. Work Intensity

One measures how hard someone likes to work, and the pace at which they work. That is the talent we call Work Intensity. To spot this talent, watch for people who are always busy, who have a lot going on, and who fill every waking hour with activity. They often walk fast, check their watch a lot, tap their pen, or seem impatient. They want things to happen now, and they have very clear short-term and long-term goals.

When I was about 10 years old, I was chosen to represent my school in a storytelling festival. I spent weeks rehearsing a story about a terrifying gorilla. I can still remember that nervous feeling as I began to tell my story to a room full of strangers. As I told my story, that feeling quickly turned to excitement and a sense of accomplishment. It was at that moment that I first realized the tremenous power of storytelling.

That power is more relevant than ever today—when salespeople are challenged to explain Google Analytics to their clients. And to make those analytics tell a powerful story.

Over the past few months, I have had a lot of questions from salespeople regarding Google Analytics. They want to know how website analytics can help them show the performance of the campaigns they’re running for clients. The answer is not just in the numbers, but also in how you use the numbers in a narrative that makes the performance come alive.

Website analytics are loaded with information, and with thoughtful analysis, insight as well. Simply communicating numbers from a client’s Google Analytics report might put your client to sleep, but you can strike gold if you can draw them in with a story of how the campaign is achieving results. In order to tell your story, you need to gain access to their analytics, of course, but equally important, you need to have a clear picture of what they want to accomplish with their campaign.  

For some clients, you can look to the basic metrics like site traffic, time spent on site, or bounce rate. These can provide a general understanding of the traffic that you might be driving to a website, or if visitors are spending more time on the site as a result of a campaign. But the lines begin to blur if there are multiple resources directing potential consumers to a website. 

So where do you start?  

Today is Labor Day, the unofficial "end" of summer. We hope you're relaxing with your family today, and spending some time outside, before the weather starts to turn.

This week, we talked about talent trumping desire, how to increase referrals, how winning is everything, and what's changed (and what hasn't!) in sales this century.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Kurt Sima taught us how to build a referral machine in five steps.

• Tuesday, Dana Bojcic told a story about taking up tennis with her husband, and how she learned that talent trumps desire, every time.

Approaching new prospects with a customer-needs focus used to be the smartest thing you could do. No longer. 

Today it’s the only thing you can do, the only way to win an appointment with a decision influencer. 

Rewind back to the 1990s. It was that recently that prospects needed to meet with a salesperson to learn about the products and services that company was offering. Yes, there were brochures, and sometimes a company would make a brochure available by mail to prospects, but to get questions answered and to learn about specific applications, buyers knew they needed salespeople.

Today, that notion is downright quaint. Product information, answers to most questions, insights into specific applications via case studies, and user reviews/raves/rants are all found online. Prospects learn almost everything they need to know faster, and with more accuracy and reliability, on the web than they do from salespeople.

They can make a buying decision quicker, easier, and with less annoyance without a salesperson than with one!

As a result, it’s pretty rare these days that a salesperson can get an audience with a buyer to talk about what he or she is selling. What used to be the path to a weak deal at a dirtball price—talking about what you’re selling—is now even worse: It just gets your email, your voicemail, and you deleted.

Several years ago I decided to take up tennis. I have always considered tennis to be the sport with the cutest outfits and I was excited to learn! The tennis courts in the neighborhood my husband and I had just moved into were beautiful and we thought tennis would be something fun we could do together.

We approached the sport with a sense of enthusiasm and excellent intentions. We invested in some equipment; scheduled time to practice together and even signed up to play on a few beginner teams. I thought it would be perfect: We get to spend time together, we get exercise, we get to hang with friends… it was an excellent plan!

There was only one problem: My lack of tennis talent. And it proved to be a big problem.

Neither of us had ever played in a league, yet we noticed a huge difference immediately. Denis had a talent for tennis. I did not.

Everyone has talent—for something. Every single person in the world has a short list of things they are really good at. These are our talents and they define who we are, what we do, how we work, where we succeed, and why we’re valuable.

Just as all of us have a short list of talents, we also have a long list of non-talents. Whenever possible, we should avoid doing things that require talents we don’t have, and other people would be wise to avoid asking us to do them as well. When it came to tennis, I was asking myself to use a talent I didn’t have.

You Can’t Fix Weaknesses in Business or in Tennis

The key point here is that people do not succeed based on their weaknesses. That may seem obvious, but it’s important to reiterate: We will never progress or get ahead by leaning on our weaknesses—or by trying to fix our weaknesses.

This week, we wrote about nonprofits, and how they're not so different from us. We focused on individual focus meetings, discussed where vs. what, and we broke inbound marketing into pieces that even a five-year-old could understand.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Jim Hopes told us that when you're looking for a nonprofit fundraiser, there are eight talents to look for, and it takes more than a good heart to succeed.

• Tuesday, Matt Sunshine gave us three things to add to our individual focus meetings to make them better.

Have you ever gone to the grocery store hungry and without a shopping list?

Do you make strategic and wise choices or do you bounce around from aisle to aisle frantically looking for “something to eat” and realize later that you picked up some things you didn’t really need?

I think Albert Einstein was onto something with that statement.

If you’ve ever found yourself trying to explain something technical or complex to someone who isn’t familiar with the topic, you know what I mean. Perhaps you work in finance or real estate and are all too familiar with the puzzled looks from your clients when you try to explain mortgages, stocks, or investments. (This is where all those “______ for Dummies” books come in handy, right?)

As an inbound marketing consultant, I get the confused look pretty often. It’s easy for me to assume everyone knows what inbound is. After all it’s a big “buzzword” in the digital marketing world. But the reality is it’s still a relatively new topic and those in other industries don’t always understand. Sure, maybe they’ve heard the term, but they don’t really have a good grasp of what it is or what it looks like. In fact, I have friends in sales, management, and even some working in traditional (outbound) marketing that are still giving me that quizzical look even after I provide them with the general definition—and these are people that should know. They’re the ones who can really benefit from it.

It’s at this point where I typically recall (and laugh about) the scene from The Office, where Steve Carrel’s character is trying to understand an explanation of their budget but doesn’t get it. After briefly pretending to understand, he finally asks his coworker to, “Explain it to me like I’m 5.” And, ever since then, I’ve found myself thinking this same thought when someone is trying to explain something complex or technical that I’m not familiar with, or when I need to explain something of similar nature to someone else.

Here’s our official definition of inbound marketing:

The process of attracting the attention of prospects, through content, before they are even ready to buy; the best and most cost-effective way to convert strangers into customers and promoters of your business.

But, again, what does it really entail? What does it look like? Complexities and technical jargon aside, of
course.