The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

We would probably all agree that strong athletic coaching is key to maximizing the performance of an athlete.  Effective sales coaching is just as essential for maximizing sales performance!

If you are a regular reader of our blog or a current client of The Center for Sales Strategy, you know that we believe strong coaching plays an enormous role in the development of people and their natural talents.  This slide show presentation will depict for you the five ways that sales coaching and athletic coaching are most similar and give you some important things to consider when coaching others.

 5 Parallels Between Athletic Coaching and Sales Coaching

Like you, I get a ton of emails in a typical day. If I read them all, I’d get little else done. So if I don’t see something in the subject line that grabs my attention because it’s relevant to me, that message is gone! That takes care of 50% of the email crowding my Inbox. If I do actually start reading, but there’s nothing intriguing in the first few sentences, there goes another 30% of the daily onslaught. Another 10% or so is internal mail, and my boss reads this blog, so I’m saying for the record that I read those. Which brings us to that last 10% of email, items I may actually read.

How can you be included in my 10%? Or the 10% of the other strangers you’re trying to reach? Make it stand out. Be intriguing and, include a call to action, and keep it short. Sounds simple, right? Try it. You’ll find it’s much harder than you think. Below are 10 message goals that fit into two concise paragraphs and will keep your email message “above the fold,” giving it a good chance of capturing the reader:

Example: Sending an Email to an IT Company

1. Subject Line – Here’s your one and only chance to make a good first impression. “Less than 30% of IT administrators are certified in Cloud Computing.” Pretty intriguing if I’m an IT company transitioning from servers and desktop applications to a cloud-based, software-as-a-service environment.
2. Introduction – The reader needs to know who you are and the company you work for… “My name is… and I work for…”

Not long ago, I had the chance to watch a role-play workshop. The consultant from The Center for Sales strategy was playing “the client,” and an account manager was playing “the salesperson.” 

A few minutes into this hypothetical needs analysis, a light bulb turned on in the account manager’s head. It was as if the clouds parted, and a ray of inspired genius shone down on the salesperson from high heaven. (Or at least, that’s how the salesperson felt, based on the look on his face and the way he started fidgeting.)

Unable to contain his enthusiasm, he interrupted the client with, “Hey! I have an idea. You know what we could do…?” And of course, he dove into a thorough explanation of his epiphany. The idea was okay but not great. The client was patient and polite, but her reaction was subdued; not nearly as positive as the account manager had clearly anticipated. So the seller re-approached: “Yes, but you don’t understand. The reason this is a great idea is…” And he repeated his idea three times, in three different ways. Each time, the client was becoming less patient, less interested, and understandably less polite.

This week's writing was really interesting! Mike's post about great salespeople hitting moving targets really resonated with our readers. I loved Brittany's post about who should be using target personas. Kurt's post (and slideshow) gave us five reasons to stop talking about features, and I shared what I learned from a blogger's conference. Read below, and have a great weekend!

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Mike Anderson told us that the very best salespeople can hit a moving target.

• Tuesday morning, Brittany Ransonet gave a comprehensive response to the question, "What is a target persona?"

• Tuesday afternoon found us hearing from Jim Hopes about the future of sales and marketing. This post included a two-minute video of Matt Sunshine explaining inbound marketing.

Last week, I attended ProBlogger academy in Portland, Oregon. As blog manager for The Center for Sales Strategy, when I tell people what I do for a living, their reactions range from indifference to perplexity, so heading to a conference where I didn't have to do a lot of explaining about what a blog is, and why it needs a manager, was fun and enjoyable.

The academy itself was positioned toward personal bloggers, not inbound marketing, but there were still many important takeaways that I learned, and want to share those with you. If you have a blog, you'll find these useful.

1. The 80/20 rule applies to blogs. Spend 20% of your time creating content, and 80% promoting it. Tweet this.

2. Key to blogging success: discover problems, then solve them. Tweet this.

A friend of mine in sales was recently frustrated with the lack of response he'd been getting. Suddenly, it seemed, the tried and true sales methods he'd become accustomed to weren't working anymore. He sat down next to me, and said, "I think it's time I moved beyond selling benefits and features to my prospects."

I smiled, and said, "welcome to the club."

I've been in sales my entire career, and encourage everyone, not just my friend, to move beyond selling benefits and features. Below are five reasons why.

Three years ago, our team discovered the power of inbound marketing and began experimenting with the best way to use it in order to grow our own business. We knew we needed to stop wasting time and energy searching for the right prospects among a mountain of possibilities and we were increasingly determined to figure out how to clear a path so those businesses who needed us could come find us instead. After our first year of great success on our own behalf (our new business is WAY up), our expertise was strong and we were ready to help our clients achieve the same kinds of results we were enjoying. 

For two years now we have been considered a leader in inbound marketing. We have helped many businesses in the U.S. learn how to turn the tables so the few best prospects can find them and raise their hands. We are currently a Platinum-level partner with Hubspot and we consult 22 inbound clients at this moment.

Recently our expertise gained recognition far beyond our country’s borders and we have had the opportunity to help businesses in Western Europe put these same principles to work.

We hope you had a relaxing and safe long weekend last week. We certainly did! This week, we came back refreshed and wrote about a variety of topics. We wrote about different kinds of salespeople, concentration, motivating prospects, and managing your expectations regarding inbound marketing.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• On Monday, Mike Anderson told us that we suceed in sales, but we have to concentrate. More options is not better.

• Tuesday, Harry Tomasides asked us what kind of salesperson we thought we were, and gave us a series of interesting questions we should ask ourselves to give ourselves a gut check.

Over the last month I read four articles that kept coming back to the same theme: The impact technology is having on traditional sales organizations.

Consider this:

1. Procter & Gamble recently announced that by the end of 2014 they want to buy 75% of their U.S. digital media programmatically—and just to make sure we’re on the same page here, programmatically means untouched by human hands.

2. Publisher Conde Nast announced it was merging programmatic and direct sales together.

3. Andrea Mitchell, in a piece on bizcommunity.com, said “It is predicted that programmatic media buying will soon replace all traditional ways of media planning and buying—not just for digital, but for all media channels.”

4. While showrooming has had a tremendous impact on retailers, human interaction still matters. It is still a vital driver that explains why, in certain cases, consumers still prefer to purchase products in-store versus online. For example, a 2012 Nielsen poll indicated that 69% of its respondents thought in-store purchases were "most reliable," and 68% said it was the "easiest" and the "most convenient" way to shop.