The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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. 

Recently, I had the chance to observe a sales meeting where all of the current revenue initiatives of a company were being reviewed by management. And there were lots of initiatives. There were incentive programs, inventory priorities, special promotions, new product introductions, price-point packages, and a new website and workflow system to support all of the above. 

The point of management was obvious: “You have so many different things to sell, how can we possibly not hit our numbers?!”

But what the sales team was hearing was also obvious: “You have given us so many things to “focus” on, how can we possibly hit our numbers?!”

Look, I know I’m not going to—nor do I want to—talk anyone out of innovating new products, promotions, and sales ideas for their team. But I think it would be smart to reflect on the rules of concentration of force.

The 4th of July is a great holiday. Think about it. It's a holiday that involves spending time with people you love, eating food fresh off the barbecue, and, if you're lucky, going swimming in the nearest body of water. There's very little in the way of expectation in terms of gifts (at least, nothing beyond a six pack or some coleslaw) and everyone is generally in good spirits.

Which got me thinking. There's a lot to celebrate this 4th of July.

Some of the things we're celebrating this 4th of July include:

1. Freedom

Our Founding Fathers fought for our nation's independence while wearing wool (and wigs!) in July. Today, we're connected to each other through the power of technology. We can meet with anyone, anywhere, virtually. We can work from any location. Technology frees us from commuting as well as ensures we can communicate more efficiently. Today, too, we can celebrate freedom from technology. So, put down the phone, step away from the computer, and get offline.

2. Loved Ones

The long weekend means we get to take time with the people who matter most to us: our family and close friends. Enjoying a long weekend with your favorite people lets you appreciate why you work so hard the rest of the year. Make the effort to ensure the time you spend with family is quality time.

Sales staff turnover is expensive. I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard many times before. The Center for Sales Strategy published an ebook on this subject last year, revealing for many just how many different line items—and how many hidden costs—are driven up every time a salesperson departs, whether on their own or at your behest.

So I’m not out of line to ask: If so many sales managers are so aware that turnover is a giant expense undermining effectiveness and profitability, why don’t they take more measures to reduce turnover? Here’s what a smart manager would do—and what his savvy boss would require—to reduce sales staff turnover and bring the velocity of that revolving door down to a crawl.

1. Hire the right people in the first place.

Seems so obvious it’s hardly worth mentioning. But on this very day, sales managers across the globe will make more bad hires than good hires. That same ebook offered several steps that can help companies reverse those crummy odds. Follow them! The result will be alignment—alignment between (a) the talents, habits, preferences, and inclinations of your salespeople and (b) what you need them to do in order to be successful in your organization. If you have employed such people in the past, you know how delightful it is that you don’t have to hound, bribe, or threaten them to take the right actions. Having such a person on staff need not be the rare exception. If you use a validated talent assessment interview to select your sellers, your staff could be composed largely of people who are in near-perfect alignment with your needs and expectations.

2. Hire the right managers for them.

Clients of The Center for Sales Strategy know that it’s more important to know your prospect than your product, and that well-defined needs lead to the most dramatic revenue opportunities. But finding customer needs is not enough.

What you’re looking for is an assignment.

The Difference Between a Need and an Assignment

A need is a way you can help (and chances are, you’ll find a lot of these). But an assignment is an important need for which the client has said they want your help. 

Consider narrowing the list of needs to the client’s most urgent and important priorities in order to sell bigger with questions like these: 

• “We’ve talked about a lot of areas where it sounds like I could be of help to you. If you had to narrow it down to one or two priorities that are important right now, which would they be?” 

• “If we could only focus on this list of needs by working on one thing at a time, which item would come first?”