The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

I recently attended my son’s fourth grade championship basketball game. They had a great season and fought hard, but they just couldn’t pull it out.

Losing the fourth grade championship game is disappointing for sure, but what I found most interesting were the different levels of disappointment from the players. Some were okay with it. They had a good season and enjoyed their time on the team, so losing was no big deal. They walked happily over to the snack area just like they did after every other game. Others were a little more ruffled. They were more visibly disappointed and somber, hanging their heads a bit and walking a little more slowly to the snack area.

Then you have kids like my son, who was devastated. I could see tears in his eyes and his distress was palpable. He talked incessantly about the game for three full days. He analyzed every play, every move, and he asked himself what could have happened differently. He sulked and stewed right up until soccer practice started and the new season of challenges began. 

I love my job. I have a manager who knows, understands, and develops my talents, and I get to spend the majority of my time doing things I’m naturally wired to do.

When you use your natural strengths, you are happier, more engaged, and you feel strong. However, some people are not the right fit for their jobs. Their talents don’t match up with what’s expected of them. They make up a considerable portion of the people who dread going to work each day.

Think about the one thing in your job you do best, maybe even better than everyone else. Now think about the one thing in your job you do most.

Do the two match up?

What if you spent most of your time doing what you do best?

When people use their talents, they can experience exponential growth—yes, they can get 10 times better, 10 times more productive.  But when people are called on to use their non-talents, they experience very limited growth, they struggle to get even 10% better..

I wish I could sing, but I’m a terrible singer. I just can’t carry a tune. If I took voice lessons and practiced every day, I may get a little better, but I will never be a famous vocalist—or even an adequate chorus member—because I don’t have the talent. On the other hand, I love cooking and I’m pretty good at coming up with my own recipes. I love to plan the meal, shop for the ingredients, and prepare interesting dishes for people to enjoy. Now, if I took cooking lessons, I would likely experience tremendous growth, because I already have a knack for it.

You shouldn’t waste time trying to fix one of your weaknesses, but instead come up with a plan to manage the weakness so it doesn’t get in your way. Then spend the majority of your time developing your precious talents.

How do you know if you have a talent?

Can you believe it's May already? At this rate, the year will be over before we know it. We're excited for the summer preview weather we've been having, but if you're in a part of the world where summer preview means tornado season, we hope you're staying safe.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Matt Sunshine wrote about The Center for Sales Strategy's recent conversion to HubSpot Platinum status and discussed how and when we got involved in inbound marketing in the first place.

• Steve Marx argues that brevity is only a virtue in some circumstances. He wrote this piece of advice 20 years ago, and noted that nothing has changed except the delivery channels.

You’ve been reading our blog for a while, and you’re convinced that your company should start an inbound marketing program. But there’s one problem: You can’t get your boss to sign off on starting an inbound marketing program.

Maybe it’s because your boss is unfamiliar with the terminology, or worried about the amount of work it’ll add to your already-full plate. Maybe she needs more information about what, exactly, she’s approving before making a final decision. Maybe she just doesn't know how inbound marketing works.

This post is for you, to show your boss. It’ll walk through the foundations of inbound marketing, and show the benefits. It’ll detail the level of work involved, and offer tips on how to streamline the process.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is the process of drawing the attention of prospects to your expertise, thought leadership, helpfulness, and reliability, before they are ready to buy. The best and most cost-effective way to convert strangers into customers and promoters of your business.

How Inbound Marketing Works

The benefits of inbound marketing are often misunderstood, leaving management to scratch their heads. The common perception of inbound marketing is that it’s all about writing blogs and lead generation. As you will see, inbound marketing is much more than that. It offers numerous benefits beyond lead generation.

“Keep it short,” they say, “because folks don’t have time to read anymore.” That’s good advice. The shorter, the better. When is brevity a virtue? When you have nothing to say.

Truth is, most of the advice we get telling us to keep it brief is based on the assumption that what we’re writing—be it a blog post, an email, a letter, a proposal, a report—is of little interest to the reader, anyway.

Therein lies the real issue: It’s not so much the length of what we write as it is the content and the layout.

Let’s get more specific, more real, about this notion that people don’t have time to read:

• They don’t have time to read things that are not interesting to them. When the subject is of interest, they’ll devour a 400-page book.

The Center for Sales Strategy is proud to share that we’ve been named a HubSpot Platinum partner,  one of only twelve platinum partners in the world.

Patrick Shea, HubSpot Senior Manager of Channel Marketing, spoke highly of The Center and this accomplishment, “Achieving this exclusive status of becoming a HubSpot Platinum partner represents the highest standards of inbound marketing success and we are thrilled that The Center for Sales Strategy has reached that level. They not only specialize in delivering exceptional client results, but in sharing their expertise with marketers and business owners through world-class educational resources.”

How We Got Involved—and Grew—with Inbound Marketing

The Center for Sales Strategy is a sales performance company with a simple mission statement: To help our clients turn talent into performance. Our clients implement a seven-step process we created, called How Selling. Of course, we eat our own dog food and follow the same steps:

• Find the strongest potential leads
• Select the best prospects using the Ideal Customer Profile
• Approach these prospects using a Valid Business Reason
• Define the prospect's real needs using the Hourglass Needs Analysis process
• Solve the prospect's specific problem with a collaboratively developed plan
• Confirm the sale
• Deliver better-than-expected results
  

Today, we're happy to have our taxes done. Do you wait until the last minute or do you file as soon as you get your return?

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Mike Anderson wrote about Vendor Relationship Management, and said, "Just because you’re already the selected vendor and serving the customer, it doesn’t mean the customer is no longer interested in VRM—in managing their relationship with you."

• Dana Bojcic wrote about listening for talent when interviewing salespeople, and said, "If you don’t know the answer, ask more questions. Ask a lot of questions… and then really listen."

We’ve all heard of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and most sales organizations are using CRM software of one kind or another. One intent of CRM is to make sure no clients or prospects “fall through the cracks.” It’s a neat piece of software that helps the sales team make sure they are calling on prospects with sufficient frequency, suggesting upsell opportunities, and learning the buying cycle of existing clients. Sometimes the CRM system can even automate the process of corresponding with the customer. 

And now, many of those customers are automating their vendor relationships.

Have you experienced “Vendor Relationship Management?” If you’ve been stung by any of the following practices, you’ve run into VRM: 

• The human gatekeeper who is paid, in part, to protect their executive from most “typical salespeople.”
• The habit of sorting quickly through traditional mail or email, swiftly discarding anything that is from an unfamiliar sender.

Today, we're happy to have our taxes done. Do you wait until the last minute or do you file as soon as you get your return?

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

In Best Practices when Networking on LinkedIn, Brian Hasenbauer writes, "Don’t send LinkedIn requests to people you don’t know or don’t have a solid reason for knowing them."

While the economy has shown general improvement the last few years, most of the clients I work with remain in a difficult business climate. The job of sales management is much tougher than before the recent recession. Their sales engine needs to be firing on all cylinders if there’s any hope of exceeding goals.

While helping several clients work through some tough problems, a powerful truth occurred to me:

Talent doesn’t fix every problem, but you can’t fix any problem without the right talent.

I was with one particular client for a few days, meeting with various managers and hearing about their problems, one after another. Each time, I probed for more information, asking for specific data, drilling down, so I could provide useful insight. One issue stood out every time: The organization was expecting outstanding sales numbers from someone who didn’t have sales talent.

You can have a great product to sell and the right prospects to talk to, but if the salesperson on the account doesn't have the talent needed for success, there isn't going to be a good outcome. In these situations, there was very little in the way of useful advice I could give, other than replace the salesperson.