The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Last week I attended a client’s annual leadership conference where I had the opportunity to see a keynote presentation from Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo, and author of the bestselling book Love is the Killer App. Tim did a great job articulating the importance of why talent is the key to everything. He also spent some time talking to the audience about email at work and how it is currently the #2 cause of stress in the workplace (#1 is change). Tim mentioned that he has the Dirty Dozen Rules of Email Etiquette and shared a few of them with us.  

It's Pop Culture Week on The Center for Sales Strategy blog. This week, we are taking our sales strategy lessons from the pages of pop culture. Today, we're talking children's books...

We often say that "the client's needs provide fuel and focus to the entire sales process." What better way to gain an initial picture of those needs than through the prospect's website, advertising, or publicly-available corporate reports? Some of the best prep work you can do might be hiding in a commonly available website.

You've done a great job in your first appointment with the client. You've exposed lots of areas where they'd like to see improvement. You've also eliminated areas of focus that aren't important. You've asked the client’s help in narrowing down which challenge or challenges they'd like your help with. And that challenge may sound something like this:

Marketers love digital because it’s measurable, but there seems to be a lot of unwarranted hype about the importance of the click-through-rate (CTR). While the CTR is one form of measurement, research tells us focusing solely on the CTR is an expensive mistake. Here’s why:

When you look at emerging trends in the digital space right now, location-based marketing is rarely missing from the conversation. The discussion surrounding the effectiveness of local advertising, the power of social media and the growth of mobile add color to the conversation.

Our company’s reason for being is to help our clients turn talent into performance, and I spend most of my time making sure we have everything operating in such a way that we can delight customers. I don’t get to sell that often, but recently I found myself in conversations with a friend who runs his own business. After a few conversations and a meeting with a few key managers, I presented the owner with a pre-proposal and asked him to review it with his management team. 

 1. The Top 10 Marketing Infographics of 2011

Have you ever found yourself trying to explain the difference between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? How about trying to articulate the draw of a FourSquare, Instagram or newer site like Pinterest? Better yet, how about the reasons why you would want to be actively engaged with multiple social media sites?