The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

This week, we discussed medicine, stealing, wasting time, and personality tests. Oddly, they all go together. Read on to see how.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Monday, John Henley gave us a dose of good medicine for healthy sales.

• Tuesday, Mike Anderson reminded us that there are people trying to steal our business, and offered several tips on how to prevent that theft.

What a great week! There are some great gems from our writers here, and wonderful news from around the web. Read on!

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Monday, Steve Marx told us about the trap in focusing on a slow-selling line. It's always, always, always about their needs, not your products.

• Tuesday, Kimberly Alexandre talked about Starbucks, and how they're letting ideas drive campaigns. Notice the trend this week?

We work in an increasingly connected world. We can meet with someone a thousand miles away without ever leaving the comfort of our own office. This cuts down on costs, as well as travel time, but often, distance meetings leave something to be desired. Nothing beats meeting in person, but a great distance meeting can be a close second.

Below are three things you can do to elevate your distance meetings from mediocre to great.

1. Stream Video of Yourself to Make the Meetings More Personal

Ideas are worth more than the media time or space used to distribute them. If you don’t believe me, take a closer look at the development of Starbucks' first branding campaign, recently released by 72andSunny, the agency responsible for the work. The campaign itself includes a mini-documentary-style film shot in 59 different stores, in 28 countries, using 39 local filmmakers and ten local photographers.

This project may be one of the largest in scale for any branding campaign, but where the idea came from is even more important. Starbucks’ branding campaign was sparked by its observation of how Starbucks customers were using social media—specifically the stories they were telling in YouTube videos that were shot inside Starbucks' stores. To watch, click here. Digital media wasn’t simply used to spread an idea, but to source the idea! In any medium and on any platform, it’s the idea that counts, the idea that carries most of the value and generates all the value created with its intended target. Ideas drive campaigns, now more than ever.

What a great week in the blog world! There are some great gems from our writers here, and wonderful news from around the web. Read on!

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Monday, Mindy Murphy asked if it was possible to have too much work intensity, and gave us reasons why she thinks it is.

• Tuesday, John Henley gave us a great lesson in perspective by writing about outhouses, of all places.

What a great week for reading! From dealing with the lone wolf salesperson to landing bigger deals, we have some great reads for you this week.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Monday, Dana Bojcic taught us how to work with the opposite of the warm and fuzzy salesperson.

• Tuesday, John Henley gave us the key to selling bigger deals.

Happy September! We're fully embracing back-to-school season by brushing up on our sales skills! If you missed any of our great sales strategy posts this week, this wrap-up is for you.

The Center for Sales Strategy Weekly Wrap-Up

• Monday, John Henley told us not to obsess about the decision maker in sales, and what to focus on instead.

• Tuesday, Kurt Sima told sales managers to ask themselves five tough questions when one of their salespeople is underperforming.

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.

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.