The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The things you do are often more powerful than the things you say. 

New business prospects are more likely to increase their engagement level when they know a seller truly cares about them and their business. Think about your own buying habits—are you more likely to do business with someone who cares about you compared to a slick talking salesperson who only cares about making a sale? 

Here are five things to do before and during a first meeting with a new business prospect to demonstrate you care:

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on Liveplan.com.

The longer a sales proposal sits, the less likely it is to convert to an actual sale.

The trouble with these stalled proposals is that you could have 100 potential sales stuck in limbo, but you can’t use those possible sales to pay your real bills. A bloated sales pipeline can start to have a real impact on your company’s cash flow if you’re not careful.

Proper preparation prevents poor performance! 

Take these five P's for a test drive, and your sale performance will improve. 

If you are struggling to uncover desired business results that lead to cash, perhaps it is time to modify your needs analysis process. Here’s a new model that is getting rave reviews — feel free to take it for a test drive during your next discovery meeting with a new prospect.

A new year is around the corner, and it is time to perform some routine maintenance. A great place to start is cleaning up your account list. Follow these ten steps to get your sales organization’s account list cleaned up and ready to go for a successful 2019! 

Which of the following will generate the highest return?

• More customers
• Keeping customers longer
• More revenue per customer

Any one of these can grow revenue. But one has been shown to consistently bring in a higher return on your investment. Most businesses say they are focused on these in the order of the list: adding more customers, than keeping them longer, and finally getting more revenue per customer.

The problem is that the research shows that a focus on more customers is the wrong path to maximize your return. And that it leads you to build the wrong solutions.

This post was originally published on the LeadG2 blog.

Recently, LeadG2 shared a post explaining how to send videos via email. Due to spam, security, and email hosting features, many email clients do not allow video embeds directly into emails, so with a few easy steps, marketers and salespeople can send video via email, just not with an actual embed. If you are a Hubspot Sales user at the Professional or Enterprise level, I have good news! Not long ago, Hubspot announced a feature that enables salespeople (or any Hubspot user communicating with a contact through the CRM) to embed videos directly into their 1:1 emails! 

Here are just a few reasons this exciting feature is valuable and vital to the sales process:

1. Video creates a more personal and humanized sales experience.
2. Sales reps that use video in prospecting, relationship-building, and sales emails see 5x higher open rates and 8x higher open-to-reply rates.
3. Video can help to establish and build trust with a prospect that doesn't yet know you.

If you try and engage me with a serious conversation via email, you will almost always find me walking to your office or calling you on the phone. Verbal communication is usually the best form of communication for people who meet other people for a living. To people like us, we only prefer written text when confirming dates or answering 'yes' or 'no' questions. Surely, most salespeople are more effective when they have a face-to-face opportunity than when they depend on their writing abilities.

Nevertheless, we need email to help us breakthrough to people that we don’t know in order to get a face-to-face call. While I was at INBOUND18 in Boston this year, I made a point to attend presentations on how video can help me stand out with email prospecting and capabilities.

Video has become so prevalent that it is now practical to use on a daily basis and reps that use video in prospecting, relationship-building, and sales emails see 5x higher open rates and 8x higher open-to-reply rates. It works because it has a higher attention factor and is more personable to your prospect. So, video can also make you a better communicator. 

There are three reasons that now is the time to start practicing your video skills and implementing video into your sales strategy to improve sales results:

"No. No, no, no. No!" Have you ever had someone tell you "No" before? Whether you're a sales manager coaching your sales team to success, or a salesperson eager to reach your goals, you've more than likely been told "No." BUT... that doesn't mean it's over. It just became a challenge. Are you ready to take on that challenge?

The next time you present a proposal and hear “No,” try some of these tactics designed to change the outcome. 

Early in my sales career, I got a call from a veteran Account Executive across the hall. He worked for one of our other properties and saw that I was working with a prospect he was calling on. He wanted to set up a joint sales call. I was skeptical, since I'd recently met with that prospect, and the manager made it abundantly clear that he had already placed his budget for the year, and he was not open to new ideas.