The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

This is the glorious time of year when most leaders are engulfed in budgets, planning, meetings, and deadlines. 

With less than six weeks until 2023, let’s dive into a few things to check off or add to your list.

One of the first signs that a sales organization of a small company is growing and maturing is that they no longer rely on the sales team to generate leads.

In the early stages of development, a new company requires that everyone “wear multiple hats”. Consequently, the salesperson usually plays the role of Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Campaign Manager, and Business Development Specialist.

It’s quite simple really—if the salesperson doesn't generate leads, no one will. But as an organization matures, the various Sales and Marketing disciplines should be divided as soon as possible. Not doing so simply makes achieving growth objectives more challenging and makes your life tougher than it needs to be.

This article was originally published on Entrepreneur.com.

What’s the worst thing that can happen if you buy weak leads from a questionable source? New York City real estate broker Nathan Horne almost found out.

Like the thousands of professionals in his industry who collectively spent $10.5 billion on advertising in 2017, his employer, The Corcoran Group, focused on branding instead of strategic lead generation. So, when Horne called someone he thought was a hot lead, he got the surprise of his life. Instead of a potential buyer, the police detective who answered the phone made a veiled threat about having a gun and being willing to use it.

Sometimes to be more productive and effective, you just need to take it back to the basics. But, often, that’s what takes the most time — and most days, we don’t have enough hours in the day.  

If you could invest now to save later, would you do it? Ask yourself, if you could make a change today to reap benefits in the future, would you be willing to give it a try?  

At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we value sales and marketing alignment, and a lot of our efforts overlap; and therefore, we carry tips and strategies across departments. Why? Because they work.  

In this post, you’ll find three valuable non-innovative marketing tactics that we’ve seen support the sales process. We call them “non-innovative” because it’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but the question and challenge we have for you is, have you done these things, or are you committed to putting forth the effort to adopt these tactics to boost your sales process? 

Amidst the worldwide pandemic and historic economic shift, sales managers and business leaders everywhere are busy trying to adjust business models. A majority of business owners are re-inventing their business operations in a time where most people are "sheltering-in-place" and can no longer physically visit their place of business.

Once you figure out what this new world order entails for your organization, it’s time to re-examine your marketing strategy—not just your advertising and commercial messaging. COVID-19 is shifting consumer behavior and media habits, and we all need to make sure our strategy changes with them.

When it comes to lead generation, when does the marketing department’s role end and the sales department’s role begin? Very specifically, when should a lead be passed from marketing to sales?

As with most marketing and sales best practices, it’s not always a black and white answer.

Every organization is different, and it’s important that your organization have it's own marketing and sales agreement plan that outlines in detail how you will qualify, distribute, track, and ultimately close your marketing leads.

Many organizations have built barriers between the various functions of their business. Even groups that rely on and support each other’s goals (like Sales and Marketing) are “siloed” in their own worlds and rarely communicate. Breaking down those walls and aligning goals and expectations can be challenging, but there are tremendous benefits as well.

When a problem comes along, you must whip it.
When something's going wrong, you must whip it.
Now whip it into shape… shape it up, get straight, go forward, move ahead.
Try to detect it… it's not too late to whip it!
Whip it good!
-Devo, "Whip It"

A research study by McKinsey Global Institute reported that salespeople on average spend less than 13 hours a week actually selling.

Considering that going out and selling solutions is what salespeople actually are best at, and what is most profitable for them and the company they work for, it’s a little disheartening that so much time is spent doing other things like office tasks, answering emails, researching leads, and internal communication (I’m guessing this includes one too many meetings a week).

However, I’m not so sure we can eliminate those other tasks and give salespeople back another 20 hours a week. And even if they had that extra time, I’m not sure they’d be spending it in the most effective way. It’s not about how much time we have to actually sell. It’s about how much time we waste on trying to get to that point of the selling process.

This article was originally published on Sales & Marketing Management.