The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Congratulations! You made it through 2020, and a new year is upon us.

Business is not going to look the same as it did this time last year. The pandemic hasn’t just caused pivots — it’s caused permanent change. But all change is not bad! 2021 presents significant growth opportunities for organizations that can Accept, Adapt, and Accelerate from the lessons this year taught us.

Below are predictions from our team of experts to help sales organizations remain agile and seize opportunities in 2021.

You want to get the most out of your people… so how do you really inspire them? 

Most of the managers immediately respond, “Pay them more!” Believe it or not, that’s not going to cut it. 

Most employees are not coin-operated, and more money does not lead to more engagement.

Wonderfully stated in a Harvard Business Review article, authors Eric Garton and Michael C. Mankins explained there are four levels of employee engagement: Dissatisfied, Satisfied, Engaged, and Inspired, and they pointed to recent productivity research related to each level. 

Here’s what they learned.

We believe that talent + training + tactics = performance, and today we are bringing you a recap of the most popular blog posts we've published in 2020 on all things talent.

Providing quality content that helps our clients and visitors improve their sales performance is a goal of ours, and we hope this blog has brought you insight, education, and tips to get you on the path to success. We've searched for the most popular blog posts of 2020, and we've curated these lists that will publish each day this week to bring you some of the most informative content from the year. Check out these top articles on talent from 2020, and let them kickstart your 2021 sales strategy.

"Silence is golden"—usually this is said right after your children leave the room and you finally have a moment of peace.

Providing quality content that helps our clients and visitors improve their sales performance is a goal of ours, and we hope this blog has brought you insight, education, and tips to get you on the path to success.

We've searched for the most popular blog posts of 2020, and we've curated these lists to bring you some of the most informative content from the year. Check out these top blogs on the sales culture and company culture from 2020, and let them kickstart your 2021 sales strategy.

As we get closer to the New Year, we're taking some time to reflect on 2020 and the success we've seen our clients achieve. While many are enjoying this special holiday with family and friends, we're bringing you a recap of the most popular posts we've published in 2020. 

Providing quality content that helps our clients and visitors improve their sales performance is a goal of ours, and we hope this blog has brought you insight, education, and tips to get you on the path to success. We've searched for the most popular blogs of 2020, and we've curated these lists that will publish each day this week to bring you some of the most informative content from the year. Check out these top blogs on sales management from 2020.

So many things have changed this year in response to the pandemic we may not fully appreciate how different our lives really are. Most of the changes have not been positive, but certain outcomes have proven to be beneficial now and are likely to continue into future.

For example, if pre-pandemic shutdown I would have advised you not to bother meeting with a prospect in their office, but rather simply visit them at their home — you might have thought I had lost my mind. 

But, that's what many of you are doing right now because most of our clients are working from home in the new Zoom video world. We’ve all been “inside” someone’s home, at their kitchen table, den, basement office, or spare bedroom via live video connection, and if you think about it, it’s startling. We could never have accomplished this pre-pandemic!

These days you can never get enough information on work from home best practices, how to use video to help manage and sell, and how to manage a remote sales team.

In episode 7 of the Improving Sales Performance series, Matt Sunshine hosts a roundtable discussion with Jim Hopes, Stephanie Downs, and Kurt Sima — all consultants at The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS). This is a rare opportunity for listeners to see what an internal meeting is like at CSS and to truly learn from a team of sales experts that offer different points of view.

None of us fathomed that a year ago we could do business without traveling. No one imagined that we would exclusively have online events, online trainings, online meetings, online calls, and so on. Lessons learned in 2020 boil down to three words — Accept, Adapt, Accelerate.

• We’ve accepted that there’s a new reality for the way we do business
• We’ve adapted to the way we sell and talk to clients based on our new reality
• We’ve accelerated the sales process (and more) in order to improve

Although conducting business during a pandemic has been challenging, are all the changes we’ve made really that bad? Here are some lessons learned in 2020, straight from the mouths of experts at The Center of Sales Strategy (CSS), LeadG2, and Up Your Culture.

With most of the workforce now working from home, sales managers are figuring out what the new normal is when it comes to their team’s workflow. 

While there are numerous benefits to an at-home, flexible work schedule (like lower stress and a higher employee retention rate), sales teams still need all the help they can get for constant communication, effective project management, goal setting, and team building. 

Thankfully, there is an arsenal of apps, integrations, and platforms that will not only help teams to stay motivated and productive, but will also help to crush quotas as well. Keep reading to find out which tech is right for your team.