The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

From personal branding and thought leadership to prospecting, lead nurturing, and recruiting—there are many benefits to using LinkedIn as a sales professional. The problem is that sales professionals don't have time to set up or update the basics of their LinkedIn accounts to best represent them and their company. 

You can't build a great building on a weak foundation, and the LinkedIn profile is just that: the foundation that could affect the success of your social efforts. Use this checklist to ensure your profile is updated and the best representation of your personal brand, the products you sell, and what you have to offer a prospect.

The sales pitch is delivered, objections are resolved, and the contract is sent. Now, you patiently wait for the prospect to sign, and you’ve sealed the deal. But then — the email comes through, and suddenly you’re scheduling a sales negotiation.

Even if a salesperson has properly qualified a prospect and correctly managed their expectations through the sales process, they still can find themselves shifting gears from consultant to negotiator. And while negotiations can go in an infinite number of directions, honing-in on these six sales negotiation tactics will help close the deal.

Whether it's in the gym or on the field, athletes like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady are known for being the hardest workers during practice. And, as the greatest athletes of all time, they're not out there trying to learn something new—they're simply practicing the basics.

Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA, writes that to go from “knowing nothing to being pretty good” actually takes about 20 hours of practice—that’s 45 minutes every day for a month. As leaders, we're accustomed to being great at what we do. But in order to learn something new and help your salespeople get better, everyone must practice. 

If you lead a sales team or if you’re in sales yourself, then you know that closing business is a key part of the job. Yes, there are also other very important parts of selling, such as:

• Conducting a quality discovery meeting
• Overcoming objections
• Keeping your promises

But, in the end, if you’re not closing sales — you’re not going to make it. As a general rule, when it comes to closing business, you might adopt this saying that we’ve been using for quite some time— "Slow down the proposal and speed up the sale."

A New Year's resolution is a tradition in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their life. The New Year brings a fresh start and the opportunity for sales managers and sales teams to set goals and intentions for the coming months. 

Perhaps you, or a salesperson on your team, had a lousy 2019 and are ready to make some changes in 2020. A resolution can help reset the compass — here’s a list of options to help kick off the New Year and improve your (or your sales team's) sales performance.

Whether you’re a sales manager evaluating your team or in the field coaching salespeople who are trying to get quality appointments, you’re always looking to improve results.

Based on years of experience, we often see salespeople develop strong valid business reasons, but the delivery is too formal. Listen to the video for great before and after examples and keep reading for the secret to a successful sales strategy.

Top-performing sales organizations have many things in common. One is their understanding of and the importance they place on an account list management strategy. Here’s the concept and some tips used by world-class managers—feel free to use it in your organization.

Recently, I read a book by this title written by retired admiral William H. McRaven. He was a Navy Seal and eventually rose to the command of the worldwide Seal operation. The book is loaded with principles McRaven learned as a Navy Seal, each of which is an invaluable nugget that leads to success in about any venture.

The first principle is, if you want to change the world begin by accomplishing something first thing every morning — make your bed. Now, it sounds simple, and perhaps even trivial, but he points out beginning each day with a measurable accomplishment sets the tone for a productive 24 hours ahead.

As you might imagine, a well-made bed for a Seal is one so perfect the drill sergeant can bounce a quarter six inches high off the perfectly-taught cover. Failure to deliver such a quality job can result in a hundred push ups or perhaps a two-mile run as the sun rises.

So, I began wondering what making your bed looks like for a sales professional? Beyond literally making your bed (which I happen to do everyday first thing, so I appreciate the adrenaline charge of that early accomplishment), what are the "first-thing" activities a sales pro should accomplish in order to insure a productive day ahead and improve sales performance? Here are some that come to mind for me.