<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=585972928235617&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

5 Steps to More High-Quality Appointments

Steps.jpg

Raise your hand if you wish you had more quality appointments each week? My bet is that nearly 100% of you raised your hand. Almost every salesperson and sales manager that I speak to these days is talking about how difficult it is to get the quality appointment. Ironically, at the same time that getting quality appointments has become perhaps the most important activity for growing business, it has also become one of the most challenging parts of the sales process. The reasons for this are nearly the same in every market. They sound like some variation of the following.

Topics: Sales

Two Mistakes Salespeople Make When Sharing Insights

Big_Idea_Sales-3.jpg

Sharing insights as part of the sales process is getting a lot of press these days. It makes sense that prospects are looking for relevant insights that will impact their business in world of abundant information. 

But there are two mistakes I see salespeople making when sharing insights. Insights have to actually be relevant to the prospect and be truly insightful in order to speed up the sale. The mistakes I see most frequestly are:

  1. Sharing a deck of random facts and thinking they are insights. 
  2. Sharing an insight and not turning it into an interesting conversation.
Topics: Sales

5 Highly Effective Ways to Respond to Pricing Questions + More

appointment.jpg

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

15 Highly Effective Ways to Respond to Pricing Questions — HubSpot

You’re meeting with a hot prospect for the first time when they hit you with the dreaded price question. How you respond could make or break the rest of the conversation. Here's how to nail that response.

Topics: Inbound Marketing Sales Wrap-up

Increase Your E-mail Open Rates and Avoid the Trash with These 10 Subject Lines

sales-email-tips.jpg

Okay, here’s the scenario. You’ve done your due diligence on a prospect and your extensive research tells you that:

Topics: email Sales

Is Your Hunger Greater Than Your Fear?

Battle-Fear.jpg

If you are in sales, you have to learn to effectively battle your fears. Fear of a big client leaving. Fear of a big deal falling through. Fear of your company making a change. Fear of the marketplace changing. Fear of the new boss.  

Topics: Sales

Offline & Organic: The Two Rivers That Feed Modern Local SEO + More

Content-Library.jpg

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1Offline & Organic: The Two Rivers That Feed Modern Local SEO — Moz

Local companies that lack a basic understanding of how customer service works in the offline world won’t be fully equipped to consult with clients who may need as much help defining the USP of their business as they do managing its local promotion. This post shows how the two work together and howt o maximize them both.

Topics: Inbound Marketing Sales Wrap-up

How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really) + More

sales-team-meeting.jpg

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really) — strategy + business

At their worst, meetings are like short prison sentences that have you counting the minutes until your release. Yet there are meetings that are useful and productive, and even invigorating and enjoyable. This article looks at three types of meetings that exemplify variations on best practices and are worth emulating.

Topics: Inbound Marketing Sales Wrap-up

Are Your Best Salespeople Leaving Money on the Table?

salespeople-working.jpg

Top salespeople are often the veterans. They have deep relationships, and when there is an RFP (request for proposal) or a big contract up for bid, they know just how to zero in on that transaction and bring home the biggest share of the business.

The prospect has already decided they are going to spend that money for your product or industry. It's the "money on the table" or the low hanging fruit, and the issue was always about beating the competition.

Transactional business is critical to secure, and the big wins take hard work. But those successes can blind even the best sales reps from rocking the boat enough to look for more opportunities.

Topics: Sales

The #1 Way to Respond to Any Question from a Prospect + More

appointment-2.jpg

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1The #1 Way to Respond to Any Question from a Prospect— HubSpot

How do you respond to prospect questions? The most effective type of response isn’t an immediate one. Implement this technique, and you’ll stand out from your selling competition.

Topics: Inbound Marketing Sales Wrap-up

How Do You Tantalize a Prospect?

prospect_meeting.jpg

Is a prospect’s first impression of you a list of bold claims about your product and how superior it is to competing products? I hope not. It’s boring to the prospect. You see, dangling product in front of a prospect is usually ineffective for many reasons:

Topics: Needs Analysis Sales