The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

We've come to the end of the week, so it's Friday and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. The Secret to High Performance That Deloitte Teaches Its Employees — Inc.

Your skills aren't enough to help you perform at your best. There's another element critical to high performance: how you use your strengths. Strengths are often assumed to define what a person is good at. This is only part of the truth. Strengths are also what energize you: It's work that lights you up when you get to do it. This article explains how strengths propel people to high performance, and how to harness that energy for yourself and for your team.

I had the opportunity to sit on the number 6 tee box at The Masters Golf Tournament recently, and as golfers and caddies made their way to the tee box, I noticed that the interactions between each one were different. One caddie simply reported the distance to the green, another caddie discussed wind direction and pin placement, and another caddie talked the golfer through the entire shot.

Weaknesses. We all have them. But we all have strengths as well. Which do you focus on? 

Human nature leads us to naturally focus on our weaknesses, but it is a proven fact that we can be significantly more effective when we do the exact opposite! 

In sales coaching, you can get a 10x lift from a salesperson if you focus on their strengths. This is the most highly effective use of your coaching time when you consider that you will only be able to improve people in an area of weakness by about 10%.

Yes, easier said than done at times, so here are some suggestions on how to accomplish that.

We've come to another Friday, and it's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Sharpen Your Content Marketing: 4 Ways to Model the Buyer’s Journey — Content Marketing Institute

An effective content marketing strategy starts with the buyer's journey. What does that journey look like for your prospects? This post considers four ways to model the buyer's journey, to help you better understand your own.

Media salespeople struggle now more than ever to secure quality appointments with prospects that might actually be ready, willing, and able to do business. The fact is that media salespeople are typically at their best when they are in front of a prospect, finding needs, and selling solutions. The challenge is that most media salespeople, after spending many frustrating hours cold calling, only find themselves going on one or two quality appointments a week. The system is broken and it must be fixed before even the most talented sellers will see better results.   

You've probably seen umpteen lists of ways to increase a sales team's performance. Trust me, I know. I have probably written a half dozen of those myself.  

But the more I work with sales teams, the more I've realized that what a sales manager needs is not another list of productivity tips and tricks, but an integrated process for increasing their sales team's productivity. This is particularly true for media sales, where custom solutions can require more involved sales funnels. Here's the process I've developed and implemented with success.

I recently had a conversation with a manager who asked me: “What do I need to keep in mind when I, as a highly-competitive person, am managing a seller who is also highly competitive?” He was concerned that because they both had highly-competitive natures, he may have a tendency to want to compete with his own direct report, which he instinctively knew would work against them both in the end. I gave an analogy to the manager that I would tell any manager, competitive or not.

Here we are at the end of another week! It's Friday, and it's time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. 8 Small But Unforgivable Sales Email Sins — HubSpot

Getting a response from prospects is hard enough. If you add an annoying email habit to the mix, your chances of a reply are almost nil. So open your “Sent” folder, and make sure you’re not guilty of any of these eight email sins.

Oops. In your enthusiasm to close the sale, did you promise the car dealer or medi-spa owner that the advertising for their grand opening will bring so many people that they will be lined up around the block? In your energetic attempt to close the deal, did you tell the roofing or HVAC company that their phone will “ring off the hook”?

What happens when there aren’t lines around the block and the phone doesn’t ring off the hook?

Your credibility has been destroyed along with trust. How can this all-too-often occurrence be avoided?