The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Salespeople who have mastered the art of “Big Game Hunting” start at the perceived top of the mountain. Too many salespeople start at the bottom—and stay there. Why can’t you call or email a CEO or CMO with a very Valid Business Reason? Why don’t you suggest a time to meet to pursue ideas that may possibly help their company/organization/mission achieve their current marketing objectives? You can!

What stops most salespeople is the start. They limit their own opportunities by being ill-prepared with a truly Valid Business Reason and with lack of confidence to reach higher. Unpreparedness has that effect. Let’s look at the Valid Business Reason which is the key to engaging your prospect: the reason that gets the target’s attention on why they should want to meet with you—not why you want to meet with them. See the difference?

Sales Managers have a hard job. Above them, executives are very clear about what they expect them to achieve—usually expressed as a dollar goal for the department. But, the Sales Manager is the person who has to convert what the company expects into how to accomplish it. Not easy. If the company expects the Sales Manager to reach a million dollars in sales this month simply sending that message down the line to the sales team is of little or no value. We all know certain things roll downhill with little result. 

So what kind of feedback does the Sales Manager provide to translate the what (the monetary goal), to the how (the method by which we will accomplish the goal)? Here are some ideas:

Happy Friday! Here we are at the end of another week, 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. Practice for Tough Situations as You’d Practice a Sport — HBR

Preparation is one of the most obvious yet most misunderstood aspects of learning soft skills. Imagine you’re heading off to lead a meeting, make an important pitch for your company, or have a difficult conversation. It’s obvious in these situations that you want to prepare yourself for what you’re going to do or say. But what we often miss when learning soft skills is preparing to manage ourselves—especially when we start to feel the stress and pressure of the real-life situation. This article explains that to learn soft skills in a way that truly prepares us for what we’ll face when it really matters, we can take a few lessons from a different arena where learning, development, and performance are essential: professional sports.

Hope you've had a great 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. 9 Simple Sales Enablement Tips to Implement Now — SBI

What is sales enablement really? It’s about getting the right content into the hands of the right reps. It’s about getting it to them at the right time, through the right channel. It's empowering your salespeople to do their jobs better and get better results. This article offers nine tips you can iimplement today.

The top three social channels being used most often by B2B marketers won’t surprise you, the ones they find most effective may. According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are still the top choices. YouTube and Google+ are also substantial for usage. Which channels on the top 10 list below are you using? 

You know the value of your investments. What is the value of your personal brand? It’s somewhat difficult to always control your investments due to outside forces, but controlling your brand is in your hands. As a salesperson, the value you garner from your personal brand is priceless. 

“Personal branding is the process of developing a 'mark' that is created around your personal name or your career. You use this 'mark' to express and communicate your skills, personality and values. The end goal is that the personal brand you develop will build your reputation and help you grow your network in a way that interests others. They will seek you out for your knowledge and expertise." — Laura Lake, Marketing Expert

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. Why Your Sales Team Needs to Sit Next to Marketing — Salesforce

Sales and Marketing serve a shared purpose: to identify, attract, and close business for the company. But far too often, these teams find themselves acting out a typical “Dilbert” comic script of blame and frustration during slow sales cycles. Fortunately, it’s possible to bring these two groups to the same table to work off of the same script and dramatically improve performance across almost every worthwhile metric. Here's how.

There are many roads to reach annual billing of $1 million. It’s a milestone in many industries. Most account lists are some combination of client levels, but let’s look at three possible scenarios to reach $1 million in billing:

• 1,000 clients spending $1,000 each
• 100 clients spending $10,000 each
• 10 clients spending $100,000 each

The reason to stop and think about your client list this way is that it ends up determining how you spend your time each day and, ultimately, your sales career.

I recently attended an event sponsored by Startup Grind Asheville. Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. The speaker at this particular event was Josh Dorfman, from Venture Asheville (an initiative to support high growth business ventures).   

In response to a question, Josh gave the advice to look sideways. He was encouraging entrepreneurs to look sideways as they run hard straight ahead toward their goal (so they don’t miss an opportunity they were not really looking for). This is another way to express something I heard years ago from the consulting firm Innosight. A speaker I heard from Innosight said that the great majority of companies that successfully transitioned their business during an industry disruption did so by pursuing a path they didn’t see when they started to make their pivot. That struck me at the time. What Innosight had learned is that the plan you develop when you start in a new direction is almost certainly the wrong plan, but doing nothing is also a sure path to failure. What an interesting discovery.