The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Ask a sales manager about the most important decisions he or she makes, and you will probably hear about exceeding budget, growing market share, or achieving year-over-year growth. While those decisions are critically important aspects of the job, and they require a great deal of attention, none of them can be accomplished without an even more important decision being made first.  

The most important decision you will ever make as a manger is the decision of who to hire. If you don’t have great people working in the sales department, you can’t accomplish the rest.

Think of the very best salesperson you have working for you. Not the highest biller or the person that has been there the longest. I want you to think about the best seller. Imagine if you had an entire sales department of people just like that. Would sales go up? Of course.

If you want to accomplish more, there is something you can do about it.

Great salespeople are always on the lookout for leads and are weighing each lead against a list of criteria to see which leads are the better leads. This happens in organizations where salespeople are responsible for generating all their own leads and in those where some leads are provided to the salespeople.

Leads are good, but even better if they are good leads. One trick you can use as a salesperson to make sure your leads are better leads is to look more for opportunities as opposed to just looking for leads. We like to say that it’s more powerful to search for opportunities than it is to search for prospects.

It's the end of another week, and we're sharing the top articles and resources we've read this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. If You Care About Culture, You Have to Hire for It From the Start — Inc.

More and more companies are beginning to realize the importance that culture has to their business. A strong company culture positively influences recruitment, retention, productivity and overall employee satisfaction. But if you want a stong culture, you have to hire people who reflect the culture you're working towards. This article explains how.

Over the years, as sales and marketing has become more automated, it’s become increasingly important for salespeople to differentiate themselves from others and to provide value throughout the sales process. With control of the sales process having shifted from sellers to buyers, the B2B buyer now holds the cards, and does approximately 60% of his or her research before ever feeling the need to contact a salesperson.

Some of the ways that a salesperson can provide value throughout the sales process is by being seen as a thought leader and credible member of the industry that they are a part of. Social media has come to play a big part in establishing yourself as an expert in your field and having your profile elevated.

Here are three ways that salespeople can stand out using social media:

You already know that turning talent into performance requires a true understanding of talent. Spotting talent, hiring talent, developing talent, and coaching talent. . . it’s mission critical.

Here’s a little something you may not have thought about before, though: every innate talent at an extreme level of intensity, can have its downside. One of my clients recently observed, “Talent can be used for good or evil!”

• Take charge and convincing is good. Bossy is bad.
• Social and people-oriented is good. Long-winded, over-talking is bad.
• Competitive and driven is good. Cut-throat is bad.

Here we are at Friday, the end of another week, and we're sharing the top articles and resources we've read this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Grow From Your Strengths — strategy + business

Most companies want to grow. But as this article points out, you can grow profitably and sustainably only from a position of strength. The author explains how to chart a course toward sustainable and profitable expansion by combining four approaches to growth. 

You've spent weeks trying to get a meeting with an important prospect, you've gotten past the gatekeepers and have given him or her a valid business reason (VBR) to have a meeting with you. You're halfway through the presentation that you worked on for hours over the weekend, and your prospect stops you dead in your tracks with a question you have never heard before. What do you do? Do you fake it? Do you dance around the question and minimize it?

If you are truly looking to better yourself as a salesperson and to make a solid and lasting client relationship, you don’t do any of those things mentioned above. You stop and turn to your prospect and say, “That’s a great question and one I have never heard before. I don’t know, let me get back to you."

It might not work on a test in college or in politics, but admitting you don’t know the answer to a question in business can work to your advantage in 3 ways. The first way is that it gives you the opportunity to follow up with your prospect after the meeting with information the person is interested in receiving. Secondly, it gives you a chance to display your expertise in a well-thought-out manner. And lastly, it helps you build credibility and trust (especially if you follow up in a timely manner). Let’s look at how each of these ways can benefit you.

We've come to the end of the week, and we're sharing the top articles and resources we've read this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. Deliver Feedback That Sticks — Harvard Business Review

The secret of effective feedback is making it feel like the message is coming from an ally, not an adversary. But this is easier said than done. This article offers practical steps to make sure you're delivering feedback in a way that shows you're on the same team.