The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

I was recently talking with a sales rep for a heavy equipment company. He sells agriculture and construction equipment, you know tractors, front loaders, bull dozers, excavators, forklifts…big machines most men (and all little boys) wish they had a reason to buy. He was telling me about a particular situation he was working through with a potential customer.

Beware!  Danger to your sales strategy is lurking as close as your telephone receiver. How so?

Bet you love the Sherlock Holmes you have on your sales team. He’s analytical, hyper-focused on solving the puzzle, enjoys research, and always knows where to find the answers!  

Of course you wouldn't. Whether you're a manager, salesperson or consumer, you wouldn't hire someone to do a job or to work for you without ample evidence they have been successful for other people.

Generating qualified leads with inbound marketing is not complicated or difficult.  It’s a repeatable process that can be broken down in only 561 words!

• Create a blog and graciously share information that matters to your business and your customers – this means regularly share insight, expertise, real world scenarios and stories that will suck your readers in and keep their attention until the end of the post.  Give them information they can use and commit to providing valuable content. Keep it real...no nonsense here.

The New Year celebration is over and if you are like many salespeople you have set a few personal and professional goals for the upcoming year.

One New Year’s resolution that’s made by numerous business professionals around the world is to network more often and network more efficiently. One of the ways that business professionals can go about this is to utilize social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, to build your personal brand and reputation.  

Sellers often bemoan that they find themselves deep into the sales process with a new prospect, only to discover there isn't much budget available.

Sometimes, despite all our efforts to break the ice and establish credibility in advance of that first call to a prospect, and despite having well-crafted and articulated valid business reasons, the prospect is still reluctant to see us.

On a recent client visit, the main purpose was to help them plan their 2013 strategy.  One of the topics we covered was how the management team and sales people could remain digitally relevant in 2013.   After seeing the movie "Parental Guidance," it was obvious one of the lead characters, Artie Decker could relate.