The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

At the core of every successful workforce management practice is communication. As managers and sellers adapt to this new normal, clear communication, and scheduled talk time are more important than ever before. Talk time comes in forms such as:

• Manager to seller talk time
• Manager to key customer talk time
• Seller to key and secondary customer talk time

Email is great for communicating data and confirming details, but nothing beats a conversation. Especially when the person on the other end of the line—phone or video—has a problem and needs to tap into your problem-solving expertise.

Whether with your sales team, customers, or prospects, regular check-ins promote open communication and stop larger issues from festering, as well as allow for immediate feedback.

It takes a lot of work to get a first meeting with a prospect.

While connecting with a prospect and getting a meeting is a series of events and second chances, that’s not the case with your needs analysis or discovery meeting. The discovery meeting is your one chance to gather information critical to creating a proposal the prospect will be interested in purchasing.

Let’s look at seven signs that you might be doing your needs analysis wrong.

Sales meetings are more than just a routine; they have the potential to inspire, motivate, and educate your sales team.

A productive sales meeting introduces your team to new information, solutions, and opportunities, ultimately driving revenue. But a poorly executed one? It can demoralize and waste precious time and resources.

Have you ever met with a prospect for the first time and felt like the entire conversation was like pulling teeth?

Maybe they took a couple of calls or answered some urgent emails while you were waiting to ask your next question. Maybe you couldn’t meet in person, and you could sense they were distracted and not focused during the little time you had. 

In these situations, it's common to leave the appointment with little to no valuable information, no follow-up direction, and when you look at your notes it feels like a waste of your valuable time.

Not all first meetings go well, but you can prevent the train wreck first appointment with better pre-planning.

For any sales manager, it's incredibly frustrating when their salespeople don’t seem to be able to close the deal. A successful sale often depends on the product and customer knowledge of the salesperson, but what happens when the hard work isn’t translating into results?

Let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why your team may not be closing deals - from common hurdles like difficulty establishing credibility and understanding client needs to more nuanced issues like forgoing preparation time before meetings or failing to ask questions throughout conversations.

Here's our breakdown on how you can help your team move past these sticking points and finally start seeing those eagerly awaited closed deals!

If your sales meetings are typically focused on reviewing the budget pacing numbers and other housekeeping notes, then WOW are you missing a great opportunity. Sales meetings are a great place to do sales training or sales warm ups.

While most sales managers agree with this, they often share that one of the reasons they don’t do that sort of activity is because they don’t have time to prepare. Clients of The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) often use one of the “sales meeting kits, ” but not everyone has that available to them. So, if you're looking for some content to enliven your next sales meeting, here are four TED talks that we recommend.

Thank you! Thank you!  Really, Thanks. Please hold your applause until the end of the sales meeting. 

What? 

You mean that you haven’t been interrupted during your sales meeting by thunderous applause from your salespeople?  Really?

Sales meetings have always been stressful. But with the recent shift to digital, many sales professionals have had to adapt to a whole new way of closing deals.

Naturally, as with anything new, mistakes are still being made. And since sales meeting blunders can cost you business, we've created a list of the five most common ones so you can avoid them in the future.

Case Studies and campaign recaps are powerful tools to help sell success. When managers share individual wins with their team, it boosts morale, sparks ideas, and motivates others to do similar work.

Salespeople value the real-life experience of their peers. After all, the best part of working in sales is celebrating your biggest wins after hours, weeks, maybe even months of hard work. Sales wins are a combination of strategies, tools, and content — doesn't other players on your team want to know what worked well for the salesperson who sealed the deal?

Someone once said that perceptions can’t be wrong because it’s a perception, an opinion and impression of someone else. However, perceptions are often wrong because if they were right, they would be called facts.  

Whether we deserve it or not, we’re judged by every person that we connect with. The words that come out of our mouth firmly establish an imaginary tattoo on our forehead as we stand in front of a quality prospect.

Perception is everything, and how you’re seen by your team, prospects, and clients is a key to success. New research shows that you have 27 seconds to make a positive impression and 1 minute to prove value in any given situation. Like it or not, how you look, dress, and speak helps people to form an opinion of you.