Posts Tagged ‘Sales Management’
B2B Sales and Marketing “Cultural Alignment” Part 2
In my last blog post, I discussed the fact that sales and marketing teams largely come from a different set of internal “cultures,” cultures whose viewpoints and and attitudes are often at odds with each other. In Part 2, I want to take a closer look at this concept, because as sales and marketing teams…
Read MoreAligning Sales and Marketing – It’s Not Just About Metrics, It’s Culture
Having just re-read sales and marketing blogger Adam Needle’s 4 part series on the “Unspoken ‘Real State’ of Modern B2B Demand Generation,” I once again cannot commend enough the value of the data and analysis he presents. If you have any interest at all in B2B sales, marketing, branding, or sales management, this is a…
Read MoreThe 2 Lead Routing Criteria that Produce More Sales
At some point, every sales manager on the planet has heard a sales rep gripe about how and when they’re getting their leads.
“Who’s deciding this?”
“Why aren’t I getting more leads?”
“Why aren’t I getting more leads from industry X / hot leads / leads for large accounts?”
Most companies struggle to find and keep a consistent stream of good, warm leads, and handing out a fresh, qualified lead can almost feel like an event in and of itself—but that doesn’t mean a rep asking these questions is out of line.
However the decision is made, the fact is that lead distribution is a selection process. Somewhere along the way, someone is making a decision about how leads are being handed out. Even if the decision is totally random / ad hoc, that’s still a decision . . . .
Read MoreSales 2.0 – Psychology, Self-Selection, and “Getting There First”
I’ve read, heard, and studied lots of talk about the psychology of sales and marketing.
What makes buyers tick.
How decisions are made.
Prestige, Pleasure, Pain (relief), Profits, or Preservation.
But I was reminded today of another key psychological aspect of sales:
Get there first.
“Getting there first” is a simple rule that Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook talks about.
Want to be a budding (sales) rock star?
Get there first.
When it comes to lead management and generating new sales, showing up last is often worse than not showing up at all . . . .
Read MoreInside Sales – Lead Management, CRM, and Knowing Something About “Something”
Today Seth Godin stated that one of the revolutions of human economy was when man first discovered that knowing something about “something” was just as valuable, if not more valuable than the “something” itself.
Consider:
How much more valuable is a library when it has a card catalog, digital or otherwise?
Without the card catalog, the usefulness and utility of the library itself decreases by a factor of 50, 100, 1000 or more. How hard would it be to find something in even an average-sized municipal library without an efficient, easy-to-follow system of organization?
Now think about the Library of Congress.
So what does this mean for sales and marketing?
It’s simple:
How much more valuable does your sales team become when you have a “card catalog” of what they do . . . .
Read MoreInside Sales: Two Hidden Metrics of Prospecting That are Hurting Your Sales
Most of the common marketing and sales and metrics—click-throughs, impressions, sales cycle, revenue per deal—don’t really need an explanation. But there are two metrics where a lot of companies we’ve worked with have holes in their sales process.
How soon after a new Web lead comes in does a sales rep make the first contact attempt, and how long after it came in did they actually make contact? Every single piece of data we’ve ever researched shows that for Web-generated leads, immediate response is crucial . . . .
Read MoreSales Management – “Hello, Massive Disconnect? This is Your Friend, Crappy Performance.”
I bumped into this post on The New Sales Economy, and thought it was a worthwhile read on inside sales best practices (thanks to Trish Bertuzzi for the link). Using The Bridge Group’s data, author Chad Levitt asks nine highly relevant, incisive questions about the current state of professional inside sales. I was particularly interested…
Read MoreInside Sales Best Practices – Kill the “Sunny Day Salary”
Time Waster #3 of our classic 15 Time Wasters of Marketing and Sales is what I call “Sunny Day Salaries.”
A “Sunny Day Salary” is a pay plan or commission structure that can only be met when “every single star falls into alignment.”
When every decision maker acts exactly the way we expect, when every sale goes according to plan.
As long as there’s no obstacles, no off-the-wall objections, as long as “Everything’s bright and sun-shiny,” the sales rep can meet their quota, and earn their performance bonus.
As every sales rep knows, real life doesn’t work this way.
Ever.
To wit: . . . .
Read MoreLead Management – JS Bach, Music, and Your Sales Pipeline
I absolutely loved this recent post by Copyblogger. As someone who took piano lessons for over eight years, I’ve played my fair share of Bach minuets, and hearing about the sheer amount of effort he put into creating his music inspired me.
And I think there’s a lesson to be learned here that’s eminently applicable to sales:
“Researchers concluded that the rate of [musical composition] hits to misses was pretty constant between major and minor composers. The truly great composers produce more masterpieces than the others, mainly because they produced more work overall.”
Change “musical composition” to “prospects,” and “masterpieces” to “sales” and suddenly we’re on to something.
You want to know one of the secrets of the top sales people? The agents in the “20 percent” category of the “80/20 Rule of Sales” (i.e., “80 percent of all sales are generated by 20 percent of the reps”)?
Read MoreAligning Lead Management and Sales Management
Stumbled across this blog entry recently on Glance Networks, and having done exactly what Tom Scontras is talking about for three or four years now, I related completely.
He nails #4 on the head—it’s a constant game in both sales and marketing to not outsmart ourselves. Don’t toss away something that works pretty well in hope of chasing the “home run” without really, really researching it out first.
We’ve wasted a lot of dollars over the years because we forgot to split test everything. When it comes to your lead generation efforts, don’t make decisions based on your gut . . . .
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