Posts Tagged ‘Sales Process’
3 Takeaways from a Road Trip to Zappos
For the past 3 or 4 years, “Zappos” and “incredible customer service” have been essentially synonymous. Bring up the the little ‘ole online shoe retailer that Amazon bought for a cool $1.2 billion, and invariably someone starts spouting stories of the company’s legendary customer satisfaction and loyalty. The 365 day return policy. Pre-paid shipping of…
Read MoreA Sales Management Tip “Two-for” Tuesday
Two quick hits on some stuff I found interesting: I. Craig Rosenberg is generally a pretty smart and insightful guy. As the self-proclaimed “Funnelholic” and Focus.com VP of Products and Services, his extensive background in B2B sales and marketing gives his voice some weight in our space. So when Craig (@funnelholic on Twitter) recently posted…
Read MoreLooking Backwards and Forwards From 2011: Predictive Sales Intelligence Will Redefine CRM and the Sales Process
One of the problems we all have with technology is that we soon forget that what is now commonplace was once rare or non-existent. New technologies penetrate the market so rapidly that total market transformations can occur in the space of under three years (and some might say even less). It’s barely been a decade…
Read MoreOptimal Metrics for Lead Generation
Driving performance requires accurate and focused measures of performance. This is especially the case for account development and lead generation teams. I have recently been interviewing both XANT customers and non-customers (predominantly from the B2B High Tech/Services/Telecom industries) to identify the optimal metric to use when measuring the success of account development reps. I found that…
Read MoreSales and the “Definition of Done” — A Project Manager’s Perspective
It was a crazy week at Dreamforce. The PowerDialer for Salesforce 3.0 that we rolled out the first day of the conference was an incredible success. The number of inquiries, and the level of interest blew away our expectations.
Now back to the real world.
I have to admit, before Dreamforce, I was getting g little burnt out on the usual sales and marketing blog schtick.
How many different ways can you say, “Align marketing and sales,” or “Create a measurable sales process” before you’re repeating yourself (endlessly….repeating….yourself)?
So today we’re doing something different.
I don’t know anything about Pawel Brodzinski other than he’s a software developer, and he’s Polish . . .
Read MoreThe Prospect’s Process is in Charge – A Sales Pop Quiz
If you’re not on a call with a prospect or client RIGHT NOW, put down the phone, and stop what you’re doing. And get off Facebook and quit fiddling with your iPhone too. Pop Quiz, hotshot. Here’s the rules: Without looking at your CRM system, think of your highest-probability deal in the pipeline right now,…
Read MoreAnalytics, CRM, and “Sales Prevention”
Ran into a great blog by Bob Apollo (@bobapollo on Twitter) on the Inflexion-Point Blog this morning that really got my wheels turning, entitled “Is your CRM system a sales prevention system?” Since one of my company’s biggest products is a lead management CRM, I was intrigued by Bob’s five “danger signs” that a company’s…
Read MoreInside Sales Tips — Debunking Voice Mail Myths
At some point every sales organization that engages in outbound prospecting has a debate over whether targeted sales voice messages make any real difference in results.
The primary complaints of those who don’t like using voice mail as a prospecting tool:
1. It doesn’t work
2. Even if it does work, it’s too time consuming.
I’m here to debunk both of these myths.
The Reality: voice mail works, and it works well.
On any objective level, this complaint is a straw man argument. Inside sales industry insider Ken Krogue has created and nurtured two $1 million+ a month sales teams in two different industries—business development at Franklin-Covey (now Franklin-Qwest), and telecom with inContact, formerly UCN. Every piece of data he’s ever compiled from his teams shows that direct prospecting voice mail averages a 4-6 percent response rate –and it’s often much higher, depending on the product, vertical, and targets chosen . . . .
Read MoreSales Process Tip: Split Your Sales Team Into Specialists
Question: What do the names Eddie Johnson, JJ Redick, Trent Tucker, and Craig Hodges have in common?
Answer: They’re all NBA basketball players who were able to have successful careers primarily by being proficient at one thing (and not much else):
Making three-point shots.
These were players who realized that the highest value to their teams was to focus on what they did well—and develop as many “sub-skills” around that core value as they could.
JJ Redick will never win a dunk contest, or be considered anything more than a mediocre defender—but he has perfected the art of coming off screens, and has a lightning-quick shot release.
It’s not always the case, but in today’s Sales 2.0 World, a lot of the time it’s better to be fantastically good at one thing than to be average at half-a-dozen . . . .
Read MoreBetter Sales Management, Performance Starts with “Scrappy”
If you’ve read my “15 Time-wasters of Inside Sales and Marketing,” you’ve heard me say that one of the biggest culprits of poor sales performance and poor motivation is having a bad sales manager. And if you’ve read my “15 Time Wasters,” you’ve also heard me say that regardless of where they come from or…
Read More