I recently came across this extremely powerful list of success quotes by Robin Sharma, a writer and philosopher that I deeply admire and respect. I was so impressed with this list that I sent him and note to ask if I could share it with all of you and he graciously agreed.

The post Success Quotes: 51 Ways Ordinary People Reached World-Class appeared first on Business Help and Success Tips from John Spence.

Sales ops executives are charged with improving sales effectiveness and efficiency.  Provide
the right processes, tools, structure and guidance to best deliver revenue.  Your goal is to best enable sales.  But is that the same as enabling the buyer to buy?

Today’s post is about flipping your perspective in all you do.  Turning everything inside-out by
looking from the “outside-in”.

Buyers don’t care about how your organization wants to sell.  They only care about making the
best buying decisions possible.  Look across the spectrum of Sales Operations.  Consider everything from strategy to territory design and all your work in-between.

Is everything you do making it easier for your buyers to buy?  If the answer is no for any initiatives, apply the brakes right now.  

Sign up for SBI’s 7th annual research tour: "How to Make Your Number in 2014: A
Sales Strategy You Can Execute.”  Learn how to more closely align with your buyers and enable them to buy.  Get details on what best-in-class organizations are doing differently next year.  When you register, you’ll also get the Outside-In Sales Ops Scorecard.  The scorecard will help you identify where you must shift your focus.

Reverse Your Approach

You’ve been hearing that buyers have changed significantly.  With each passing day, B2B buyers become more self-directed.  Instant access to data, personal networks, experts and your competitors have enabled them.  Product or service differentiation is harder to come by in today’s agile world.

Looking “outside-in” is the answer.  Reversing your outlook to the buyer perspective needs to be part of your DNA.  Examples of the difference between inside-out vs. outside-in approaches
for Sales Ops follows:

A few basic questions should clarify if you are looking inside-out or outside-in.

• Look at your company job postings for sales executives.  Do they focus on skills that align with having a deep knowledge of the buyer?  Does it require social selling skills? If so, that’s a good sign.  If not, raise the red
  flag.  Is the posting littered with phrases like “influential personality” or “self-confident”?  How will that be measured?
• Review your Sales Process.  Is it based on how buyers buy or how you want to sell?  Does it use observable customer actions as milestones for progress?  Consider the difference between offering to provide verses being asked for a proposal. 
• Inspect how leads are being generated.  Are they mainly a result of out-bound telemarketing & cold-calling?  Cold-calling isn’t dead - it’s just not as likely hit at the right time with the right message.  Are you delivering the right content through the right mode at the right time?  Building your social networks, listening to your buyers and providing relevant content.
• Closely examine your web site.  Is the content arranged to your most
  important buyer personas?  Is it product heavy but light on answering the buyer question of “So what?”  Does the site enable your prospect to buy what and how they want?
• Are you conducting 3^rd party Win-Loss interviews?  If you are relying on sales to provide this info, that’s a problem.  A big reason deals are lost is that the rep isn’t in sync with the buyer.  Or they’ve not understood what motivates the buyer.  Why do they buy what they buy?  Get 3^rd party unbiased data on your wins and losses.   

In the end, your buyers are not there to enable you to sell.  Sales pros are there to enable
them to buy.  Perhaps we need to change the term Sales Enablement to Buyer Enablement. 
How about changing Field Sales Executive to Buying Process Executive?

This is not a subtle distinction.  Register for SBI’s "How to Make Your Number in 2014: A
Sales Strategy You Can Execute.” Find out the difference and what you can do about it.  In addition, by registering, you’ll get the Outside-In Sales Ops Scorecard.

Author: Patrick Seidell

Follow @pseidell

Follow @MakingTheNumber

If you enjoyed this post, never miss one again by subscribing your Email Here and/or subscribing to the RSS Here. Comments are welcome below.

The rise and fall? of infographics

According to the volume of searches in Google Trends shown in this infographic, the popularity of infographics has increased by 800% over two years since 2010.

Perhaps surprisingly, the latest figures have shown a slight decrease in searches since May this year. Do you think infographics are becoming less effective from your use of them?

We think infographics remain a great tool to visually share and represent information and knowledge, both within the organisation and externally for outreach. Of course, it’s important to get the quality right as Dan Bosomworth explains in his post giving 10 best practices for the perfect marketing infographic. We try to produce useful infographics which help marketers explain practices such as those we have collected in our free Digital Marketing Infographics pack.

We’ve noticed a growth in use of tools for creating infographics including visual.ly, Infgr.am and piktochart. While these have opened up the creation of infographics to those without the resources to use Graphic Designers or those who need a quick turnaround we think quality will often suffer.

Like any other content, the aims of the communication strategy to create and promote it is just as important  as the Infographic itself.

This Infographic we are sharing, provides 9 reasons and best practices for using Infographics, peak search interest and regional variations.

Read more on how to promote your Infographic.

According to the MarketingSherpa  2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report, 24% of marketers ask a timeline-to-purchase question on their lead capture forms.

Q: Please select the most important fields that you need to collect from your leads on the lead generation form.

Another 17% ask budget-related questions. I suspect marketers do so because they have heard about “BANT qualified leads” and apply these criteria to Web forms. For the uninitiated, BANT is an acronym:

• B = Budget
• A = Authority
• N = Need
• T= Timing

It’s time to move BANT methodology into retirement.

As I wrote in my previous B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post, BANT is not feasible without someone having a conversation with a prospect. For marketing departments, it’s impossible to deliver BANT qualified leads unless marketing owns an inside sales function.

Making matters worse, BANT does not align with customer buying behavior early in the decision process when Marketing and Sales generally need to engage prospects to win new business. So, even if Marketing owns an inside sales operation, asking the reps to use BANT criteria is misguided.

Lead qualification in a post-BANT world

Now, before introducing an alternative to BANT, I would ask you to think about the mindset of business prospects when they first express interest by sharing their identity.

We have all downloaded a white paper or attended a webinar. Think back on that experience. Now imagine after having done so, the vendor tries to call you. You go through a series of decisions, which we call “micro-yeses.”

The micro-yes decisions depend on the channel but the thought sequence of the customer is actually quite similar, for each channel:

What’s obvious is that we want to qualify the companies who solicit us every bit as much as they want to qualify us.

At each step of the decision process, we decide not only whether to keep going, but whether to do so now using all manner of mental machinery to answer these questions for ourselves.

In the case of email, if we don’t know the sender, then we’re trying to see if the email is junk mail. The “from” field might be a clue. For example, if that field contains the name of a company, we suspect it’s some kind of advertisement or triggered email. We then look at the subject line. And so on.

With a voicemail or an outbound call, we’re listening to the accent, the clarity, the tone, not just the meaning of the words. All of these factors and more can influence how someone might react.

The decisions we make are not just “yes or no.” Often, they are “if/then” scenarios. If the call is from my agency, then X, or if it’s from overseas, then Y, and so on. Those who engage customers need to be mindful and respectful of this filtering process that all of us use.

Lead qualification does not start with prospects

Given this desire we all have to be guarded with strangers, how should we qualify prospects once we decide to speak to them?

First, you need to be polite, not rude or disrespectful. I know that sounds obvious, but we all know how low the bar is. People call without an appointment, without asking if you are busy, without knowing much about you. Rarely do they offer to add value.

So, before you start qualifying them, maybe ask if you’ve called at a bad time. Before asking them questions, do some research on LinkedIn to see if it sounds like they are responsible for what you sell. In other words, you want to establish your authority and credibility, partly through your respectfulness and professionalism.

With this as a context, let me propose a replacement for BANT. I call it PAM – Persona qualification, Account qualification, Motivation.

Persona Qualification

One thing that is disrespectful is rattling on about something irrelevant to the prospect. The first point of phone qualification is making sure the person is one of the buying personas you hunt for. It’s usually not about the title, although a title is highly indicative. Really, it’s about the charter the person has.

But, how do you determine the charter?

First, provide a process-level and a prospect-level value proposition.

The process-level value proposition answers the question, “Why should I listen to you at all?” The prospect-level value proposition frames your value proposition from a buyer-persona perspective.

For example, you might say, “We have some new research that marketing executives faced with lead follow-up and lead conversion challenges find very helpful. With this new approach, companies are seeing 30% to 40% increases in lead conversion.”

Now you have possibly earned the right to ask them a question or two. Explain that you don’t want to waste their time and so you’d like to ask two questions. Ask what their role is in the company and how the company makes decisions about the kinds of solutions you sell.

Most of the time, if the person you are speaking with is not involved, he or she will give you the name of the person you might want to speak with, if they are at all aware of the challenge. If the person is involved, then he or she may want to learn more before getting others involved.

Account Qualification

Next, make sure the account meets the criteria you look for. Again, frame your questions in terms of not wanting to waste the time of the prospect.

If the person you are speaking to is not the right person, qualify the account in order to know whether you should be talking to someone else. That said, one of my pet peeves is needless qualification.

For example, if you sell to large retail chains, do you really need to qualify Wal-Mart? It’s important not be like the actor Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day,” doomed to repeat the same qualification questions with the same account over and over.

A good database marketing strategy and solid CRM implementation is critical.

Secondly, if you can find out an answer without asking, do so. Confirming what you think you know gives you credibility and is respectful. Not doing your homework isn’t.

Account qualification often varies by solution area. The key here is finding the answer to one or two questions that give you enough directional confidence to continue interacting with the account, now and in the future.

The answers should also help you prioritize your efforts to determine if the account is a minnow or a whale.

These two areas of qualification tell you the person and the account may buy at some point. They also help you figure out the size of the account, authority and charter of the decision maker, and may also indicate how much potential revenue is at stake.

But persona and account qualification say nothing about when the account might actually buy, and that’s the reason for the final area of qualification.

Motivation

Is the person you’re talking to motivated enough to help you get to the people or person who matters?

What pain do they have that maps to what you sell? I like the word pain because I can live with a problem, but pain is much harder to ignore.

Pain can and should happen at the account or department level and at the individual level. But, your first job is to see if it’s happening somewhere in the account.

How big of a priority is eliminating that pain, both for the person you are speaking with and for the others involved in the decision process? Insight into motivations can tell you a lot about the probability of a purchase and timeline for purchase.

It’s all about crafting a true sales-ready engagement

With the right answers to the questions in these three areas of qualification, you have a lead that is usually worthy of sales engagement.

The questions for marketers is what they can do upstream of live conversations to tee up people and accounts that are more likely to convert into sales-ready leads. There are many things.

But for now, I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for improvement on the PAM model in the comments section below.

Related Resources:

Lead Gen Summit 2013 in San Francisco (September 30 – October 3, 2013)

The Lament of the Inside Sales Team: Data, Data Everywhere, but Who’s Ready to Buy?

How to Use Lead Scoring to Drive the Highest Return on Your Trade Show Investment

In working on OWNER magazine, I’m paying attention to stats really closely so that I can try things, tweak things, and see what works and what doesn’t. I feel like Christopher S Penn, but when I say that, please know I’m joking. I’ll never be 1/114th as clever as that man.

I’m looking at my bounce rate (how long someone stays on site before they drop off and leave), which is around 65% (not great, but not hideous).

I’m looking at what they click, where they came from, where they go. And with this, I’m testing. I’m asking what I can do to improve time on site, what kinds of offers are interesting and useful and which aren’t, which networks are currently serving me my most traffic (twitter) and where I need more amplification (LinkedIn). I spent $100 promoting a post on Facebook to see if something would come of that (so far, not really, but that’s likely me, because I’m not as smart as Amy Porterfield).

What’s fun is that I’ve not “had” to do this at [chrisbrogan.com] for a while. I know who you are. I know what you’ll do. I know what makes you happy and what bores you. I ignore a lot of what the stats tell me. But this is different. I’m approaching OWNER magazine like one should: like a new business. I’m working on knowing the guts of it inside and out so that I can help prospective partners who want to do business with us to understand who exactly are on the site, and what they most want.

How I Normally View Stats

I have two metrics that I measure numerically and one measure of qualitative analysis. The qualitative measure is just how people react and respond via email replies and comments and other feedback. The two numerical metrics are # of subscribers and $ of revenue per active subscriber. That’s it. Because my business is a media business, that’s all I need to REALLY pay attention to most days.

But then, I like finding those stats for any business. If I ran restaurants, I’d be very attentive to $ per guest (average order) as a metric for my servers. I might be attentive to pounds of waste with my cooking staff. And for planning, I’d want to work on margins and attendance.

To me, there are a wealth of stats, but I only usually need a few to figure out the “hinges” of the business. If you’re liking the magazine, my other metrics fall into place without me needing to know the guts and the details. If I’m still trying to figure out ways to grow my numbers (and I am), I’ll have to see what you’re clicking and what you’re not, how you’re searching for me, and how you’re not, etc. But then, when it gets rolling, I’ll use higher level dashboard metrics than that.

What stats do you follow for your business? How much of what you run is numerical? What do you do to tweak those numbers?

Recently, some interesting initiatives have been launched that can accelerate B2B content marketing on tablets. So, is it high time for more B2B activity on this user-friendly medium? After all, many B2B marketers are still burying their heads in the sand regarding the possibilities and opportunities offered by mobile devices.

Time is running out for those B2B marketers who have not yet embraced the developments in mobile marketing. The time is ripe to explore the potential.

Statistics Double in One Year

Within a short time, mobile devices have developed from fun gadgets into productivity enhancers. Since the arrival and rapid growth of so-called enterprise apps, smartphones and tablets are now more than just quick ways of accessing e-mail, calendars, social media, and online information. The integration of mobile applications with business systems, such as CRM and business intelligence, means that information and processes can be accessed and managed from anywhere, at any time. User expectations have changed due to the growing relevance of apps. The expectations imposed on the information and functionality provided have risen significantly.

At the same time, the percentage of overall Internet traffic that takes place via mobile devices is steadily on the rise. The Monetate Q1 2013 Ecommerce Quarterly gives insight on the increase in web traffic on smartphones versus tablets and versus desktops. Traffic on mobile devices has almost doubled in one year. And it is not just the channel that is witnessing such strong growth. Forrester predicted that the mobile marketing budget in 2013 will be around double that in 2012, overtaking both social media and e-mail marketing.

Top Mobile Marketing Tactics

The mobile channel is therefore playing an increasingly important role in marketing, and it deserves special attention. However, B2B marketers who want to use this mobile channel and create an impact are faced with a challenge. Users want relevance, functionality, and access to information on any device, at any time and from any location. So how can this be achieved? Start by considering the following tactics for your mobile presence.

1. Responsive website. Make your website responsive to the different devices and adapt content where necessary.
2. Mobile-friendly campaigns. Ensure that your campaigns do not run aground on mobile devices, and instead optimize your landing pages. Tailor settings for each type of device for things such as forms.
3. Mobile advertising. Mobile advertising can be highly tailored by location, time, and device, resulting in high relevance and therefore high-response rates.
4. Mobile e-mail. Reading e-mails is still one of the most used functions on smartphones and tablets. It is therefore essential to ensure that your HTML can be read properly on these devices. For example, use only one column.
5. Mobile apps. An app enables you to secure a prominent presence on your customer’s device. But for this you need to do more than simply follow the recommendations given above.

One important recommendation is missing however. As advised by Forrester in the new report “Don’t Confuse Tablet And Mobile Marketing,” a B2B marketer needs to differentiate between smartphones and tablets. Smartphones have a much smaller screen for content experiences and is used “on the go,” while tablets are used more at home and in the office offering rich content opportunities. Tablets are also increasingly differentiated as “lead back” media versus the “lead forward” or “behind the desk” content consumption on the PC or laptop.

Entering the Market With an App

B2B marketers hoping to establish a presence on their customers’ mobile device with an app are faced with new challenges. For example, a mobile app can offer the user distinctive functionality, fun or information. So, to be successful, you first and foremost need to consider how you can offer the user an experience that exceeds his high expectations. And this can differ greatly between the tablet and the smartphone.

Both smartphones and tablets are frequently used to check e-mails and to keep up to date with social media. However, tablets are primarily used at home in a relaxed environment, for instance as a second screen for watching television, work-related activities, shopping and reading background information. Although smartphones are often also used at home, they are strongly associated with being ‘on the go’. By contrast, tablets offer many more opportunities for a visual experience, while smartphones are effective for location-based services.

So as B2B marketer, you have many opportunities to pursue and it’s time to act. The challenge is to find it and start exploring.

I spend time with recruiters and HR professionals who have two profiles on LinkedIn. One for their personal network and one for the times when they reach out to candidates during the sourcing, screening, recruiting and hiring process.

“Laurie, I don’t want to personally connect with thousands of strangers. My job makes me do it.”

Although that sounds dumb to most people, I get it. The internet is weird. But if you compare the two profiles side-by-side, neither are truly stellar and both are in need of some work.

You can use these social networking platforms any way you choose, but it’s exhausting to have a dual identity. Trust me. I have two personae: one for my real life and one for my writing. If I had a full-time job and kids, I couldn’t do it.

In fact, I can barely do it.

If I had to manage two LinkedIn accounts + two Facebook accounts + multiple twitter accounts + a job + a boss + candidates + clients + meetings + real work + kids + a spouse + my family responsibilities, I would never get anything done.

Jennifer McClure and I offer online classes on optimizing your social media presence and the next one is in December. You get 4.5 HRCI recertification credits for it. But I don’t care if you sign up for our classes. Take a look at our free resource on LinkedIn.

Optimize your profile. Make your life easier. Get the heck off the internet and into the real world where you can make a real difference.

That’s what we want for you.

Overall usage on social media platforms is exploding. Millions and millions of consumers are expressing likes on Facebook, tweeting about products on Twitter, and pinning on Pinterest every single day.

Retailers and brands are increasingly focusing their attention on social commerce.

But many struggle with the question: how do you convert a "like," a "tweet," or "pin" into a sale? Is social media really going to be a source of dollars and foot traffic? 

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at successful examples of businesses and business models for generating commerce via social media-based strategies.

Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

We also analyze Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform, look at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender, and we examine the numbers behind the social commerce conversion and order value gap. The report is supplemented by rich datasets on social commerce, and subscribers will also receive full access to BI Intelligence's full library of hundreds of in-depth reports, charts and datasets — including up to date coverage on social commerce. 

Here's an overview of the converging trends that promise to transform social media into a viable commerce platform:

• The rise of mobile: The rise of mobile, which means shoppers can price-compare and solicit advice from friends wherever they are. Overall, mobile accounts for just under 40% of time spent on social media. Facebook has passed the 50% mobile usage mark and Pinterest is at 48%. Together, they combine for over 56% of social generated e-commerce at the moment, according to social commerce platform, Addshoppers. Given the continued growth of mobile devices, it will only rise. Brands' desire for guaranteed attention in the medium, coupled with this explosion, helps to explain social media's move away from traditional display ads - like Facebook's right-rail ads - and into the realm of social commerce.

• The rise of the visual Web: Sites like Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and Wanelo are becoming repositories for shopping ideas, fashion tips, and wish lists — in essence user-generated catalogs. For example, in a recent survey by Zmags (a mobile catalog company), 63% of online shoppers said they plan to use online catalogs. And 35% said they plan to use Pinterest to make purchases. 

• Demographics: Today's mobile-savvy consumers in their teens and early twenties are accustomed to shopping online and tend to see their smartphones and tablets asan important shopping tool. Pinterest's average user is between the ages of 30 and 49, which is an age bracket with considerable disposable income. Pinterest users tend to be women (anywhere from 80 to 85% of its user base is female). Marketers know that it is women who usually control the purse strings for household purchases for clothes, home decoration, and gifts — three strong areas for Pinterest. There is increasing evidence that Pinterest is driving shoppers into bricks-and-mortar stores. 

• Significant challenges remain: Social commerce — whatever the model — needs to better reflect the fundamental rule of e-commerce, which Amazon has always championed: Consumers will click to buy when it's relatively effortless. That's even more true of a casual shopper who ends up on a retailer's site because of a social recommendation. That intent to buy is fragile and can quickly evaporate. Currently, social commerce strategies involve too many intermediate steps before a user ends up in front of the crucial "buy" button. 
  

In full, the report: 

• Analyzes successful examples of businesses generating commerce via social media-based strategies (such as Groupon, Fab, and Jack Threads)
• Conducts an in-depth look at Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform
• Looks at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender
• Examines the e-commerce conversion and order value gap. 

To access BI Intelligence's full reports on The Rise Of Social Commerce, sign up for a free trial subscription here.

Join the conversation about this story »

We are big believers that creating a winning culture is absolutely essential for any type of success from sports to raising children and it is particularly important in terms of driving superior sales results (see our previous posts: Building a Culture of Success in Your Sales Team and Why Culture Matters in Sales Hiring).

Sales managers have a full plate every day; hiring, training, and driving their sales teams to meet demanding sales numbers. Few managers have the time to think about creating a culture of success. Yet, that is exactly what the best companies do—they work hard to build and communicate a culture that demands, and rewards, sales excellence.

Looking back at some of the books we have enjoys and business experts we admire, we culled together some key success traits common across the cultures of leading organizations.

Candor

Managers should expect and encourage frankness from their sales people. Early in my sales management life, I had one rep who always had strong sales forecasts – that were never realized. We have all employed a”sunshine pump.” You have to challenge your reps. Dig beneath what they are saying, and motivate them to do better. Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, credits developing candor throughout GE as a key reason he was able to change it from a stagnant corporation to a global powerhouse.

Welch would push sales teams to strive for more. If they achieved a 15 percent annual increase, he would applaud them, but then ask if they were exploring every possible avenue to achieve even higher goals. Candor ruffles a few feathers, but is critical to building an action-oriented business culture.

Planning and Strategy

The most successful companies we work with put emphasis on planning and strategy. They are not alone. A while back I read Jeb Blount’s book, “People Follow You,” and in it he says that great sales managers provide consistent systems that allow their people to win. They focus on coaching, mentoring, and providing a structure that gets their account executives in front of customers often. They spend lots of time watching their salespeople and helping them learn, as well as holding them accountable and recognizing their achievement.

Consistency

Another interesting read, Robert Hogan’s “Personality and the Fate of Organizations”, notes that 75 percent of people at work say their boss is the most stressful part of their work life. Part of the reason for this is management inconsistency. We see this as well when recruiting sales managers and reviewing their performance and management style. Micro-managing when they have time or under managing when they are busy. Providing conflicting guidance and not regularly holding reps accountable or reviewing performance. Great organizations are able to get a lot out of their people because they present a consistent culture. Team members are expected to excel, but always know where they stand.

Modern Sales Process

Creating a consistent culture of sales success is especially important in today’s world of advanced technology. In the past, prospects and clients got most of their information from the salesperson. Today buyers research different options online well before they contact any vendors.

A CEB Marketing survey showed B2B clients across many industries contact a salesperson after they have finished an average of 60 percent of the buying decision. As a result, every person in your company, as well as every piece of marketing, must share a consistent vision so that prospects receive a unified message.

Inspire Your Team

Sales is all about money, right? Well yes in most cases, but actually, creating a culture of success demands that sales managers have a broader foundation. Teach reps how to have meaningful integrity-based relationships with customers, and more than simply reminding reps of the goal to deliver revenues, promote a larger mission such as improving the lives of customers and regularly point to examples where this has happened.

Explain Why

Wait, aren’t good sales leaders hard-headed pragmatists? Who cares about inspiration? The best leaders make sure their people buy into their vision. In his landmark 2010 TED talk, author Simon Senek explains that great leaders inspire with belief. It explains why some leaders inspire while others do not.

Senek says every organization knows what they do, some know how they do it, but very few know why. Most companies and leaders operate from the outside in, with the “why” in the middle. Great leaders do the opposite. They live from the inside out, by starting with the “why.” They are able to create a culture of success because their followers support what the leadership believes, not just what they do.

Recast The Mission

Sales trainer Troy Harrison told American Business magazine that every successful company he has worked with had a strong sales culture. He recommends that organizations forget their original corporate mission statement, and start over by developing a mission with a sales slant that guides every decision made.

Rory Vaden, sales trainer and bestselling author of “Take the Stairs,” agrees. He explained in the American Express Open Forum that one of the keys to creating a top sales culture is being able to share a vision. He believes that great salespeople need an overarching creed, and it is the responsibility of management to create one for them.

High-performance sales cultures are based on candor, consistency, and a deeper mission to improve the lives of employees and customers. Step back from the daily grind, and examine where you can use some of these techniques to improve your own sales culture.

To your success!

How well do you maintain good eye contact with your customer?

Lack of eye contact does more to destroy sales confidence — yours and the customer’s — than most salespeople realize.

If you want to succeed, you have to be able to maintain good eye contact, whether delivering your price or handling a customer’s question or objection.

In fact, you should try to know the color of their eyes:

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. 

Every once in a while we see something special. In 1980 I was thirteen and I can remember watching the winter olympics on a little black and white TV in my basement bedroom. After we (sorry Canadian and European friends), beat the big bad Soviet Union (remember the CCCP on their jerseys?), I forced my younger sister to watch the Gold Medal Game with me and together we chanted “USA, USA, USA” as the clocked ticked down to zero and Al Michaels’ famous line became part of our lexicon forever. Honestly, it’s one of my strongest sports memories, even to this day. That was an incredible team that accomplished incredible things.

Last month I saw something special, so special, that I recognized it instantly and knew it was worthy of sharing with you here. I spent two days with an incredible company, who, without a doubt, has the healthiest sales team culture I’ve experienced. Their culture was so strong, so ideal, and unfortunately so rare, that it took a full week for me to process it to the point where I could articulate it well.

We all talk about the importance of culture. And for the most part, I bet most executives and salespeople would agree what a healthy sales culture should look and feel like. But the truth is that I almost never see one. Sure, I worked at one company back in the late 1990′s that came as close as any to having what I’d call and ideal sales culture. And occasionally, I’ll see elements of a healthy culture within my clients’ organizations, but after having worked with about 80 sales teams, I can say with certainty this company last month had, by far, the best I’ve ever seen.

Before sharing more about this particular culture, let me direct one strong shot across the bow of the cynical anti-sales executive reading this post who thinks that “culture” is a soft, mushy topic not tied to results. This company that invited me in to help take their new business development effort to the next level is already outrageously successful. They’re a dynamo in their space and members of their team produce twice the industry average. And as you’ll read in a minute, there was nothing soft about this culture.

The Healthiest Sales Culture I’ve Seen:

1.  An engaged, pro-sales CEO and executive team:  Wise mentors in my life have taught me a lot about leadership. Some of the one-liners that have stuck in my head include: as goes the leader, so goes the organization; the fish stinks at the head; if it’s broken at the top then it’s broken everywhere; the level of the team rarely, if ever, exceeds the level of the leader; all roads lead to the leader. Need I go on?  Let’s just say I learned the hard way, early on, that sales coaching isn’t all that’s necessary to fix broken sales organizations.

This company’s CEO is fully engaged with the sales team. He is pro-sales. He took great pride in sharing many success stories about how they’ve groomed talented individuals. There were John Wooden books prominently displayed on his shelves. He talked a lot about the culture at the company. When I started mentioning the buzz in the office, what I was observing from members of the team, the pride in the company that many of the reps described, the CEO stopped me. He leaned in, and said, “Mike, everything flows from culture.”  I almost cried right there. And then I asked him if he wanted to consult other companies, because I know quite a few that need to hear his message!

2.  No confusion; a crystal clear strategy; laser focus:  What a rare treat to see a laser-focused sales team. There was no fog. Everyone understood the company’s mission, what space they played in, what they were selling, their position in the market and whom they were targeting. And even better, the sales team understood that their job was to sell. There were no mixed messages from management about helping out operations, no excuses about working on other projects or getting caught up in customer service issues.

3.  Crazed focus on goals and results:  Everywhere you turned there was a report or white board with sales data on it. Results were posted, published and public. The salespeople submitted their own performance goals to management, and management would regularly review those goals with each salesperson.

4. Love:  There was a fraternal bond among members of the sales team and between management and the sales team. This group was tight. They had each other’s backs. There was a company rule that you could not talk badly about another person. If you had a problem with someone, you were to go to that person. Management admitted that it wasn’t perfectly enforced, but they tried. And the very fact that they had the policy was powerful.

5.  Competitive, self-policing team:  This team was in it to win it. Make no mistake, this was not a recreational sports team; they were a select team committed to winning a championship. And it felt like a winning locker room. There was a standard of performance that was a given. Complacency would not be tolerated. No coasting allowed.

6. Brutal feedback:  I was shocked how brutally honest management was with members of the team. We were working on incorporating their sharpened “sales story” into conversations with prospective clients and several salespeople were asked to role play in front 30 people in the room. Members of the team teased each other mercilessly, but in a fun and funny, not demeaning way. And when someone on the team swung and missed or sounded terrible, it didn’t take an executive two seconds to stop that person and let them know how awful they were doing. At first, I was uncomfortable with the brutal honesty. But after seeing it play out, especially because it was done so well and with love, I really appreciated how effective it was. It was a glaring contrast to most organizations where people rarely provide honest, direct feedback to those who need it.

7.  Servant leadership:  We hear a lot about servant leadership, but it’s pretty rare to see it in action. I’ve shared stories from my favorite airline, and occasionally will see it from senior executives. But it was a way of life at this company. The key managers were actively involved with their teams, even sitting on the sales floor with them. No ivory towers here. Executives were not far away or living the life of the absentee owner barking orders from afar. As an aside, I see way too many senior leaders express frustration with their sales team’s intensity or performance while taking extended vacations thousands of miles away.

8. Celebration:  One of my mentors, Donnie Williams, who I mention frequently in my book, was a master at pre-celebrating success. He understood that sales was as much a matter of the heart as it is of the head. He loved to celebrate with the sales team, and so does this new client of mine. They not only socialize together often, management rewards them. Just recently they dropped a bundle to take the entire team to the Rolling Stones concert. When the CEO told me the story, he simply said that it was the worth the money and they wanted the team to feel special and appreciated.

Sales leader, senior executive, CEO or small company owner, scroll back to the top and take a minute pondering the image of that 1980 US Olympic team. Wouldn’t it be great to create the kind of sales culture that could produce a gold medal for your organization?

Can I be so bold as to ask you to grab a sheet of paper and write down the eight attributes of this incredibly healthy sales culture I’ve described. What would it take to start down the path of creating that type of success-breeding culture in your organization?

Do you sometimes feel that your marketing partner doesn’t understand what’s going on out there? Or to put it simply, they “just don’t get it.” This post is about common pain points and suggestions to better align different mindsets and objectives that exist within marketing and sales teams.

In my previous roles as a sales rep and/or product manager, I too complained sometimes that my marketing partner just didn’t “get it”. Granted that my 10 years in Sales was in the dark ages before digital, a time when Marketing sat in the “ivory tower” creating traditional advertising campaigns and corporate brochures. But even then, those of us in the field often said what is still being said today: “These collateral and/or communication pieces aren’t hitting the mark. Why doesn’t the marketing team ever visit to talk to us about our needs or opinions? We don’t even know who’s in the marketing department. Don’t they know that without us the company’s revenue goals can’t be met?”

That said, Sales and Marketing integration in B2B industries is much better now—partly because it’s been forced through digital advancements that have led to changes in buyer behavior and communication opportunities. There is much more integration now, with marketing teams actively focused on driving leads and supporting the sales process.

And yet I continue to hear complaints from both sides, in both large and small companies, saying “they don’t get it”. For example:

Sales folks:

• “I don’t understand why our marketing staff is not accountable for sales results. They seem to get a nice budget year after year with no accountability for ROI.”

• “Not once has anyone on our marketing team asked to go on a sales call. How are they going to understand our process and the prospect’s needs if they don’t get out of their pretty office and get on the streets?”

• “Our marketing team seems to be in a silo; they’re only interested in doing things that make them look good.”

• “It would be nice if the web team, writers and others working on the detail of our marketing come out to the field and ask about our point-of-view. We might have some good feedback!  But no, they don’t want us in their kitchen. And BTW, John S. on my team is a fantastic writer in his spare time and might be willing to contribute to a blog post now and then.”

• “Marketers don’t get Sales nor do they want to. All they care about is their Marketing Brief and the ability to look good at a meeting with senior management.”

• “I want to be more strategic but it’s hard to juggle sales calls, lead management, deal flow, customer onboarding and support, networking, social media engagement and administrative tasks. I need help. It would be great to have someone focused on data, insights about the marketplace, new research on our customers and industry trends. I would love it if part of the marketing budget were dedicated to things like this in addition to the website, email copy, collateral and webinar support.”

• “Our company has a marketing support person dedicated to collateral and communications for the sales team, but she seems to only care about how pretty something is or what the click through rates are. She’s all about her, not the end game.”

• “I sat with our marketing team for half a day at their request, but at the end they didn’t use any of my ideas. I was trying to be a team player but they didn’t hit the ball back. They’ve lost credibility with me as a result.”

On the flip side, I have heard many marketers on both the business and agency side express these pains:

• “A key part of our charter is to oversee the Brand and to be the advocate for the Customer. If the Sales team would partner with us rather than resist or constantly try to take over the marketing function, they would likely see that Marketing is more than sales sheets, PR and events and can actually help them better connect with prospects and close deals. But they need to first understand our charter, trust that we know what we’re doing, and believe that we bring skills, data and knowledge they may not have.”

• “The sales team thinks they know everything about “marketing” and consistently disrespect processes and best practices we know are needed and will work. It’s fine to have an opinion but to completely disrespect where we are coming from is just plain rude.”

• “The sales team wants to drive our entire process. They want to tell us how to do our jobs. In a nutshell they want us to be support staff for their personal wish lists.”

• “The sales team only wants to talk “ideas” for tactics, not strategy. Not only that, they expect us to treat their ideas as “orders”. We’re not thrilled about being perceived as order-takers.”

• “Our company’s sales approach seems to be in the dark ages, with no strategy and/or processes current with the times. Some of the reps aren’t interested in learning about industry advancements or changes, and/or don’t seem to understand or care about big-picture concepts that successful brands use. This makes our job harder.”

• “I’ve asked to go on sales visits or listen in on calls, but the reps are always too busy and/or they don’t think it’s a good idea. It would help if someone at the leadership table promoted that this is a win-win scenario.”

• “We’re told that marketing and sales need to work out our problems together. Whatever. It wouldn’t hurt if the leadership team built the type of culture that doesn’t separate us so much to begin with.”

If you’re in a situation where these scenarios or pains continue to exist, here are some suggestions for breaking down the barriers: 

Marketing folks:

1. Make a point to get under the hood to truly understand the sales experience (particularly of top performers), including their pains and their views on customer needs. Don’t just visit. Ask questions, dive deep, and demonstrate that you are actually listening and using their intel to improve marketing ideas.
2. Carve out time and budget to support top performers in meaningful ways. For example: (1) help them with industry research, data and buyer personas that enable them to be more strategic; (2) make sure they feel confident with the tools and communications available for their outreach efforts; (3) proactively make them aware of decisions or projects that will affect them so that they can provide feedback, ask questions or raise concerns.
3. Go on sales calls with top performers or set up some type of system to get the download on how calls typically go, so that you have a database of “real” intelligence. This is particularly important if you don’t have budget to develop in-depth research.
4. Take the time to build an education loop to help your sales partners understand why you want to do some of the things you do. I was once on a sales team where the leadership team brought in a guru from a big agency to help us understand brand strategy, and it was a real eye-opener. Now granted, this was back when Marketing really just meant “Advertising”, but still, we left that discussion much more open-minded about what the marketing department was trying to do.
5. While you’re at it, go visit the customer support team – listen in on some calls and get their insight about how customers really “feel” about the company.

Sales folks:

1. Realize that a large part of your marketing team’s charter is to oversee the Brand as a whole and to be the voice of the Customer. Respect that there are marketing best practices and methodologies proven to work that you may not understand or know that much about. Ask questions; try to genuinely understand; try to appreciate and to learn.
2. Respect your marketing partner’s point of view and let them drive the process to integrate sales support and marketing. See how it goes before pushing back or telling them what to do.
3. Recognize when you have a marketing partner that is doing their best to include you in their process and get your insight. Help them help you.
4. Don’t expect your marketing partners to execute every piece of feedback you give for tactics and messaging—respect that they will weave it in based on: how it fits within the overall strategy (that hopefully everyone has already agreed to); their knowledge of customer needs; their own skills and best practices.
5. If you feel the urge to push through an “order” for a marketing tactic, consider the marketing function as you would other functions such as Legal or Finance. You don’t give “orders” to those groups do you? If you feel something critical is missing from the marketing plan, raise your concerns and/or make your case respectfully.

Sales and Marketing leaders:

1. Coordinate monthly workshops to discuss marketing initiatives, setting egos aside and not caring whose the “smartest” person in the room. Make it an open forum to simply review the status of key initiatives, share ideas and discuss questions from both marketing and sales perspectives.
2. Come up with a list of best practices from both traditional marketing and sales perspectives and develop training forums that allow each mindset to “sell” the other on why their philosophies are good for business. Include a “Did You Know” element where both teams share trivia on competencies that they feel can enlighten others.
3. Help ensure the marketing team has budget and resources to give the sales team direct support that will help them be strategic in their approach, to move prospects through the funnel or deepen relationships with clients, while at the same time ensuring everyone is crystal clear on the strategy.
4. Present progress and results to senior management and board members together – your efforts should be one story don’t you think?

All this said, the root of the problem for teams still struggling with Sales and Marketing alignment and partnership often lies in the fact that the company hires separate leaders, treating them as separate functions from the get go. Therefore here are some additional suggestions for the…

Executive team:

1. Proactively bring these two mindsets together from the beginning. Organize strategic working sessions with both Marketing and Sales hats on and set a foundation early for shared accountability, a diligent focus on the customer and outcomes, and mutual respect.
2. Confirm the “role” marketing activities should play in driving business and identify investments and integration points early so that there is one integrated plan instead of one for Marketing and one for Sales.
3. Make it clear where accountability lies and when various functions or people are responsible for “leading” vs. “partnering/supporting”.
4. Be the voice of integration; make it a requirement from top to bottom, whether people are working in the ideation stage, on decisions about significant technology investments or when putting pen to paper to write sales copy.
5. Compensate and reward for integration and shared accountability. Perhaps do some research and modeling to decide how the needle may move with vs. without industry best practices applied.
6. If you have a large organization with multiple locations, budget for marketers to travel to field offices and for those on the front lines to visit the headquarters. Also invest in insight-gathering tools and processes as well as group collaboration and sharing. Many tools are available to align Sales and Marketing mindsets, but it still takes an investment and a culture that says “This is important to our customer’s success!”.

This is obviously not an all-encompassing list of complaints or suggestions and is not meant to be a sweeping stereotypical view of how Sales and Marketing teams behave.

The point is: In B2B it is all about the customer and sales results, and yet the personality traits, skills and motivations are often completely different for those responsible or involved in the activities that move prospects to action. More companies should recognize as well as embrace this reality, and adopt philosophies in the business planning stage to ensure that Sales and Marketing as well as every other department in the company are united, with a diligent eye on the customer and business outcomes.

photo credit: Kevin Lawver via photopin cc

photo credit: Cayusa via photopin cc

Without exception, when recruiting sales job seekers, companies want the interviewee to ask intelligent, thoughtful questions. Though, all too often, the applicant does not come prepared with inquiries.

Regardless of how well the answers the individual gave were, if they don’t have pertinent questions, the meeting is left in an “up in the air” state.

In essence, sales employees should think of this section of the interview as their close. For assistance, our recruiters came up with 50 questions to ask on a sales interview:

1. What motivates the sales personnel at the company?

2. How would you describe the corporate culture of the company?

3. What traits make up the most effective sales representatives at the firm?

4. What is the quota you expect from this individual?

5. What is the ramp-up time until I will be making sales?

6. What is an average sales cycle?

7. Who is the most profitable target market?

8. Whom within those companies will I be selling to?

9. What are some common hurdles the sales team currently faces right now?

10. How involved can a contract negotiation be?

11. How does your organization position themselves in the market?

12. What is the industry outlook for the coming years?

13. What are some of the traits you look for in a sales representative?

14. What are your competitors currently doing that the firm is not?

15. Where would you like to see the sales team improve?

16. Do the representatives use more of a consultative selling style?

17. How much is an average sale?

18. Is new business acquisition a priority or would you rather maintain current accounts?

19. What is a typical day like?

20. What is the typical sales recruiting process at the company?

21. Is this an expansion or replacement position?

22. What type of feedback will I be getting from my manager?

23. Whom will I be reporting to?

24. What is the sales manager’s background?

25. How would you describe the selling style of the manager?

26. Where do you see this employee being in 1, 3 and 5 years?

27. How would you describe the company’s vision?

28. How would you describe the company’s core values?

29. How would you describe the people at the company?

30. What do you enjoy about working at the company?

32. What was your experience like during the sales recruitment process when you first joined?

33. Will there be formal training or do you prefer this individual to be self-taught?

34. What advantages does your sales team currently have over the competition?

35. What is the commission structure like?

36. What is the on-target expected earnings?

37. What percentage of sales employees meet their quota?

38. Are there extra bonuses for greatly exceeding quota?

39. Is the company currently coming out with any new products or services in the coming future?

40. How would you describe the current sales force?

41. What type of marketing does the firm currently engage in?

42. Is the marketing helpful to the sales representatives?

43. Do you do in-house marketing recruitment or outsource the job?

44. How does the company obtain its leads?

45. What percentage of leads does the company convert?

46. How would you describe your ideal sales lead?

47. How competitive is the industry right now?

48. What innovations are currently happening in the industry?

49. Will these marketplace changes affect the sales team?

50. If so, how will the changes affect them?

In the end

Interviewing for a sales job is not about selling yourself, rather it’s about branding yourself as confident, intelligent and composed. Taking a few of these questions to your next meeting should do the trick.

Author:

Ken Sundheim is the CEO of KAS Placement Recruiting a sales and marketing executive search firm based out of New York City. He is also a writer for Forbes.

Sales reps come from all kinds of backgrounds, but they all have one goal…to close deals.

Skills in prospecting, lead qualification, asking questions, and providing demos all play a huge role. These are traits that every sales professional should work to always improve. But the next generation of sales professional has to do more than that.  They have to do the following:

It’s short, sweet, and meaningful. If you’re selling just to make money for you and your business, you’re doing it wrong.

Instead, think about what you and your product can do to truly provide long-lasting value to everyone who uses it. When sales becomes helpfulness, it’s a whole new ballgame. One that people react well to, and which will ultimately earn you those big commission checks you’ve been looking for.

Think about the simple things you can do for your prospects and customers:

• Be Prompt: Tell a prospect you’ll provide info by the next day and deliver within the hour.
• Be Proactive: Let every sales call and demo run smoothly with the right preparation on your part.
• Actively Listen: Let a prospect know their being heard by repeating the things they care the most about and asking questions to clarify their needs.
• Build Rapport: Let every action help build a great relationship and show you care. It takes time, but it’s worth it (and certainly helps when it comes to referrals).

In the end, it’s genuity that can tip the scales and gain business. As always, a sincere sale is a better sale.

Think stories are just something that should be limited to a campfire? Think again.

Everyone likes to listen to a good story, and in a sale they can be a great way to lighten the sometimes tense conversations buyer’s dread. They can do several things:

• Show That You’re Human: Stories are relatable. Especially those that relate well to a prospect’s own fears or needs.
• Engage the Prospect: It’s more fun to listen to a good story than it is a trite sales pitch any day of the week.
• Show that You Care: By relating on a more personal level, you’re showing that you understand what it’s like to be in the buyer’s position.
• Make you Memorable: If there’s one thing that will stick out when a prospect heads back to talk to their boss, it’s a kick-ass story.

Make sure any story fits into your sale. Don’t start off a cold call with a 3 minute story. It’s easy to recognize when they’re out of place, but when used well, they can spur action on the part of the buyer.

Whether you’re passionate about selling, culture, prospecting, or whatever it may be, make sure it shows. It should be apparent on your social profiles, email communications, every call, and everything else you do.

Having a well defined brand not only shows your human side, but helps prospects learn quickly what you stand for (and how you can help them). Try to link your client’s interests with your brand, and show them how seriously you address their problems and fears.

Your business should have a personality of it’s own, and every output should represent it. Make sure every sales rep (and every member of your team for that matter) understands what values your brand represents and works to promote them. Hire reps with naturally similar values and let them infuse their personality into their work.

In a more technological vein, don’t be tentative about communicating digitally, particularly on social media. While there may be no substitute for great phone work, it’s naive to ignore the huge shift towards marketing and sales that takes place online.

In laymans terms- stay connected.

Learn quickly and be the first to adapt to a new system or site that you can monitor and reach out to prospects on. Along the same lines, learn how to effectively use popular tools like LinkedIn and Twitter to communicate and look out for sales triggers you can use to close more deals.

It’s a digital age and it’s time to integrate your sales with the social tools that’s populated by potential buyers.

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Four traits embodied by the greats. Please comment and let us know your thoughts, or supplement our list.

The idea of a magic formula that solves problems is as old as mankind. Even though we know it doesn’t exist, hope remains that someone will discover the combination that resolves all issues with a sip or swipe. This hope has created opportunities for snake oil salesmen hawking everything from tonics to social media. Desperate people seeking help for ills and failing businesses reach for anything that might possibly solve their problems.

The first rule of a good con is to start with the truth because it increases people’s willingness to go to the next step. The snake oil salesmen of yesteryear started with the truth that Chinese water snake oil actually worked at reducing inflammation. The oil was rich in Omega-3 acids which effectively treat arthritis. When word of the oil started to spread in America, people tried to create their own version using rattlesnakes. This is when the problems began.

Chinese water snakes are Omega-3 rich with approximately three times the amount in rattlesnakes. This automatically made the homegrown version less effective. And then, there is that pesky problem of having to actually capture rattlesnakes to create the oil. It was much easier to substitute other oils that were easier to obtain. If the promotion was dramatic enough, who would notice that it didn’t actually do anything?

Social media is the snake oil of marketing today. It started with two truths – word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising and electronic communication simplifies the communication process. In its purest form, people talking with close friends, social media is very effective. Companies that provide service worth telling others have benefited from the new channel. When word spread about a new venue for connecting with customers, those pesky problems started to appear.

Instead of creating experiences that people would want to talk about, marketers tried to generate content that inspired conversation. The homegrown version of word of mouth is like the rattlesnake oil. Even though it is much less effective, social media gurus started declaring the death of traditional marketing. Before long they were dictating the right and wrong way to communicate with customers and prospects. It created an environment where marketers were hesitant to test the new channel in fear that they would antagonize the people speaking the loudest.

Traditional marketing is always dying because evolution is mandatory for success. While some things stopped working, others things that worked hundreds of years ago still work today. People like to be entertained, respected, and appreciated. They don’t like to feel like they have been conned. The one size fits all magic solution leaves a trail of unhappy customers.

There is a magic formula for sales and service but it isn’t easy to find. Every company has to find its unique combination that serves customers, employees, and shareholders. The ones that invest the resources needed to find that formula and alter it when needed over time build a foundation for long term success. Start creating the magic formula for your business by:

• Knowing what your customers want. How do they shop your products and services? What is their preferred communication tool? When are they most likely to respond to offers?
• Delivering on the promise. People are most satisfied when they receive what they expect (presuming the expectations are good.) Manage expectations well and consistently deliver.
• Use data well. Actionable data is available to improve the buying and service experience. Find the data that makes a difference for your customers and use it to keep them happily coming back.
• Find your company’s unique combination. There is a mix of marketing and service that works perfectly for every company. Find the one that fits your corporate culture and build from there.
• Ignore the pundits. Everybody has an opinion. Social platforms make sharing them easy. If your customers are happy and your business is growing, what do they know that you don’t?
• Strive for continuous improvement. Markets change. Test different strategies, channels, and platforms to see what works best for your company. You may find a new source of customers.

Consumers are on pace to buy fewer tablet computers this year than some analysts had originally forecasted.

Consumers will buy an estimated 227.4 million tablet computers by the end of the year, according to analysts at IDC. They had previously forecasted global tablet sales of 229.3 million units.

Despite that tempered forecast, sales of tablets will end the year 57.7 percent higher than last year.

Analysts believe tablet sales are increasingly coming under pressure from larger-screen smartphones, also known as “phablets”—the portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet.” Phablets are becoming more popular with consumers, and several high-profile devices are set to launch in the second half of the year.

Earlier this week, Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy Note 3 at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin. LG and Acer both also released new phablets for this fall, while Nokia is reportedly readying a 6-inch device running the Windows operating system.

The tablet market is maturing in many countries. Analysts blamed the decline on market saturation in key sales regions, as well as a dearth of new product launches in the second quarter.

IDC said that mature markets, consisting of North America, Western Europe and Japan, will see their share of the tablet sector fall from 60.8 percent of global sales in 2012 to 49 percent by 2017. Much of the long-term growth in the market will be driven by territories such as China, where projected growth rates are consistently higher than the global average.

“We expect average selling prices to continue to compress as more mainstream vendors utilize low-cost components to better compete with the whitebox tablet vendors that continue to enjoy widespread traction in the market, despite typically offering lower-quality products and poorer customer experiences,” said Tom Mainelli, research director for tablets at IDC.

The research also revealed that the adoption of tablet devices in the enterprise is set to continue growing over the next few years. Just one in ten sales last year went to the commercial market. That’s expected to rise to 13 percent this year and 20 percent by 2017.

We recently started using tinypulse.com internally to get a sense of how our team feels about themselves and various aspects of working with us.

Once per week, the service sends out a very brief survey questionnaire to all staff. Each survey consists of about 2-3 questions such as “how happy are you about working here?” All the responses are anonymous, but it gives us a chance to see general attitudes and address issues openly at our team meetings which has the net effect of solving our problems much faster than we would have otherwise.

Great service. If you want to find out what your sales reps think and build a better happier sales team (which means happier customers, which means more sales), then we recommend you give it a try.

First things first, let’s get a couple of things straight. I love food. I love content marketing. The two combined? I’m head over heels…

Admittedly, utilising content marketing within the food industry was never going to be a particularly difficult task. For decades, people across the world have turned to their trusty cookbooks for advice. More recently, they’ve begun turning to websites and apps to find what they need. The fact is that many people live to eat, so the demand for valuable content will always be high. There’s a ready-made audience on offer!

That doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of skill, though. Just think how many food-based brands are out there… Finding a voice amongst the noise takes long-term commitment, an understanding of what customers/prospects want and creativity. So, which brands are leading the way when it comes to content?

Wisconsin Cheese

You may never have heard of this brand, but trust me – if you love cheese as much as I do, you’ll thank me after seeing what the brand has been up to!

In a bid to encourage more Americans to invest in its produce and raise global awareness of the brand, the Wisconsin Cheese company created various websites designed to help the public make the most of their cheese. These include the Grilled Cheese Academy, Cheese Cupid, the Cheese and Burger Society and the 30 Days, 30 Ways with Macaroni Cheese site. Let’s take a closer look at my favourite, Cheese Cupid…

It’s a tool that helps you pair wines with cheese and vice versa. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity… Speaking as a cheese and wine lover, I can confirm that this tool is a solid example of perfect content marketing. Yes – I used the P word and it’s well deserved.

This tool lets me pick my favourite wine, then generates a list of around 15 cheeses that would complement it. Not only does this a) give me a smiley face and b) make me want to run out right now for some cheese, but it also educates me. It tells me why these pairings work so well. Armed with this intelligence, I can make better purchasing decisions in the future and am more likely to find any future information I need about cheese from this company. Isn’t that exactly what content marketing is meant to do?

Betty Crocker

Once a name synonymous with wholesome American family cooking, the Betty Crocker brand has set itself up quite nicely amongst the British market – thanks in part to Betty TV. Comprising a video archive made up of everything from how-to guides to historical television adverts, Betty TV helps the public engage with the brand.

It makes the most of Britain’s love of all things vintage and provides would-be bakers with handy tips on how to make the most of Betty Crocker cake mixes. For those who are new to baking or simply want to get better at it, this is a very useful resource and definitely endears the brand to its target audience.

Happy Eggs

I admit it – over the past couple of years, the Happy Eggs brand has drawn me in… Hook, line and sinker. I don’t even eat eggs! But my other half does and thanks to its clever offline and online content, I don’t let him buy anything else now. So why has it been so successful?

There’s only one word needed here: storytelling. When I started buying the eggs, the first thing I was struck by was the little card that came inside the box. It showed me where the chickens were living; their stimulating, free-range environments. It helped me make a personal connection with the brand and the product itself.

The online content is really endearing too, though. The website also tells me about the chickens’ day-to-day lives. However the best part of all this is the brand’s Facebook and Pinterest pages. I’m admittedly a sucker for any animal pictures, but the real-life images of chickens living free on Happy Eggs’ various farms and the tasty recipes shared just further cement my intention to only buy eggs from this brand.

“Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam…I DON’T LIKE SPAM!” These lines from the 1970 Monty Python sketch that incorporates Spam into everything is the namesake of the annoying and potentially time-wasting unsolicited bulk messages we see everyday. Whether it’s in email inboxes, blog comments, social media or auto-filled on online conversion forms, it’s tough to escape. However, there are a few tricks you might not be familiar with that can reduce the volume.

Spam in Email:

Sometimes it seems like if there wasn’t junk email, there wouldn’t be much email at all. In fact, estimates are that 80-85% of worldwide email is spam. Today alone, I’ve received over 75 spam emails and it isn’t even noon! Fortunately, we have a good junk mail filter but some still sneak through. This abundance of spam inspired this post and I’ve learned a few things.

1. DMA Email Preference Service – similar to the National Do Not Call Registry, The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has an email Preference Service (eMPS) that allows you to register and opt out of receiving unsolicited commercial emails from DMA members. Registration is free and good for six years.
2. Virus and Worm protection – because much of the spam is sent by zombie networks that take control of infected home and office computers, making sure you have high-quality, up-to-date Internet Security software is a must.
3. Don’t be quick to give out your email – exchanging your email address for valuable information or registering for a service, event or membership on a website has become commonplace. While usually not a bad practice, make sure you read the fine print. Anytime a user agreement is prompted, don’t automatically click saying you’ve read it. Lesser-known, lower-reputation sites often slip in a line saying they can sell your information to other online marketers (term used very loosely). And, these are not always marketers you want to hear from. Once you end up on a list, it can be a big process to get yourself removed.
4. CAN-SPAM – while sometimes referred to as “You Can Spam” because of its limitations, it’s still the only legislation attempting to curb the flow of unwanted, unsolicited spam messages. The Act identifies compliance standards for unsubscribes, content and sending behavior. Reporting violators is the first step in getting them to stop.

Spam in Social Media:

Poor Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, no matter how hard they try their security systems can’t seem to block the nasty phishers, hackers and spammers from accessing member accounts. Tweets, posts and status updates seemingly from friends and connections can not only be misleading, but also end up bringing you angst.

1. Don’t click! If you see a posting from a “friend” that doesn’t sound like them and has a link embedded, just don’t click. Don’t fall for the “I’ve been on this diet for two weeks and it works great” type message. The links are spam, or worse, can contain viruses or worms that are damaging to your system.
2. Use strong, different, private passwords – This sounds basic but a shocking number of people use obvious passwords like “password” or “123456” and, use those same passwords for everything. See the problem? Scammers who regularly hack social media outlets know if they’re successful on one platform, try the same passwords on the others. I hate to admit it but I had the same password for my major profiles and yep, they all got hit at the same time.
3. Interact through a secure third-party platform – HootSuite and other secure platforms will act as a buffer, giving you a warning that your account may have been hijacked. Any suspicious activity should trigger the software and hopefully give you time to react.

Spam in Conversion Forms and Blogs: 

Because many organizations have form submissions feeding into their CRM systems, spammy responses are more than inconvenient. Being engaged with your prospects and customers shouldn’t mean you have to put up with bad information throwing off your process.

1. Include a form field without a value – This one was new to me and I love it. Simply include a form field that should not include a value. In fact, you can even say on your form “leave blank”. Bots will automatically fill in any available field so if your form response has a value in this field, you know it’s not real.
2. reCAPTCHA – These little puzzles are meant to verify that a real human is filling out the form or entering a comment on the blog. Unfortunately, they’re not exactly human-friendly either with frequent complaints that they’re unreadable. The customizable reCAPTCHA is pretty slick, it simply asks a very obvious question like “What color is an orange”. Responses with the correct answer are likely real people.
3. Trackback and comment spam blockers – plugins, APIs and software are becoming a popular way to block irrelevant or false comments, trackbacks or pingbacks because they analyze responses and provide you with a review before you ever see any of the comments. These do a nice job stopping some of the more advanced spammers that actually employ real people to respond to your blogs and forms instead of using bots.
4. Set up filters – We’re big advocates of HubSpot because they offer a lot of advanced, helpful features and this happens to be an area where they shine. Setting up filters that look for “asdf”, “abc”, “123”, repeatable strings like “William Williams” or URLs in the wrong fields eliminates a lot of bad contacts. For B2B companies, consider filtering out emails from general providers like @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, etc.
5. Ask nicely – A great idea from one of our clients was to create a simple but nicely worded message on their Contact Us form asking that solicitations and self-promoting messages not be submitted through the form. While it certainly isn’t a net catching any unwanted activity, it might give pause to anyone randomly submitting unwanted promotional information.

Nothing stops spam completely but a few of these tricks should help reduce a few headaches. Do you have any helpful hints you have in place and would be willing to share? If you’re not a spammer, we’ll definitely give you credit!

So you’ve gotten more of the right kind of website traffic. You’ve engaged your website visitors with remarkable content that is helpful and informative. Now what?

The next step is to get your website visitors to convert from prospects into leads. If your website visitors leave without providing contact information, you will lose the opportunity to nurture them until they are ready to buy.

Here are the basics of what you need to convert all those website visitors into leads.

Effective Calls-to-Action – A successful call-to-action (CTA) drives a visitor to take a desired action. Generally, CTAs are placed “above the fold” on a website or in clear sight so visitors will know what action to take. CTAs are key to lead generation. Here are some best practices:

• Make CTAs big and bold. But don’t overdo it.
• Make CTAs look so good people will want to click them. Think about colors that will help them stand out.
• Offer value like tip sheets, how-to guides, white papers. “Contact Us” does not offer value and should not be the only option offered for conversion.
• Make CTAs look clickable. Make them look like a button, add a shadow or a hover effect.
• Keep simple and clear what is offered.
• Test when possible. Try testing different colors, words and placement (using A/B testing) to see which CTAs get more clicks and leads.

CTA Positioning – You don’t want to scatter CTAs everywhere on your site. That will give visitors too many options or not the right options at the right time.

• Related to your sales funnel, segment your top-of-the-funnel and middle-of-the-funnel offers. Place your top-of-the-funnel offers (informational downloads like white papers and e-books) on top-level pages. Put your middle-of-the-funnel offers (request a quote, demo, consultation) on lower level pages as your prospect is digging deeper and learning more about what you offer.
• Put your CTAs above the fold, at the bottom of your pages and within content as appropriate.
• Put the CTAs on the right. Most studies suggest CTAs on the right work better, but make sure to test it.
• Put more CTAs on thank-you pages. Once someone completes a form, he gets a message on another page, called a thank-you page. There’s usually lots of real estate there to offer another download, this time without having to complete another form.
• Test which placements drive the most conversions.

Landing Pages – Once your visitors have clicked on a CTA, you need to drive them to a landing page. Also known as “lead capture pages,” landing pages turn visitors into leads by collecting information from them.

A landing page typically includes a headline, a brief description of the offer, a supporting image and, most importantly, a form to capture information.

Landing pages are absolutely necessary for lead generation and serve only one purpose – to capture lead information. Good landing pages can turn your website into a lead generation machine. For an effective landing page:

• Never use your homepage as a landing page.
• Remove the main site navigation so visitors can focus on completing the form and not continue to search your site.
• Make it clear what the offer is. And make it irresistible.
• Make sure the content on the landing page matches the CTA. If there’s a disconnect between the two, you’re less likely to capture the lead.
• Don’t make visitors think too much or work too hard (e.g., reading).
• Only collect information you absolutely need. Use as few form fields as possible.

Forms – The fewer the fields in your forms, the higher will be your conversions, so ask only for the information you really need (beyond an email address). A few other considerations:

• The value of the offer. If it’s a newsletter subscription, an email address and name is enough. If it’s a more valuable piece of content like a research report, you should ask for more lead-qualifying information.
• Privacy. People are wary of spam and are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Include a privacy message that their email address will not be sold or shared.
• Don’t use the word “SUBMIT” on form buttons. Instead, use language like “download e-book” or “subscribe to our newsletter.”
• Act immediately. If you advertise a downloadable offer, fulfill it on the thank-you page. This is better than an auto-responder email containing a link where the leads will have to go into their email to find the download link.

What do you think? Please join the conversation below. And if you found this helpful, please consider sharing it with your network.

(This article originally appeared in Inside Business – The Hampton Roads Business Journal, on August 19, 2013.) Image: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

It is no secret that the world of business development and sales has continued to change. Let’s be clear – there isn’t a “winner takes all” sales strategy that works for every company in every industry. Sometimes you don’t close the deal even though you have done everything right including the best planning, the best execution, or having the best product/service. That is what makes this game of selling so exciting, so frustrating, so critical, and so important – everyone has (and is entitled to) their own opinion, and many of you have plenty of real life experiences you bring to the table.

Before we talk about the evolution with #SocialSales, let’s start with a few things that haven’t changed.

1. Having a defined sales strategy that organizes the process of selling is still very important, and this is where experience makes a big difference.
2. Execute your plan and strategy with persistence. As I have said previously, organizations need to make sure that they commit to the execution, set predetermined check points, and refine the strategy if necessary. The key word above that has never changed in sales success is persistence. As Jack Daly says, “Persistence is the one word that embodies top performers in SALES.” It usually takes a lot of persistence to win the business.

#SocialSales is changing the game in three big ways:

1. It gets you engaged in conversations you didn’t even know where happening. Sales is hard work, so why not leverage what you can to get ahead of your competition. Using your existing social connections and focusing on growing your social networks, successful sales people are planting “seeds”. Some examples of “seeds” could be your industry knowledge, your product knowledge, or your advice/experience.
2. Potential customers are making buying decisions before you even know they are a prospect, and they use the internet and social media to do a ton of research before even talking to you. Get in the game because your competition is. Jill Konrath summarized that “72.6% of sales people that use social media outperform their colleagues who aren’t using it.”
3. Social Media is an engine that is working 24/7. We live in a technological society where we want access to information when it is convenient for us. Users are accessing information at all times during the day and through multiple devices (mobile, laptops, tablets, etc.). When you are engaged in the correct social activities, your activity is working for you at all times.

#SocialSales is empowering the work effort of a sales person. It gives them a better chance to be successful, so let them be a part of the new game.

The buyer is changing and making selling more difficult than ever, but at the same time, sales is in a renaissance with new, innovative approaches such as content selling, social selling and technology. On September 12 at 10AM PDT – Matt Heinz and I are going to talk about some of the trends and best practices we are seeing in sales management. I am very excited — Join US! — Click here to RSVP.  In preparation for the event, we asked Matt some questions on the current state of sales management. As usual, his answers are awesome. I recommend to everyone in sales and/or marketing to follow Matt. In honor of Matt, today’s picture is a of Seattle where Matt calls home. Enjoy this shot from Runner310 and then read on:

What are the biggest trends you are seeing in sales management today?

One is transparency.  Sales managers have better visibility into what’s working and what’s not working than ever before.  Whether they look, and then act, is another story entirely.  But the ability to access, assess and adjust so many variables of the sales process is unprecedented and really exciting.

Two is a more intense focus on active selling time.  World-class sales organizations are putting a greater focus on measuring what % of their sales team’s time is spent actively selling, vs. on non-selling and administrative activities.  Most companies who establish a baseline are shocked at how unproductive their sales teams are, and how often that’s being driven by company process and requirements.  There is a huge opportunity and push to help your amazing sales professionals do more of what they’re so good at.

What is the most innovative practice you have seen recently in sales management?

Real-time adjustments based on performance is getting more attention these days, and is really exciting.  By this I mean the ability to automatically change lead distribution across the sales floor based on response rates and close rates by rep, as well as immediate alerts and adjustments to other performance incentives and rewards based on both sales floor performance as well as market response.

Besides CRM, what are the most important technologies for running a modern sales organization?

Empowering your sales team with direct tools to identify, triage and react to buying signals across the social web is fundamental.  You can do some of this with the free version of LinkedIn, but I think their Sales Navigator is approaching mandatory status.

Helping your sales team know exactly what to do next, and where to focus, is also critically important.  Tools suck as Velocify and Factor Lab are actively working to solve this challenge today.

Gamification is also critically important, but ultimately not in the current more overt format.  There’s a big difference between awards, badges and more explicit games that drive sale performance, vs. the kind of game mechanics that can ultimately be built more subtly into our CRM systems and other technology.  That’s the future, but it’s still working towards driving behavior appropriately.

What are the biggest mistakes sales managers make today and how can they avoid them?

Sales managers are still too reactive.  They prioritize next steps based on the last conversation they had.  This randomizes their team, their leadership, their marketing teams and more.

There’s no question sales is a daily battle and sales management in particular requires addressing fires all day every day.  But putting out those fires can’t become your primary job.  You need an overall vision for how you expect to manage and accelerate sales performance long-term.  It’s that long-term approach and strategy that is still eluding too many sales departments and leaders today.

Give us 3 exciting ideas for a sales manager to go do right away.

One, rank your sales team based on current & potential performance.  Understand who your current superstars are, as well as who your up-and-comers are.  Prioritize your time and training accordingly.

Two, get marketing on board with revenue responsibility.  Marketing is your partner, not your support agency.

Three, help your sales reps become thought leaders.  If your prospects see their sales rep as an expert in the field, as someone they can talk to about broader business questions and challenges, then you’re accelerating the path to building credibility and increasing the likelihood that you’ll get the deal.

Join Matt and I as we spit game on sales management on our September 12 at 10AM PDT webinar sponsored by the boys from Glider. Seriously, if you want to have some fun talking about sales — Do it!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

I see the job situation gradually improving. Companies are hiring, because executives in many industries are optimistic. They are also more willing than ever before to let go of underperformers and look for better talent. At the same time, sales professionals are moving around more than ever before, changing jobs, looking for a better career opportunities and greater earning potential.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that good salespeople are landing better jobs than they had—jobs with higher pay potential and with the promise of career advancement based on achievement of performance goals. Direct sales is a good place to be right now. Why? It pays very well and, as far as I can see, direct selling jobs can't be outsourced overseas.

There is bad news for many who are seeking out a new job in sales. Just as buyers have gotten better at buying, many managers and executives have gotten considerably better at hiring. Having been through the experience and cost of hiring the wrong people, possessing a higher degree of accountability and putting more focus on effectiveness and productivity, they are more determined to do it right.

I spend a fair amount of time assisting companies hire the right sales people. We don’t accomplish that by chance or through gut feel. We depend on a hiring process I’ve developed which includes, among other components, comprehensive job profiles, probing interview questions, and the formal training of a hiring team. I become part of the hiring team, performing many interviews with candidates for sales jobs—at the rep, support, management, and executive levels.

From my perspective as a hiring coach, influencer and recommender, here are 10 critical success factors for getting yourself hired:

Have a plan

There are a good deal of similarities between seeking a new job and running a sales campaign. (When seeking a job, you'll be doing a fair amount more buying than you do in your sales job, but you'll still be doing a considerably amount of selling.) So, in keeping with my recommended format for a sales plan, the following should be the format of your plan to get the job:

• Situation assessment. Ask yourself these questions: What are your skills, your experience, and your past performance against quota? What industries (or companies) are hiring? What are the hirer's expectations (perhaps a "golden" Rolodex)? What compensation level is realistic to expect? What are your decision criteria? What are theirs? Are they employing a hiring process? If so, what are the steps? You will also need to assess your prospective employer's industry and company, just as you would a prospect.
• Objective: To be offered three positions on or about a specified date at a specified OTE (on-target earning) potential.
• Strategy: What are you going to count upon to compel that executive to offer you the job you want for the pay you deserve?
• Tactics: How are you going to manage it all? The interviews, differentiating yourself, timing, your current job, negotiations, reference checking, your due diligence, responses to the most common objections?

This same planning model is equally as applicable, on a smaller scale, to a single interview or other meeting with your targeted employer. Your ability to have an impact on the outcome of that interview is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend planning and preparing for the event.

Specify what role you are seeking.

One of the mistakes candidates make is in not being specific enough about what job they are interested in. I've seen job objectives at the top of candidate's resumes where I couldn't discern whether the candidate was interested in a job selling, in business development, sales management, or channel management. The shotgun approach doesn't work. Hirers don't want to compromise, and they don't want generalists. The days of hiring a person and then finding the right place for them are over. Executives want the right candidate for a specific job. If you've got broad experience in a number of different areas, position that as added value which will make you even more qualified for the job for which you are applying.

One of my clients is currently looking for a very experienced sales rep. They do not need someone who is interested in a management position. Many of the candidates who want to be considered have sales management experience and it isn't clear from their resumes whether they want a sales rep or sales manager position. My client doesn't want to hire someone who isn't 100% focused on selling. They don't want someone who is just selling in order to "qualify" for a sales management job. So if a candidate doesn't specify that they just want to sell, we are passing them by.

Clean up your resume

Don't lie on your resume. In my experience more than 60% of resumes of sales people do not accurately represent the facts about the candidate. That includes inflated titles, incorrect dates meant to cover gaps in employment, team accomplishments attributed solely to the candidate, etc. Lying or misrepresentation on a resume is immediate cause for rejection.

What do you do if there is a period during which you were between jobs? Explain it. Why did it happen? What did you learn from it? What will the benefit be for your next employer? It's your job as a salesperson to effectively position yourself. Get to work cleaning up your resume and polishing your story. Leave no inconsistencies, holes, or doubts as to what you really accomplished, however big or small. Recruit a friend or associate to mentor you through the process.

A colleague and friend just started in a terrific new job as VP of an $80 million division. The job was definitely a reach, since he had never managed a business unit that large. He worked hard on effectively positioning the truth. Yes, he had not done this before, but he was more than ready for the challenge. In fact, this was the right time in his career for a move exactly like this. He was able to succinctly and compellingly discuss the advantages of hiring him over someone who might have appeared to be better qualified on paper. What might have been a disqualifier for someone else was turned into a reason for hiring him.

When I see the resume of a sales person or executive and there are no performance statistics, I am skeptical. Although smart executives know that the past doesn't equal the future, they do know that a resume without performance stats probably means that salesperson doesn't have a record of which they are proud. If you misrepresent how much you've sold and your prospective employer asks for your W-2s (earning and tax statements) for the past 5 years, you're toast.

One more point about resumes. Presentation counts. Please, no typos, nothing fancy, no downloadable graphics, not too long, nothing irrelevant, and take the time to customize the resume for the job for which you are applying. I'm not saying that presentation counts more than past performance. I'm just saying it’s representative of you.

Learn about the company with whom you will be interviewing

Winners would never think of making a sales call on a decision maker without having learned about that person's company, their industry, and the person themselves. This is a practice that should be applied in a job seeking situation. Even if you are being pursued, if it's worth an hour of your time to talk to someone from that company, it's worth some more time to do a bit of research on that company, their industry, and the person or people with whom you will be speaking. This knowledge you gain will help you in other ways. You really don't want to go work for the wrong company. So you've got to perform your due diligence. Dig into their history, management team, financial viability, culture, products and services, alliances, attrition (or lack thereof) of their sales staff, marketing capabilities, reputation in their industry, etc. Obviously, some of this can wait for the second interview. You don't want to have to be explaining to your next potential employer why you made an uninformed decision going with a company that went belly-up shortly after you joined.

Timing

When I coach sales reps (and VPs of sales for that matter) who are seeking a new job, I tell them that one of their biggest challenges is going to be in doing their best to time their job offers so the most desirable ones all come in at the same time. That way the candidate can compare and contrast them according to their decision criteria, selecting the best one at that time. The alternative is to have an offer come in when you are in the midst of the interviewing cycle with what appears to be a more exciting opportunity. If you take job #1 without fully exploring job #2, you may be missing out on what could be a better opportunity. If you stall job #1, they may hire someone else and then you are left with job #2, which may not be as good as job #1 appeared to be. Something to think about in advance.

Another aspect of timing is to begin looking for a job while you still have your current one. When it comes to hiring sales people, you are inherently more marketable if you are currently employed.

An ethical question comes into play here. Is it right to interview for another job when you are on your current employer's payroll? For some, the answer to that question is that they got their current job while on their previous employer's payroll, so it all works out. For others, making up any time spent on job searching is the answer. They work extra hours on the weekends, for example. Other people don't worry about such things. They suggest it's a cost of doing business for their employer. Ultimately that decision is yours, but I recommend making up any time spent on job searching.

Practice

I got some terrific advice many years ago when I was looking for a sales job: make certain your first interviews aren't for your most promising opportunities. Interviewing, like any other skill, requires practice. If you haven't interviewed for a while, take interviews with some companies that you don't really believe you want to work for or wouldn't likely hire you. You want to be as polished, confident, and comfortable as possible when the ideal interview comes along.

References

My clients understand the value of rigorous reference checks. You can ruin your chances of landing a job, not to mention your reputation and your relationship with a recruiter if a reference disputes claims you made on your resume or during the interview process. And don't think that potential employers will only call the names you've provided. The savvy ones have contacts in the industry and may perform blind reference checking on you, as I often do.

Hirers also know that you are only going to list names of people who will provide a positive recommendation. Please don't think that experienced executives are going to call one of those people, smile, and feel that they have all they need. That's happening less and less.

Who is selling and who is buying?

The answer to this question is, “it depends”. There is almost always a degree of balance between hirer and candidate and buying and selling. Digging in a bit further: If you are relatively inexperienced or have a less than stellar resume, you may be selling a lot more than buying, at least early in the interview cycle. If you can really convince the hirer that you are right for the job, you can transition to a bit more of a selling mode. On the other hand, if you've been taking home $500k a year and are being recruited into a hot start-up you're definitely starting out as a buyer. That could come to an abrupt halt when the recruiter tells you that there are two other candidates involved, each of whom made $750k. Now, if that job is as attractive as can be, you're like to move into selling mode. Decide which mode you should be in at any given time and be effective in that role.

Position your negatives

Last year I rejected a VP of sales candidate for a client because the candidate couldn't admit that he had any weaknesses (which when you think about it is a weakness in itself).

Positioning a strength as a weakness doesn't really work either. "One of my weaknesses is that I am too determined when it comes to winning business..." Statements like that provoke some interviewers into thinking, "What do you think, I'm stupid?"

Everyone has weaknesses. Spend some time determining in advance what yours are and what you are hopefully doing to improve yourself in those areas. If that's the case, try something more like this. "You can tell by my track record that I've been a consistent performer. But I am always looking to improve. Right now I am focusing on improving my ability to read and interpret financial statements. I know that this will enable me to be even more credible in front of C-level executives."

Add value at every turn

I love interviewing candidates for sales positions where the candidate has done their homework and tells me something that I don't know and that I believe my client doesn't know either. I react in the same way your prospects react when you do that to them. I see value, the candidate has differentiated themselves, and I am interested in hearing more.

During an interview for a sales job for one of my clients, the candidate provided observations and very specific recommendations regarding how my client was positioning their offering in their market. He suggested that a lot of what he saw was good, but certain points could be made much more effectively, which, he added would help him and the other salespeople to sell more effectively. His comments made sense. I noted them in my debriefing document, which was sent to the VP of sales and other key executives. Having done this certainly contributed to that candidate getting hired.

If you are looking for a sales position and are winging it, consider adopting these recommendations above. They could make a world of difference in your career and your bank account.

Editors Note: Repost from 9/5/13 due to continued popularity

Sales Training Article: Unleash the Power of a Great Referral Program

By Scott Gruher, Sales Benchmark Index

The goal of prospecting - gain access to a high quality potential buyer.

A lot has changed in sales over the past 50 years. One thing hasn't. Referrals continue to be the highest quality leads. However, most sales organizations are awful at generating referrals. I will explain why.

3 Reasons Why You Aren't Getting Enough Quality Referrals:

1. Accountability - your team can ask for them. The customer will tell you he's done it, but you never know for sure.

2. Not Effective - no process exists. When sales people have to invent their own method each time, they ignore it. Or they ask, but they don't ask with a specific buyer in mind. This leads to poor quality referrals.

3. Reach - Not casting a wide enough net. Sales people focus on easy referral methods that don't produce enough referrals.

Due to these three factors, Sales Leaders look for other lead generation sources. They don't view referrals as a source capable of producing enough leads. There is no question the quality is superior to any other source.

Download the tool below to unleash the power of a great referral program. When you sign up for our annual research meeting you get it. It is the World Class Referral Request Template.

The Key Benefits of this tool are:

• Get more referrals
• Target high quality buyers
• Make it easy for your customers to give you referrals

There are 5 methods to generate referrals:

1. Happy Customer - you do a great job so I will refer you. Good source, but not enough quantity.

2. By another vendor- another vendor refers you into a customer with hopes that you return the favor. I scratch your back and you scratch mine. Good source, but not enough quantity. Also, most reps don't scratch back and this source dies off.

3. From a friend - who do you know that I can talk to? This source usually doesn't produce enough referrals.

4. For a prize - "give us a name and we give you". This one may drive high quantities, but the quality is typically lower. People give you garbage names for a prize.

5. Social - an online connection. Why is social so effective at generating referrals? Social gives you visibility, access, and reach.

We will focus on social because it creates the largest quantity of quality leads.

Why Social Rises to the Top

1. Visibility - unlike many of the methods listed above, you can specifically target potential buyers. When you ask customers for referrals, they say, "I can't think of anyone". Instead, ask them to introduce you to Bob Smith at Acme. Provide the introduction language as well. Being specific makes it easy for them to execute for you.

Here is an example of a poor referral request:

Click here to get an example of a World Class Referral Request Template. Using this template will get your more referrals now.

2. Access - LinkedIn provides multiple paths to each buyer. You can ask for an introduction through each path until you are successful. This increases your chances of reaching the buyer. And since LinkedIn is not a clogged channel, people respond to your requests more often.

3. Reach - you can build a large database of referral sources. You can organize this database with the LinkedIn contacts functionality. These referral sources have connections that you can view and so on. Most of your buyers use LinkedIn. It is just a matter of building a strategy to get introduced.

5 Steps to Obtain Referrals as a Form of Lead Generation:

1.Identify Referral Source

2.Build Referral Database

3.Create Social Debt

4.Obtain Referrals

5.Iterate

Interested in Getting Started?
Referrals are a powerful source of leads. First, you have to create great LinkedIn profiles and build your network. This requires a systematic approach. Second, you need a referral process in place to ensure the team executes properly. Building a great referral program that is widely adopted by the field is not easy. Third, you need to ensure it is enabled with the right technology. LinkedIn is the best way to enable a referral program. Good luck.

Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

I’ve often heard salespeople say “I’ve been getting so many leads lately and I just can’t handle it” and I want to dispel this myth. No salesperson is “too busy” to respond to their leads!

As someone who works in sales, I have learned just how important a follow-up is and just how easy it can be to forget when you start handling a high volume of leads. Depending on what industry you are in and who in particular you need to follow up with, the amount of time in between touches will vary, but one thing will not: Every customer wants to feel important. As simple as this sounds, having tens, hundreds, or thousands of customers who want to feel the love can be challenging for even the best of us.

When I first started in my business development role, I did not really have a set way to keep all of my leads in order. I was dealing with a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, new email platform, and quite frankly, more than I had ever handled before. It took a few months for me to really settle in and find what worked best for me, but now that I have, I would like to share a few tips so you can avoid some pitfalls I found myself in early on.

1. Record Everything As Soon As Possible

One of the mistakes I made when I first got started was putting off my recording of new prospects. It was an easy habit to fall into as it seemed I was always in the middle of something when an email inquiry rolled in. I would reply to the email immediately and continue with my work, leaving the the email in my inbox to be filed later.

Rather than putting this off, I now get to a stopping point in what I am currently doing before even reading new inquiries. At this point, I will respond to and record the lead all at once. Immediately after sending my reply email, I set a follow up reminder in case the potential client does not respond in a certain amount of time. A good way to do this is with the Chrome extension, Boomerang.

A few weeks ago, my manager and I were having a conversation about some practices to keep our leads in line for follow ups, when she referred me to this time-saving (and life-saving) plugin. Along with a handful of other features, Boomerang allows you to set your email to come back to your inbox after a set period of time, if you have not received a reply. This saves you the trouble of either going into your calendar or CRM system to set this reminder, thus saving you tons of time when dealing with a high volume of clients.

After setting your reply email to Boomerang, you will then want to record all of the client information you have in a spreadsheet and/or CRM system. When you have a lot on your plate, recording new prospect information seems tedious, but it is not worth the risk of putting it off.

Initial contact records must be maintained in the same fashion ongoing. At the end of a client meeting or call, determine what your next steps are and make time on your calendar to both execute them and follow up with the potential client. For example, after an initial call, I will set a reminder to both create a proposal and to send the proposal. Also, my proposals are always sent with a three-day Boomerang.

2. Personalize Your Follow Up Without Spending Too Much Time

Continually touching base with a high volume of clients is not easy, even after you have your reminders set up. Many of your follow-up emails will end up being extremely generic because of the lack of time, and as a result, they are ineffective. Whenever I write a “Hey, are you still there?” kind of email, I try to include something that is specific to the client or solution they are interested in.

An easy way to do this is to find three articles a week that are relevant to your industry and use them as a starting point in your follow-up emails. Here is an example:

“Hi John, I came across this article about some of the basics of getting your firm found online and thought it might be helpful for you…”

Rather than saying, “I just wanted to get back in touch,” you are now bringing value to their day and letting them know that they are at the top of your mind. To find these relevant articles, you can subscribe to industry blogs and email newsletters or Google (v.) relevant topics and change your search results to “news.”

Another tactic I have employed lately to get back in touch with difficult-to-reach clients is including testimonials within my emails. Seeing that someone else had a great experience with your products or services can stir emotions that drive buying behavior. Make sure that the testimonials you use are coming from someone in a similar industry and/or market to be most effective.

3. Be Consistent and Insistent

One of the most frustrating challenges as a salesperson is not knowing where potential customers stand. You would almost rather know that they are not interested in what you are selling than have to hound them for months.

A challenge I faced in my first sales job was feeling like I was pestering clients by asking them where they were in their decision making process. Knowing how busy small business owners are, I felt like a bother. The first thing I learned here was that 90% of the time, small business owners were indeed too busy to review my proposal or reply to my email, but they appreciated my reminder.

Another good way to avoid feeling like nuisance is setting a time for your next point of contact in all of your communication. For example, if you have not heard from a client in a while who is normally responsive to email, add this to the end of your next email: “If I don’t hear back from you by next week, I will plan on giving you a call sometime on Tuesday.” This tactic may light a fire under them to get back to you or at the very least, sets the expectation that you will be calling.

In conclusion, you can never be timid in sales. To be successful and make all of your clients have that warm, fuzzy feeling about you, diligent follow up is a must. It will vary industry to industry and customer to customer. You just need to find that sweet spot when your customers need that nudge, and give it to them when and how they want it.

Source: SalesForce.com

"I don't get cold called enough, especially during meal times and when I'm with my family," said no one, ever.

Over the last twenty years, the way people work, live, shop, and buy has fundamentally changed, and consumers are armed with more tools than ever to block out interruptive marketing and sales messages. I think the most telling stat in this power shift is that prospects have made about 60% of their buying decision before talking to a sales rep, according to Corporate Executive Board. The buyer is more than halfway sure whether or not they're going to be your next customer based solely on information they've discovered online. This means your website and content are your de facto sales reps for the majority of the buying process. More importantly, it means the prospect is going to have a pretty good idea of how your product or service does and does not meet their specific business needs.

Salespeople need to have context before that first conversation with a prospect because the call isn't a pitch anymore -- it's an exchange. To empower salespeople with context when reaching out to prospects, we recently launched Signals. Within the first week, 12,000 new users downloaded Signals to see when prospects opened and clicked on their emails to be sure they were getting into the conversation at the right time. As a result, it's imperative that those of us in Sales and Marketing adapt our approach to reflect the needs of the modern buyer. Customers are now controlling the buying process and inbound selling is how modern salespeople can keep up. Check out the SlideShare and blog post below to learn how.

How You Can Take Your Sales Inbound Today

Here are a few ways your sales team can keep every step of the buying process personalized and valuable for both the prospect and the sales rep. 

1) Re-Evaluate Lead Generation

We know that about 60% of a prospect's buying decision is made based on what they've found online. It's crucial that what they are finding online makes a positive, valuable, and lasting impression. If most of your resources are going toward cold calling and other sales tactics for lead generation, think about reorganizing them so that your marketing efforts are stronger. Relevant, useful content is how you'll get found online and build relationships with prospects -- your budget should reflect that. 

2) Give in to the Leverage Shift

When I was a sales rep in the 90s, prospects had to go through me for pricing information, service plans, product details, and ROI data. Now, anybody can find that information with a quick Google search. The internet is at your prospects' fingertips and you can't stop it, so focus on making the information they want readily available, easy-to-digest, and helpful. Make your website their go-to source so they don't have to go digging online. Prospects will get annoyed and your competitor's public-facing content will be waiting with open arms.

3) Beware of Seller-Beware

Thanks to social media, email, and blogs, word of mouth travels faster and further than ever. If you call a prospect who has downloaded several of your ebooks and ask if he is familiar with your services, you can bet someone across the country, or even the world, will know about your conversation before you put down the phone. Your prospects and customers hold a great deal of influence on the way your company is perceived and talked about. Don't just aim to get customers in the door, shoot to make them happy customers for life by restructuring your sales process to recognize the value of delighting customers before, during, and after they sign on with your business. 

4) Take Your Charm Online

The days of door-to-door salesmen and business pitches over fancy dinners are a thing of the past. Now that it's so easy to communicate remotely, salespeople rarely, if ever, meet prospects and customers in person. It's a bit harder to be charming over GoToMeeting or Skype than it was when we were taking prospects out to lunch, which is why spending time with your online profile is important. Being personable through your social platforms, email signatures, and any content you create makes it easier for prospects to connect with you. 

5) Understand the "Everything-as-a-Service" Pricing Model

We talk a lot about delighting the customer with content and context, but what about delighting them with what they're most worried about? It used to be that reps sold massive up front price tags with a small tail of revenue later, regardless of your industry or product. In 2013, almost everything is packaged as a service with a revenue stream that happens over time and a profit not occurring on a customer unit basis for many months or years. As a rep, keep in mind that your customers are used to subscription models like Netflix or Spotify where they can extract value over time alongside their payments, and leverage your product pricing, packaging, and sales process to fit that mold. An "everything-as-a-service" pricing structure helps put prospects at ease, and you can have more constructive conversations from the get-go.

With so many companies falling to the wayside because they are stuck in the past, it's crucial to keep up with your customers and how they want to shop and buy. Inbound selling reflects the way people have changed, so update your sales process and go all inbound. 

Image credit: nate steiner 

Content is as important as is it has always been. The funny thing is there has always been a divide between Marketing and Sales, but they inherently depend on each other and have to work together. We could spend a lot of time talking about the traditional roles and responsibilities of each area, but let’s just jump right into a very important discussion on social media content. You want your sales people selling and building relationships – not creating content. Your marketing people want their content output and materials used.

There are two action steps:

1. Marketing (Outsourced or In-House) needs to do a better job creating social content.
2. Sales needs to use the content provided. Remember when we look at the two below, we are reinforcing the belief that everyone is on the same team and on the same page.

Marketing can create better content by changing the way they create things and have a clearer vision for how it can be used, so let’s call this Social Content Marketing. Here is a good article on content marketing.

Sales is about relationship building. Here is a key point – not just your sales people need to build relationships! Every employee in the company should be focused on building genuine relationships, and here is a great article talking about Interactive Social Content Marketing.

The great news is that there is an easy way to accomplish both of the above at the same time, and it revolves around technology. There are a number of Social Media Management Software providers in the marketplace, but very few can accommodate both sales and marketing at the same time, and we happen to be one of them.

The future of Enterprise Social Media isn’t just the sales and marketing teams – it is the entire organization. Don’t think of it as a “Battle Royal” where everyone is in the ring taking swings at each other. It should and will be more about getting everyone rowing in the same direction and blowing by your competition who is unorganized and going in every direction. Everybody fills the roles and plays a part – think Braveheart.