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Interview

Quarterly Magazine

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  The world is moving to a peer-to-peer selling environment that also now includes the sharing of experiences. Whether it’s finding a good restaurant, choosing a hotel or purchasing a new laptop, reading about other buyers’ experiences is a prerequisite to buying.

  

  Customer References
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  The current segmentation process in Excel sheets is rigid. We take accounts, filter them against our current ICP hypothesis, add some flavor of firmographic, demographic, or employee size segmentation, and put our best resources to go work against them.

  

  Account Planning
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  A sales transformation doesn’t just happen for the heck of it; there’s going to be some specific challenge or weakness driving that change. With that said, there are certain areas in which most organizations could benefit from taking a transformative approach:

  

  Sales Enablement
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  To continue to engage buyers during a time when B2B and B2C buyer demands are converging at a rapid pace, personalized, relevant content has become king. Sales enablement solutions are built to help facilitate a more productive buying and selling experience by ensuring the right content is available at...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  Marketing and sales both work to drive demand and grow revenues. The problem is that they each focus on different areas of the buying process. They do so in silos, guided by a linear process that dictates marketing works on the first part and sales works on the second.This...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  To participate in the next generation of sales tech, sales organizations will have to consider their data strategy. High-growth teams who want to keep a competitive advantage and continue to drive efficiency need to take a good hard look at where their data is coming from.

  

  Prospect Intelligence
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  I have distilled down my discussions with Bob and peers and summarized my views into some practical take-aways.  I am calling these the 3 Cs — collaboration, continuous learning, and customization — and how, together, they lead to better sales training and greater sales results.

  

  Sales Coaching
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  Defining the role Sales Enablement plays in your organization is a multi-faceted exercise. First, there’s a small matter of defining what Sales Enablement even means. It also involves answering the question, “What processes, technologies and responsibilities should the role envelope and which should it not?" Already, with just those...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  Research shows that as much as 90% of professional learning is informal and experiential, done out in the world and not in a classroom. It’s intuitive and natural, and it’s what people do every day when they access Google, YouTube, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.Yet formal learning comprises 90% of most...

  

  Sales Coaching
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  All our experience is showing that the biggest thing people will be doing right out of the gate is making sure they have the best possible visibility into the total active demand in their marketplace. You get this by augmenting your 1st party information with great sources of 3rd...

  

  Account Targeting
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  The numbers are telling. Teams who coach with film review are 30.2% more likely to hit quota. After analyzing the behaviors of 100 sales managers, we found that top managers spent 30% more time on film review. In fact, a 3X increase in film review drove a 50% increase...

  

  Sales Coaching
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  There’s so much research out there now which points us to some key areas of change, and the companies that don’t respond to them will fall behind. The good news is that buyers are telling us what they expect and will continue to.

  

  Buying Technology
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  Here’s the scenario. You’re on a ship in a vast sea. Somewhere out there on the horizon is a land of opportunity, solid ground on which to build a beautiful, sun-soaked empire–if you can get to it. But right now, you’re tossed by the waves of the ocean and,...

  

  Sales Efficiency
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  I think the first priority is taking control of the tool stack. There has been an explosion of tools in the sales ops world and we feel that today, sales operations professionals are spending more time integrating systems than performing sales operations. It’s death by a thousand tools....

  

  Sales Ops
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  If you asked 10 different business leaders to describe how digital transformation applies to their business, you would probably get 10 different responses. As CMO, when I think of digital transformation, I am applying it to the buyer journey and the new way in which prospects expect to be...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  This new software solves the biggest sales issues of all: Knowing who to call, when to call, what to say, how to follow up, when to follow up, how to get answers, how to schedule more appointments, what to do next, who to focus on, what to up-sell, where...

  

  AI Sales Solutions
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  Finding the right sales talent isn’t easy – but even when you hire the perfect candidate, keeping them for the long-term can be a whole different challenge.New reps must be supported from day one with sales readiness programs that prepare them with the skills and knowledge to effectively...

  

  Skills Development
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  An ongoing investment in and commitment to sales training is at the heart of any successful sales transformation effort. Most businesses make a significant time and financial investment at the start of the year to bring together the sales team for annual planning and training. However, the momentum coming...

  

  Sales Coaching
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  Customer experience has become the basis for competition in the modern world. If you look at the major disruptions that are happening in the business world, in many cases the product itself has not been the basis for disruption, but instead it’s the experience that has changed.

  

  Buying Technology
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  Nearly every week in 2018, we interviewed a different SalesTech company asking them how their solution changes the game for sales. Each quarter we summarized their answers in this easy to read magazine. In this 4th, and last, issue of our Sales Tech Game Changers magazine, we ask 5...

  Buying Technology
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  We have an enablement problem… People think we suck at enabling our reps because we can’t prove its impact.Many SaaS companies struggle with ramp time, and it’s getting worse over time. The Bridge Group reports that on average, it takes 5 or more months for new sales reps to...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  As buyers get harder to engage, competition grows, and markets accelerate, ensuring sellers bring their A game to each and every sales interaction becomes ever more critical. Sales leaders simply can’t afford for their team to waste at-bats, especially with swings that are so wildly off that they not...

  

  Sales Coaching
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  There are a number of considerations to weigh when deciding to implement a Sales Enablement platform. The goal of implementing a Sales Enablement platform is more than boosting productivity or ensuring compliance – it’s complete business transformation. Often times, an investment in Sales Enablement can only come with the...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  Sales organizations will have to be sure their people, processes, and technology are all working together to meet their sales goals. In the coming months, I see companies focusing on the following areas: optimizing sales processes, reviewing sales tools, and training sales teams.

  

  Sales Efficiency
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  If you’ve ever bought a house, you know the drill: Location, location, location!But in the world of B2B sales? It’s timing, timing, timing!“Bad timing is the worst objection you can get!” says DiscoverOrg’s Manager of Sales, Brandon Battey. “It’s a true reason. You just have to move on.”Unfortunately, it’s...

  

  Purchase Intent
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  As a child, you learn the “golden rule” is to treat others the way you want to be treated. But as an adult in the post-digital world, I’m not sure that still rings true. In an era of Netflix, Amazon, and Uber, isn’t it more important to treat people...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  While working on the real thing, you cannot rely on a haphazard collection of outdated notes and a motley crew of tools to keep track of what you are doing. Unfortunately, for some sales reps, digging through notes in the way real miners do, became daily routine. Due to...

  

  Lead Engagement
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  Why Buyers Resist Your Perfectly Logical ProposalsDoes it ever feel like your prospects are irrational?After all, if you present compelling information that clearly demonstrates how and why your solution addresses their needs, the rational thing would be to sign on the dotted line (or at least move toward a...

  

  Prospect Engagement
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  Have you ever made a sale that you felt slimy about? I’m talking about something that went above your need to hit a monthly sales quota. Have you ever sold a product you didn’t believe in or didn’t believe could adequately meet your customer’s needs? If the answer is...

  

  Sales Efficiency
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  TimeTrade Scheduler is the world’s leading intelligent, online appointment scheduling solution. More than 30,000 businesses worldwide use Scheduler to improve engagement and speed business cycles at every step of their customers’ journey. For a sales organization, TimeTrade Scheduler for Salesforce improves engagement & speeds business cycles.

  

  Scheduling
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  The Smart Selling Tools community knows about our weekly Executive Interview Series. Each interview is an opportunity to learn about different solutions and what way they’re changing the game for sellers. Pretty cool, right?

  

  Buying Technology
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  Seven years. A thousand employees. Hundreds of consultants. $500 million. And one announcement that ended the whole thing. Lidl, a German grocery chain with locations all over the world including 10,000 in Europe, 80 in the U.S., and plans to expand to another 500+ U.S. locations, earlier this year...

  

  Buying Technology
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  Revegy's mission is to help companies secure and grow revenue in their most important accounts by: Providing easy to use visual tools to understand the many stakeholders and their priorities; Enabling a truly collaborative team environment; Focusing on only the elements that drive clear value for each person.

  

  Account Targeting
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  What a week! When it comes to this year's Dreamforce, It most certainly did not disappoint. We'll be reporting on all the activities over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I wanted to share a Dreamforce wrap-up from the last day of the Expo floor.

  

  Buying Technology
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  Inside sales reps who engage prospects with a personalized pitch see better open rates, have longer conversations and book more meetings. But migrating from a traditional cold calling model to one that requires a high-level of customization can be challenging, even for the most sophisticated inside sales environments.

  

  Prospect Engagement
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  Sales reps can only sell as much as their productivity allows and it is really frustrating to see them doing administrative tasks rather than actual selling. Recent analytical studies show that nowadays sales reps are spending only 35-40% of their time for actual selling, the rest is taken by...

  

  Sales Efficiency
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  The Bigtincan Hub Sales Enablement Automation Platform redefines sales, marketing and service processes to enable teams to work smarter and faster together. With sophisticated, AI-driven features and automation that supports each phase of the buying process, the Bigtincan Hub makes it easier for sales reps to leverage customer data,...

  

  Sales Enablement
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  Unless you live under a rock, you know that Salesforce's annual event, Dreamforce, is just around the corner. If you're going, I hope to see you there. I'll be at the Sales Enablement Soiree at the Four Season's hotel on Thursday the 27th all day. Come by and say...

  

  Buying Technology
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  LevelJump helps sales leaders and enablers reduce ramp time by 40% by building interactive training programs linked to CRM outcomes - like closed deals and pipeline created - directly inside Salesforce Sales Cloud®.

  

  Onboarding
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  Strikedeck is the most powerful and comprehensive Customer Success solution, enabling businesses to reduce churn, drive customer trust and loyalty, and maximize revenue through innovative automation and integration technologies.

  

  Customer Success