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You all know and love that middle of the afternoon feeling when the coffee seems to wear off and all of life’s endeavors seem to focus on the goal of making it to 5p.m. (All future and present employers please disregard that last sentence) One fantastic way to get through this midday funk is to find a really inspiring quote. I often find that tweeting a great little quote will find more retweets and responses than any other tweets. I gathered 25 quotes in sales I find to be very powerful and motivating. I hope you can take at least one to heart because there are some great ones in this list.
Shoot us a tweet with your favorite sales quote! – @insideview
- “You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” ~Patricia Fripp
- “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson Jr
- “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
- “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis
- “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” ~Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “As you travel down life’s highway…whatever be your goal, you cannot sell a doughnut without acknowledging the hole.” ~Harold J. Shayler
- “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” ~Zig Ziglar
- “And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.” ~Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), Death of a Salesman, 1949.
- “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” ~Mary Kay Ash
- “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” ~Karl Marx
- “On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a Millionaire.” ~Larry D. Turner
- “It’s just called ‘The Bible’ now. We dropped the word ‘Holy’ to give it a more mass-market appeal.” ~Editor, Hodder & Stoughton The Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1989.
- “It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive.” ~Nicholas Johnson
- “Most people think “selling” is the same as “talking”. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job.” ~Roy Bartell
- “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing,and always put the customer first, success will be yours.” ~Ray Kroc
- “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” ~Estée Lauder
- “A smart salesperson listens to emotions not facts.” ~Unknown
- “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” ~Malcolm Forbes
- “Day by day, what you do is who you become.” ~Heraclitus
- “The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.” ~Lao Tsu
- “Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who will work hard enough to bring them about.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
- “Falling down is how we grow. Staying down is how we die.” ~Brian Vaszily
- “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein
- “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” ~Martina Navratilova
Welcome to the year 2012! I hope the first couple of weeks is everything and more you could have hoped for in terms of sales and getting jazzed for a fresh start. I compiled a list of some blog posts I thought you all might find interesting. They outline a lot of really great best practices to get you up and running this year. For those who didn’t quite hit your marks last year, now might be a good time to start switching things up a bit. Spend the morning or afternoon reading these from some truly influential figures in sales.
- Personality Study of 1,000 Top Salespeople-Harvard Business Review - Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
- 12 Ways to Increase Sales – Inc.
- Being True To “You” – Paul Castain’s Playbook
- Optimism is a Selling Skill. Is Your Glass Half-Empty or Half Full? – Salesopedia
- How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki
- 5 Leadership Tips for Sales Managers - Better Closer
- Seven Steps to Sales Transformation – Selling Power
- 8 Ways to Increase Sales – InsideView
- Want the Sales? Watch What You Say… – Joanne Black
- The Beauty of Imperfection – Jill Konrath
Shoot us at a tweet @insideview if you like our collection of blog posts!
How a few shifts in your sales process can have a huge impact on sales revenue.
I read a great article on Inc. yesterday on 12 ways to increase sales. The author Geoffrey James pointed out some of the most important things a salesperson or sales manager should do to increase sales in 2012. He hit the nail on the head when it comes to why these 12 ways to increase sales revenue will work, I want to tell you how to do it in 8.
1. Reduce the number of opportunities you pursue. It’s not a numbers game. By focusing your sales energy on fewer opportunities that have a higher chance of closing, you can give these customers more of your time to move the deal along. Leveraging traditional sales drivers and trigger events you are aware of, you will know which prospects have a much higher percentage of closing.
2. Increase the percentage of time you spend selling. There will always be admin work. As a salesperson you may not have the ability to hand your busy work off to others but there are ways that you can still increase your time selling. Most sales people on average spend 10hrs a week researching prospects. By leveraging technology and sales intelligence you can cut that amount of time in half and free up some of that precious time to be talking to prospects and customers and sell more.
3. Stop buying technology because it’s cool.
Stop spending your money on the next shiny object. Invest in technology that is actually going to help you sell. Focus on tools that will provide you
- Trigger events that effect your prospects and customers
- Valuable connections through multiple social networks and existing business relationships
- More personal insights that turn your CRM contacts into people you can relate to and add context around
- Highly targeted and intelligent prospect lists
4. Terminate weak engagements–politely but immediately.
Just as your company should have a solid lead qualification process to identify new opportunities you should spend the time to disqualify deals. A sales team should know what their ideal customer looks like and focus their energy on them. If a prospect doesn’t fit the mold, quit trying to force them into it.
5. Hone your lead generation effort.
Sales people need to understand the art of lead generation is shifting to an online world. Stop waiting for your phone to ring and look for the people you can help in real time. Social networks are a goldmine for the socially savvy sales rep. If you know what you are looking for, finding new opportunities with social media isn’t difficult. For example our sales team found this update on Twitter and jumped in.
What’s a good company database alternative to Hoovers? They don’t seem to want to sell me anything.
— Ross Mayfield (@Ross) January 10, 2012
These types of updates are something your sales team needs to be on the look out for. After 24 hours, Hoovers still has not replied to Ross’s update on Twitter. Listening is key. Leveraging connections and personal insights our sales team was able to connect and help Ross with his business needs.
6. Don’t focus on the gatekeepers.
Understand who the real decision makers are. Get to know them as people instead of the contact that makes decisions at XYZ company. Stay engaged with them during the sales cycle by engaging with them outside of the actual sale. Connect with prospects on social networks and try and help them with other questions they may have and add valuable insights on their industry.
7. Stay on top of your opportunities.
Build a watchlist on your opportunities so you can be fed news and other alerts to things that are changing within their company. Leveraging technology to keep your finger on the pulse of your opportunities will insure that nothing slips by you and you can even stay a step ahead during the sales process.
8. Outflank your competition.
I say it during my speaking engagements: Be different, Be better. Your prospects are getting 100+ emails a day and called as many times a week. This tactic may work some of the time but don’t do what your competitors are doing. Stand apart from them by leveraging your connections to get the introduction, connect with the decision makers on social networks to have more engaged conversations in a medium that they are already spending time in.
It works!
It can be a pain in the rump trying to find a couple of blog posts worth spending your morning reading and jump-starting the week. Literally hundreds and thousands of sales blogs with self-proclaimed “best sales solutions” trying to cram their way into your Twitter feed, Google search results and your existence. Fret no more as I have done the searching for you and found what I deem some great sales blog posts. Take a look and have a phenomenal week.
- The Secret Lesson Hiding in Nucleus Research’s ROI Study – CRM Outsiders
- 5 Steps to Create a Killer Google+ Business Page – BrainSell Blog
- Are You Lost In a B2B Sales Lead Paradox? – Marketo Blog
- New Study Says Customers Think Companies Don’t Give a Damn ABout Their Time…Just Their Money – Brent’s Social CRM Blog
- Customer Relationship Innovation for the Emergent Social Business - Brian Vellmure’s CRM Strategies Blog
- Eight Business Apps That Will Change the Way You Work - Emergence Capital Partners
- How Much Will You Sell in 2012 With Social Media? - Selling Power
- Video: The Biggest Mistakes Sellers Make – Selling to Big Companies
- Data Myth #4: Integration Ensures Cleaner CRM Data – DataMyth
- Three Steps to Develop Yourself – S. Anthony Iannarino; the Sales Blog
In the last post we explained that most companies deal with some very specific business pressures that slow down the process of finding new prospects and getting them into the sales funnel. Knowledge about your customers, finding new prospects and having a sales process that takes too long is a common pain point for businesses.
- 42% have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects
- 40% do not have the ability to identify the most likely buyers of their product
- 34% complain of having a sales process that is too long
- 21% See an increased customer churn forcing them to focus on filling the funnel
I predict in 2012 that these numbers will not change too dramatically but the results from companies that are actively leveraging technology and sales intelligence as a method of combating them will. Sales managers should be constantly on the lookout for ways to solve these business pressures and based on research by the Aberdeen Group, the top performing sales organizations have built strategies that can drive measurable results in building a sales pipeline and increasing the quality of leads.
- 59% of the best in class companies have leveraged sales intelligence tools to identify or disqualify prospects with more accuracy
- 53% of companies have been able to identify existing customers that have upsell/cross sell opportunities
- 48% of companies have increased the quality of leads intheir pipelines
- 28% use technology to capture and share sales knowledge internally.
- 21% of companies reduce the amount of time doing sales research
This research is important because it’s showing that companies that are having the problems listed above are able to continue achieving results by leveraging sales intelligence in traditional and non-conventional ways. Top performers in lead qualification teams understand that moving less qualified prospects out of their view has more value than dumping a volume of under vetted opportunities on the sales team. By not relying on data but the contextual news and social profiles of the companies and people you are contacting, better decisions can be made on which prospects to pursue and which leads to abandon.
The research study on the science of sales intelligence goes a long way in showing that companies that want to increase revenue quickly with your existing sales team can do so by leveraging technology to speed up the sales process. A strategy around using sales 2.0 applications to identify strong/weak prospects should be a key focus for your 2012 sales plan.
Just a quick poll: Are the issues described above the same as for your company?
You’ve finished your leftover turkey and the Christmas lights are starting to come up (cue Jingle Bell Rock!)…time to relax and look forward to the holidays? Wrong. At least not totally wrong. With the beginning of the holidays comes the end of the 4th Quarter. Like any team in sports, you don’t want that 4th quarter, second half or 9th inning to come down to the wire because it will shave years off your life. Here are 10 great blog posts that will get you ahead of the curve for the end of the year, allowing you to drink that egg nog a little deeper.
- Converting B2B Sales Data into Social Intelligence – Social Media B2B
- Five Ways to Measure If Facebook “Likes” Work for Your Business – Selling Power
- Myth #1: More Data Is Better – DataMyth.com
- 3 Big Data Myths for Enterprises – Smart Data Collective
- CEOs on Sales – What Company Leaders Want from Sales Leaders – The Sales Operations Blog
- Salesperson: Hunter or Farmer? – The New Sales Coach
- Are Your People Selling What They’re Supposed to Sell? – Partners in Excellence
- Social, Content & Selling – a Chief Revenue Officer’s Take – Inside Sales Expert Blog
- Four Keys to a Great 4th Quarter - Salesopedia
- Six Simple, yet Powerful Benioff-isms – The Sales 2.0 Advocate
A study by the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carlina fond that 92% of prospects don’t take a meeting when cold-called or emailed by a sales rep. Our customers don’t report numbers this high but when looking at the bigger picture, we can understand why this is the case. Cold-calls are dead in the traditional sense. There are many reasons for this and a lot of supporting arguments to the death of cold calling but what we find is that many sales people still do not know how to call a prospect with relevant information that can make an impact and identify new opportunities. Harvard Business Review recently published a blog titled “The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask” and if you don’t know what is keeping your prospects up at night then you are not doing your job as a sales person. It’s that simple.
“Using competitive intelligence to sell more effectively is not a universal practice, but the Best-in-Class include it in their solution mix 36% more frequently than Industry Average companies, and 51% more than laggards”
If traditional sales and marketing methods no longer work, what do prospects respond to? How can sales and marketing reach, connect and engage with prospects effectively in today’s world?
The secrets to successful B2B sales and marketing are simple: Right Person. Right Time. Right Message.
Right Person: The first task is to identify the right person, find relevant information about them and connect with them through someone they know and respect. 84 percent of prospects usually respond to a sales rep when recommended by someone inside the company. Rather than calling a phone number from a list, identify an individual at the right level within the organization. This person should hold a position that gives them the authority to make a decision and makes them likely to have a need for the product or service. Be aware of the prospect’s work profile and recent tweets to easily establish a rapport, and know which colleague or reference customer can provide a warm introduction to the prospect.
Right Time: Know when to call a prospect. Picking up the phone right after a company secures funding, when a new executive has come on board, or when a new regulatory requirement comes into effect matters. Calling the prospect even days or weeks before a competitor does can be the difference between winning and losing a deal.
Right Message: Prospects take it in their own hands to go online to learn about vendor solutions, and they are often aware of the key features and big differences. As a result, they value reps that are more customer-focused and who can articulate how they can address the prospect’s unique business needs. The nuanced message should be about how to help a prospect be successful rather than what a product does.
A recent paper by Aberdeen titled “Understanding the Science of Sales Intelligence” identified the key areas that companies and sales teams should be focusing on for results.
- Executives/ People Information
- Targeted company details; Financials; Competitors
- Contextually relevant news
- Analyst data on tends
- User generated content (blogs, social media)
Part of our job here at InsideView is to receive the most relevant and up-to-date knowledge about sales. Why? Because we love to know the in’s and the out’s of the sales industry. With today’s generation, knowledge is being passed around through networks like never seen before, most notably through Twitter. We have compiled a list of 25 influential leaders in sales who are some of the key distributors of rich, knowledgable content in the world of sales. If you are in sales and have a Twitter account, there is no question you should be following all 25 of these people. [The list provided is not in any specific order. I think all of these people are equally #awesome]
- Anneke Seley – @annekeseley
- Trish Bertuzzi - @bridgegroupinc
- Joanne Black – @ReferralSales
- Sam Richter – @SamRichter
- Jill Konrath – @jillkonrath
- John Barrows - @KenseiJB
- Kendra Lee - @KendraLeeKLA
- Josiane Feigon - @JosianeFeigon
- Barbara Giamanco – @barbaragiamanco
- Nigel Edelshain – @nedelsha
- Nancy Nardin – @sellingtools
- Don F. Perkins - @donfperkins
- Paul McCord – @paul_mccord
- Tibor Shanto – @Renbor
- Gary Hart – @SalesDuJour
- Gerhard Gschwandtner – @gerhard20
- John Cousineau - @jcousineau
- Kenneth Darryl Brown – @KenE3C
- Pelin Thorogood – @PelinT
- S. Anthony Iannarino – @iannarino
- Eric Blumthal – @EricBlumthal
- Doyle Slayton - @SalesBlogcast
- David A. Brock – @davidabrock
- Miles Austin – @milesaustin
- Mark Hunter - @TheSalesHunter
For the entire list plus more, check out our “B2B Superstars” list on Twitter: B2B Superstars
Many of you joined Hoovers with a mission to change the world, and you did just that in the late 90’s. However, in recent years your parent company has not fostered that original spirit. Consequently, innovation and market leadership have been replaced by layoffs and business stagnation.
Meanwhile, at InsideView we have continued to invest in our products and our people, growing our business at over 100% year-over-year. To keep up with our rapid growth, we need to find the most passionate, competent and innovative employees. I believe that many of you fit that bill, and I’m writing this open letter to invite you to join InsideView. You will find a fun, vibrant environment with very bright people, and an open culture that fosters collaboration and innovation.
We are passionate about our products and our customers. Last month’s data.com announcement made it clear to me that D&B has given up on Hoover’s in the critically important sales & marketing ecosystem, and that customers will need to look elsewhere to find sophisticated sales intelligence. I believe most of them will decide that InsideView is their best path to productivity, joining scores of Hoover’s customers that have already chosen to switch to InsideView.
We are looking for talent in every part of our business and in several locations. The positions include Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Content. Locations are in the field, at our San Francisco headquarters, and for our soon-to-be-opened Austin office (I love Austin’s entrepreneurial culture, and I see the opportunity for Austin to become a main hub for InsideView).
If you have a passion for innovation, customer success and are looking for a vibrant work environment, please email us at beyondhoovers@insideview.com for a confidential conversation. We’d also be glad to have you talk to any of the ex-Hoover’s employees who now work at InsideView, where they have found new opportunities to grow and delight customers.
We have just begun in delivering our vision, one where customer intelligence makes all customer-facing employees dramatically more productive. If you share my passion, we’d love to talk to you.
Umberto Milletti @umbertom
CEO & Founder, InsideView
