In everyday life, it’s not the person with the highest IQ who gets the deal done, it’s the person with the highest EQ—the most emotional intelligence—and the resources to get the deal done. Good deal making is more than dollars, cents, contract terms, and deadlines. It’s about knowing people and developing your EQ. I used to think making deals was only about the bottom line. I thought I was so good at deal making that I knew what was best for everybody.

An elevator pitch, also known as an elevator speech, is a concise summary of you and your product or service. It’s a prime opportunity to capture attention and convey the unique value of your big idea in a short space of time using this type of pitch. Crafting an excellent elevator pitch is an art. You need to be able to convey your message in an easy-to-understand way, and you need to be able to do it quickly to keep your audience engaged.

The first two quarters of the year are a whirlwind for most businesses. Major events like the Super Bowl, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter and Mother's Day tend to grow order volumes 10 to 15 times higher than an average week. These peak periods are a gold mine for boosting revenue, attracting new customers and increasing brand recognition, but these perks also come with immense pressure on operations. Today, I will share tips from my experience on how to plan smarter, not harder, and thrive during these critical periods.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned firsthand that practicing good sales behaviors is essential for success … and that bad sales behaviors can sink an entire sales org. Developing good sales behaviors yourself and helping your team improve is the hallmark of an effective sales professional. But it’s hard to know how to get better when you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.

Need More Wins? Try a Culture Shift in Your Sales Team. You’ve probably tried many different ways to improve the performance of your sales teams, with varying success. But there’s one way that has been proven to work and yet is often ignored by sales leaders—improving your sales team’s culture. Culture is hard to characterize, hard to measure, and hard to change. So it gets ignored on the list of levers to pull when transforming a sales organization plan.

Every deal can feel like a potential turning point. The right partnership, contract or investment could propel your business forward—but the wrong one can drag you down. The challenge? Knowing when to walk away. You may feel caught in the sunk-cost fallacy, pushing forward because you have invested time and energy. Or, fall into the “hope trap,” convincing yourself that things will work out despite glaring red flags. But understand this: Walking away is sometimes the smartest move you can make.

B2B leaders are accustomed to using technology to help them achieve profitable growth. Lately they’ve been looking at a technology that has the potential to accelerate sales transformations across the entire seller journey—gen AI. Gen AI can help drive outsized, profitable growth by boosting revenue generation, increasing sales productivity, and streamlining internal processes. These leaders believe the potential is great. According to McKinsey’s latest B2B Pulse Survey of B2B decision-makers

The millennial generation, now in their 30s and 40s, is a dominant consumer force that continues to shape industries and redefine consumer expectations. The Covid-19 pandemic has had lasting effects on their lives, influencing their approach to work, family, and purchasing behavior. Pre-pandemic strategies for marketing to millennials have evolved, and businesses must adapt to these changes. With millennials making up a significant portion of the U.S. consumer base and wielding considerable buying power, understanding their shifting priorities is crucial.

Of the many things that can help drive sales for your business, perhaps few could be more important than customer service. While your core products or services may get most of your attention during business planning, customer service deserves to be front and center in your operations, no matter what kind of business you run or what type of clients you serve. Quality customer service will influence the overall experience of your customers, directly impacting their satisfaction and retention rates.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to adapt is not just an advantage, it’s a necessity. As buyer behaviors and expectations shift, sales operations leaders must collaborate closely with sales enablement to ensure that seller behaviors evolve in tandem. By systematically capturing and categorizing seller behaviors as either adaptive or static, organizations can pinpoint gaps where seller actions fail to align with changing buyer needs.

When your shareholders have decided that it is the right time to put your business up for sale, it is very easy to say, "Great, let's sell it to the buyer with the highest valuation." But that would be a mistake. There are several other factors that go into finding the "right" buyer for your business and your specific situation. This article will help you think through those various consideration points and provide some warnings

Your day as an Account Executive is a constant balancing act. You’re prospecting, managing your pipeline, following up, closing deals, and trying to stay calm under pressure. It’s easy to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. But success in this role isn’t about working harder. It’s about working smarter. By focusing on what matters most and cutting out what doesn’t, you can save time, reduce stress, and win more deals.

Getting ghosted is an unfortunate fact of sales life nowadays. Every once in a while, the conversation with a prospect is going to die down and never pick back up — but you don't have to take those fizzle-outs lying down. There are some strategies you can leverage to give yourself a fighting chance at re-engaging a prospect who seems like a lost cause.

How a business handles customer service interactions increasingly defines its online reputation, yet, according to our recent survey that gives a list of the best and worst customer service brands, many are still getting it wrong. Brand reputation and online image can draw new customers or deter them, therefore we all need to be asking, “how do we get customer service right?”

Not long ago, two colleagues and I found ourselves in an online meeting, cornered by three wildly overzealous sales professionals. They were selling a tool my company was evaluating, and their pitch behavior was so bizarrely unhinged, I half-expected Lorne Michaels to walk in and yell, "Cut! Great rehearsal, everyone!"
Imagine two colleagues and me, being bombarded with obvious, leading questions delivered with over-the-top enthusiasm from a group of aggressive salespeople.

Do you understand your customer?
If you’re running a sales organization worth its salt, we know you do. And are you well-informed on the challenges your buyers are facing? We bet you’re doing your best to keep up.
But is your sales organization equipped to keep up with these client changes—which we know are making the sales cycle longer, more complicated, and more transactional for most businesses?

How a business handles customer service interactions increasingly defines its online reputation, yet, according to our recent survey that gives a list of the best and worst customer service brands, many are still getting it wrong. Brand reputation and online image can draw new customers or deter them, therefore we all need to be asking, “how do we get customer service right?”

For many small business owners, the word “sales” can make you cringe. If that’s you, it’s time for a mindset shift. Too many business owners, especially women, view selling as something pushy, awkward, and even sleazy. But the truth is that sales is the lifeblood of your business. Without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no business. Millionaire entrepreneurs embrace sales.

What are the key challenges for B2B marketers in 2025, and how are others looking to overcome them?

That’s the focus of the latest survey report from Sopro, which incorporates responses from more than 400 senior B2B decision-makers, along with data from 97.9 million emails, to provide some key notes and pointers to assist in your outreach strategy.

Your sales are down. You need an influx of new customers. Often the first step is segmenting your prospects into groups, whether by industry, product type, service type, or some other categorization. Then the marketing blitz begins. Maybe you create a special offer on a product. Or a discount for new customers. Or just put up some billboards to build general brand awareness. But the needle doesn’t move that significantly.