In any sales engagement, the groundwork before the call can be decisive. Chris Brewer, Co-founder at OMG Commerce, shares his pre-call preparation strategy, primarily for inbound lead generation, with insights adaptable to outbound leads. Chris sees Google as more than a search engine; it’s a vital tool in his research arsenal. By Googling a brand, he uncovers essential information like legal issues or consumer dissatisfaction. This helps him anticipate red flags that might surface during the call.

Succeeding in sales isn’t just about learning how to get someone to buy what you’re selling. Success also requires a strong sense of resilience. Specifically, resilience in the face of frequent rejection. But how? Most non-sales folks avoid rejection at all costs. The best sellers, meanwhile, must embrace rejection, as a stepping stone to their goals.

Warren Buffett, Ginni Rometty, and Howard Schultz share a common background — they all worked as salespeople before becoming CEOs of Berkshire Hathaway, IBM, and Starbucks, respectively. Buffett worked as an investment salesman, Rometty got his start in a sales role at IBM, and Schultz had a stint as a salesman for Xerox. Each serves as proof that salespeople make excellent business leaders.

It was July 2020—the middle of COVID Year 1—and the temperature had hit 95 degrees (F). Then, the AC on my beloved 2003 Toyota Highlander died. The cost to repair it was far more than the value of the automobile. I needed to buy a new car. But we were in the middle of the pandemic. Shopping for a car the “traditional” way was out of the picture. So, I did what every buyer was doing when shopping those days. I fired up my MacBook, launched Google Search, and started researching my purchase.

Raising others up is a hallmark of a great leader. Beyond simply being a kind thing to do, developing talent is paramount in achieving notable scale as a global organization. This article will outline nine principles that I think about as a sales leader. Feel free to lean on this list or develop one that aligns with your core organizational values.

Sellers have got to work harder than ever. That’s because buyers are more informed than ever before. Buyers conduct a lot of their own research, which means they’re more than 50% along the sales journey before us sellers get in touch. The challenge for us is helping buyers make sense of what they’ve read online, but without knowing what they’ve been reading up on.

When salespeople lose a deal, most prefer to move on rather than linger over the specifics of the loss. Similarly, when they win a deal, most are quick to celebrate. But very few take the time to assess why they won the business. In the authors’ experience leading and coaching sales teams, they see evidence that a brief, well-pointed sales retrospective, where you unpack the reasons behind a win or a loss, can significantly improve a team’s future win rate.

As my regular readers know, my son is a baseball player – a rising college senior (as of the summer of 2023) – and I still coach him in the batting cage when he’s home for the summer. I started coaching him when he was old enough to hold a wiffle bat. By the time he was thirteen years old, he responded to every piece of hitting advice with, “I know Dad!” He was no longer coachable (by me), thus beginning a stretch of six years during which we hired various coaches to work with him.

Problem-solving has become an integral part of our lives. Whether it's in our personal endeavors or professional pursuits, our ability to overcome challenges directly impacts our success and well-being. Traditionally, we tend to emphasize the features of a solution, often overlooking the crucial aspect of focusing on the desired output or the problem statement itself.

Whether you’re going into a job interview or trying to strike a deal with a new client, negotiating better terms can feel intimidating. While some people are good at asking for more, many are not. For example, recent data from the Pew Research Center found that 60% of U.S. adults don’t ask for higher pay when offered a position.

When companies are creating profiles of possible target customers, there is a dimension they often overlook: the urgency of the need for the offering. This article provides a process for segmenting prospective customers in this fashion and creating a sales strategy.

Many companies focus their sales training on the nuts and bolts, such as technical skills and selling strategies, often overlooking what could be the most crucial aspect of sales development: empathy. Empathy is an important skill for all levels of the sales organization. It is particularly important in helping front-line sellers in relationship-building. For sales leaders, empathy is critical in their effort to lead and inspire. But can empathy really be learned?

Over the last two decades, technology developers have utilized the agile methodology to work more effectively. As sales teams are stretched thin and face change initiatives and strategy shifts, using the sprints made popular by agile can help them focus on priorities that will drive results. At the heart of this is a cadence of structured, weekly meetings between the manager and the salesperson.

By the time we hit the age of 18, we have years of buying decisions behind us and generally feel like we’re too smart to be “sold” anything. Instead, we’re looking to be inspired to buy. Inspiring is the new selling. If you’re in sales or business development, one of the easiest ways to inspire customers is to show enthusiasm for your product. Arguably, there is nothing more contagious than enthusiasm, at least nothing that is still good for you.

Back in November 2017, Collin Sexton and his college basketball team at Alabama were forced to play 3-on-5 for more than 10 minutes against the University of Minnesota. Due to injuries, ejections, and disqualifications, Alabama could only put three players on the court. The crazy part, behind 40 points from Sexton, Alabama almost won the game, ultimately losing 89-84.

Sales teams have typically not been early adopters of technology, but generative AI may be an exception to that. Sales work typically requires administrative work, routine interactions with clients, and management attention to tasks such as forecasting. AI can help do these tasks more quickly, which is why Microsoft and Salesforce have already rolled out sales-focused versions of this powerful tool.

Something top performers – i.e. reps who hit 150% of quota – do twice as often as their peers? Research. Meaningful, deep research into their prospects to find out about their business, their interests, and what’s driving them, both intrinsically and extrinsically.

Sales is a business about people and getting the right talent is vital—companies must reconsider their talent strategies and the sales roles they need to continue to drive growth.

Learning and development (L&D) leaders face a plethora of challenges when planning, designing and developing sales enablement initiatives. Products and services are evolving faster than ever. Technology like artificial intelligence (AI), sales analytics software, customer relationship management platforms and sales collaboration and workflow tools are more entrenched across the sales cycle.

Many large, multinational companies fail to reach and profit from middle-market customers. Yet the opportunity is enormous: In the U.S. alone, middle-market companies purchase more than $6 trillion a year in goods and services. Sellers with a big middle-market customer base can grow along with their clientele. The fundamental problem is that many multinationals don’t have a full-fledged strategy for selling to midsize companies, as they usually do for sales to enterprise and small business clients.