While it is the sales team’s job to bring in business, simply cranking up the heat to get the numbers you want can produce an environment where stress backfires. Too much stress in any professional situation will mask talent and lead to poor decision-making. Instead of dialing up the pressure, the author recommends leaders engage with sellers in three areas: 1) Focus on creating an exceptional sales experience. 2) Focus on the sales process (not the outcome). 3) Focus on coaching to improve performance.

The days of buyers relying on sales reps for product information are long gone. Buyers are savvier than ever and have shifted to digital channels to research solutions. In fact, TrustRadius’ 2022 report, B2B Buying Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer, revealed that virtually 100% of buyers want to self-serve all or part of the buying journey. Because of that shift, traditional enablement no longer works. Enablement functions that focus only on sellers are missing a massive opportunity.

In the dynamic and data-driven corporate world, effective communication is paramount, and one of the key tools for this communication is corporate presentations. Corporate presentations are the perfect way to communicate ideas, proposals, and facts to your business's internal audience as well as external stakeholders. In fact, over 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given daily to more than 500 million people.

The Great Rationalization has arrived, and buyers are more risk-averse than they’ve been in a long time. One effect of selling in a more challenging economic environment? Having to make your pitch to larger buying committees that include skeptical, budget-conscious executives. It’s a challenge facing almost every B2B enterprise seller – and it’s a challenge we’re here to help you address.

Maximizing profit and growth should be a top priority for businesses, along with client care. But profit cannot be achieved in your business without making sales. Sales are the lifeblood of a business, and without revenue, your business crumbles. Many business owners fall into the trap of thinking that a lack of sales means a money problem. While yes, not meeting your sales targets will turn into a money problem, I most often see small business owners not knowing how much needs to be sold each month to keep their business afloat.

As buyers, we know how much the digital-first world has transformed buying behavior. It isn’t just the volume of choice. It’s unrestricted access to seller information, without actually having to rely on the seller for it. This has put B2B sellers in quite a tough spot. Now, sellers have an even smaller window and shorter opportunity to make an impact on their prospects.

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.