Today’s business buyers are accustomed to personalized buying experiences. We all experience the convenience and speed of consumer transactions in our personal lives, and have come to expect it in the workplace as well. Salesforce found that 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. The […]

We’ve entered a new era of sales and marketing alignment. According to The Bridge Group’s Sales Development Metrics and Compensation Report nearly one half of inbound-focused inside sales reps now report directly to Marketing. While this may seem counter-intuitive to some, it actually makes a lot of sense. Marketing already owns much of the technology that can […]

When you’re reaching out to new prospects via telephone, there is little room for error. You only have, at most, a minute to convince a prospect to stay on the phone. So how can you get prospects to not only stay on the phone, but engage them enough to convert them into buyers? The answer is that […]

Outsourcing part of the sales development role to an agent-assisted dialing service may not be as advantageous as expected. Not all software and technology are a good fit for all businesses. It depends on the sales cycle and the type of product being sold. With claims of 125 dials and 7-10 conversations per rep per […]

Call recording is an incredibly valuable tool for sales managers to leverage during sales coaching and training. It allows them to coach large teams at scale by granting them the ability to capture every call and be alerted when a specific situation or rep requires their attention. These calls can be stored in call libraries […]

For sales teams, the data value chain has never been more promising than it is right now. As your prospects go about their day, interacting with websites, smartphones and the social web, the behavioral data profile about them continues to grow. It’s possible to know more than ever about their product preferences, usage, interactions, peer […]

Bestselling author Chris Voss has negotiated some of the most difficult deals in history. As a lead negotiator for the FBI, he found himself in more than a few life-and-death situations. From his career in the FBI to his transition to being a business consultant, Voss consistently used a tactic to gain a powerful edge […]

I often get my morning coffee at Whole Foods market across the street from the office where I work. Very often, I walk out of there with more than just a coffee. The reason is that they offer a promotion that gives a discount on pastries when you purchase a coffee. I rarely intend to […]

The desk phone was once omnipresent in any work environment. But now, more and more companies are making the switch to VoIP. There can be several advantages to using browser-based telephony, including eliminating hardware costs and reducing telephony expenses. A key component of this shift is SIP trunking—a method of sending voice and other unified […]

Don’t you hate it when you answer the phone and there’s a long pause before someone on the other end speaks? Not only is it confusing, but the lengthy silence followed by a rep launching into a scripted dialogue can be quite irritating and impersonal. This is a common occurrence when sales teams use predictive […]

Sales development reps (SDRs) find themselves in a challenging situation when they are asked to prospect for new leads across a diverse cross-section of industries. The problem? Every industry has also has its own language. Unless you are (at least somewhat) fluent in that language, it can be nearly impossible to sell into any industry but your […]

No matter how consistently you coach your reps or how well they’ve performed in the past, there are always times when sales teams struggle to hit their goals. This can be especially true at the end of a challenging quarter or year. Your reps may be giving it their all, but seem to be running […]