I remember a time I was working at another company as an account executive (AE), when our sales development rep (SDR) transferred a call over to me out of the blue. There was no data about the prospect in in our CRM, so I didn’t know what solutions she was interested in buying, I didn’t […]

This guest post was authored by John Barrows (Owner, jbarrows.com, which features a wide variety of awesome sales training resources).  Marketing automation is starting to come upstream really fast and eat away at the value sales reps provide. Couple this with the amount of information customers have access to and you’re starting to see the […]

Since Apple’s iPad mini came out last year, it has quickly become one of our favorite mobile business devices. This is an updated version of the popular productivity guide that we put out several months ago. Over time, we’ve found that the mini is the perfect size for portability, while offering a screen size that’s conducive […]

According to a new report from Accenture and CSO Insights, 44% of enterprise Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) remain skeptical of their firms’ ability to hit revenue targets. To address this clear-and-present danger, the report has identified several areas for improving the effectiveness of sales organizations. One of the report’s key findings is something that we’ve […]

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 […]

The following is a guest post from RingLead’s VP of Enterprise and Channel Sales John Kosturos. Strong data is just as essential to salespeople for peak sales performance as the right gasoline is to an Indy car. Real time, clean, constantly-changing data will get you ahead of the curve so you can focus on success, […]

In my last post, I discussed how traditional behavioral data analysis differs from contextual data, which I defined as information that is delivered to the right person at the right time within an actionable context. Today I’ll discuss the three broad types of data that matter most to sales agents. Prioritization Data In enterprise companies, […]

If I had a dollar for every time a company has fired an amazing salesperson because he or she wasn’t good at prospecting for new leads, I’d be sipping margaritas in my mansion in Cabo right now. According to the TAS Group, more than two thirds of account executives (AEs) fail to hit quota. Now does this mean […]

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 […]

Recently, we’ve been deluged with sales teams looking for a Lightning ready voice communications platform for Salesforce. It’s easy to understand why, since Lightning has a sexy interface and is slowly but steadily closing functionality gaps that exist with Salesforce Classic. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about what’s possible in regards to telephony integration with Lightning. […]

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 […]

According to Marketo, 10.99% of sales referrals convert. The same research found that only 0.9% of regular sales prospects turn into customers. That’s a huge difference. One reason for this variance is likely due to the fact that only 3% of people consider salespeople to be trustworthy. Additionally, most buyers now research and select vendors […]