Selling Power Blog

What's your V.I.T.A.L Vision for Success?

2012-01-25T12:05:10-05:00

This guest blog post is by Donal Daly, CEO of the TAS Group. He shares sales insights, hindsight, and a little foresight on his sales and technology blog, Dealmaker365. I recall when, back in 1989, I was a few years into the growth of my first software company. Having bootstrapped the business and eked out survival through the first year or two, things were beginning to take shape. Each year I grew revenue levels over the previous year – but not by a lot. I used to approach planning from a position of "Where am I now, and how can...

Pricing Optimization in a B2B World: Value-Based Pricing Comes of Age for Sales

2012-01-23T13:34:47-05:00

Today's blog post is by Steven Forth, CEO of LeveragePoint, the leading SaaS platform for value-based pricing and sales. The economic climate is tough: financial uncertainty, wild fluctuations in commodity prices, global competition, and rapid commoditization of products that we all thought were safe. Business buyers are paying a lot more attention to the economic variables in a purchase decision, and this is putting new pressure on sales to execute with an emphasis on value-based selling. This is something with which most of us have little experience. We know how to build relationships, uncover customers' needs and pain points, and...

Setting Sales Goals and Targets: Step 1 to Creating a Winning Sales Plan

2012-01-18T10:04:00-05:00

Today's blog post is by Dan Hudson, President and Co-Founder of 3FORWARD. He has a B2B sales and sales leadership background of more than 30 years. Sales planning for 2012 is well under way, and most sales teams are facing quota increases for the coming year. The fact is, every sales leader will have to do more in 2012, often with limited additional resources. Even best-of-class sales programs (with average win rates of greater than 30 percent) need to continue improving their year-over-year performance. It's one of those indisputable laws, like paying taxes and getting older. This reality is what...

Seven Steps to Sales Transformation

2012-01-17T12:14:40-05:00

There is a parallel between biology and business. Our biology is largely influenced by our DNA, our genetic makeup, which contains a set of instructions vital to our ability to function, adapt, and transform over time. Our business is influenced by two DNA-like sets; one is the DNA of the economy, and the other is the DNA that's expressed by our decisions. The quality of our decisions impacts our customers and ultimately shapes sales success. Below is a brief overview of the steps that can lead to ongoing sales transformation. No matter what chaos or challenges we are facing today,...

6 Ways to Get Executive Buy-In on Sales Performance Tools

2012-01-12T11:36:14-05:00

Today's blog post is by Christopher Cabrera, CEO of Xactly Corporation, the industry leader in sales compensation automation. Trying to convince management to invest in new sales performance tools to make salespeople's lives easier is no walk in the park. While you understand how much certain sales applications would improve sales productivity, management expects you to demonstrate the value of any new solution. The big idea is—in order to make sales easier on you and your team, you need to do what you are supposed to do as a sales professional: align the value of the solution with what your...

Transformation of the Sales and Sales-Management Roles: Will You Make It?

2012-01-05T09:12:00-05:00

Today's blog post is by Nancy Martini, President and CEO of PI Worldwide, the global management consulting firm and publisher of the Predictive Index (PI) and Selling Skills Assessment Tool (SSAT). Nancy is the author of the soon-to-be-released Scientific Selling: Creating High Performance Sales Teams through Applied Psychology and Testing. The role of sales is being transformed by a set of conditions we have never seen before. The good old days are not coming back. Sales managers and reps who adjust their methods of operating to succeed in today's environment will excel in 2012 and beyond. The transformation began in...

Why Email Attachments Don't Work to Engage Customers

2012-01-04T12:15:32-05:00

Today's blog post is by tech marketing and sales veteran Bill Carney, VP of Marketing at VisibleGains. Check out the VisibleGains blog at http://blog.visiblegains.com/. Face it: we're always selling and using whatever materials we can get our hands on to get our message across, typically through email. I recently received an email with 18 links and 5 attachments! I was amazed it got past the spam filter; it scared the hell out of me! I know why it got through, though. The sender (who shall remain nameless) was on my approved list. He worked at a company where I'd previously...

5 Sales Management Questions We Answered in 2011

2011-12-22T16:39:48-05:00

Every ending signals a new beginning. To make sure we build effectively on our experiences and avoid repeating our missteps, I asked Selling Power editors to compile this list of five important sales-management questions we addressed this year. Here are some of our most popular articles on topics that resonated with readers, including developing talent in your reps, adding value for customers, staying positive, and fostering loyal relationships. Are You Selling Problems or Solutions? Think about the news stories you heard or read today. Did you find information that you could use to improve your life? Did you read something...

Can You Triple Your Sales Growth in This Economy?

2011-12-20T11:20:24-05:00

This guest post was written by Duane Sparks, creator of Action Selling and chairman of The Sales Board. Duane also wrote a best-selling book entitled Action Selling. A small-but-mighty company shows how to achieve quantum growth by installing the right selling system in the right way. Barcode equipment reseller Supply Chain Services Inc. (SCS), of Stillwater, MN, did something remarkable in 2011: it grew revenues by 60 percent – with no loss of profit margin. Even the company's managers were surprised. A year ago, they thought they were being plenty ambitious when they set a growth goal of 20 percent....

Killing Email in the Name of Sales Performance? It’s Possible.

2011-12-19T09:36:44-05:00

Today's blog post is by Christopher Cabrera, CEO of Xactly Corporation, the industry leader in sales compensation automation. The French information-technology company Atos recently announced that it will give up email over the next 18 months. Instead, all 74,000 employees will use instant messaging and a Facebook-like interface for internal communication. Atos CEO Thierry Breton said 90 percent of the emails employees receive are not useful, and 18 percent is spam. Breton has not sent an email in three years. (Source: WSJ) Here's how I think Atos stands to benefit from its email ban: Easy sharing of content across the...