Month: April 2014

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Blog sales training Social Selling

Sales Training: “Overcoming the Deadzone” with Content

Sales TrainingIf there is one idea you take from social selling to pass for sales training to your sales reps in 2014 – MAKE IT THIS ONE!

The problem your reps are having:
The buyer is going Black Ops dark on your sales reps during the proposal-to-close phase of the buying process. What was supposed to be “they asked us to call them next week” turns into “I’ve been calling them for 6 weeks, with no response!”

 
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Blog Success Stories

SUCCESS STORY: Ben Laflamme Gets More Appointments Using Social Selling!

Average Person Succeed

In this success story, I want to introduce you to Ben Laflamme, a B2B sales professional from Montreal, Canada who is starting to take his sales efforts to the next level. Ben provides fleet management solutions and insists that even industries as diverse as are undergoing lots of change.

Like most of us, Ben got into sales with a complete commitment to cold calling. He was smiling and dialing like all of us. One day he started to face a huge problem; he noticed that prospects were picking up the phones less.

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Categories
Blog Content Marketing LinkedIn

What Should I Use? A Microsite or LinkedIn Publishing For My Sales Reps?

Average Person SucceedLinkedIn Publishing lets sales reps find relevant content, follow thought leaders and nurtures prospects.

Which ocean should you dip your toes?

By now you know I love the new LinkedIn Publishing tool. This tool solves multiple challenges for sales rep:

1. Where can I find awesome content to share with my buyers?

2. Where can I find the influencers and “rock stars” of my industry for future content?

3. How can I create a site that nurtures my buyers on best practices?

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Categories
Blog Social Selling

FAIL: Sales Pollutes EVERY Medium (Part 2 of 2)

Average Person Succeed

If you’re looking to make a huge difference in your communication approach as a sales professional, you’ll need to learn social selling.

This post is a continuation of FAIL: Sales Pollutes EVERY Medium (Part 1 of 2)

Now that social media is the place where buyers are heading to research all types of products and services, I wonder what will happen. Will salespeople figure out how to send blind/unwanted mass messaging online too?

The same attitude and mentality that we take with every other form of communication medium should not be brought to social media.

Let’s not pollute this new and genuinely helpful communication medium.

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Categories
Blog Sales Social Selling

FAIL: Sales Pollutes EVERY Medium (Part 1 of 2)

Average Person Succeed

In the early to mid-90’s, the internet was commercialized and brought to the masses. For the next 5-10 years, we saw companies like AOL and Netscape dominate the first generation of the internet.

Remember how iconic AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail” slogan was? It even had a movie named after it.

When businesses started to bring the internet and e-mail in-house, it was one of the greatest evolutions of human society. Communications could now be transmitted at a blistering speed and the entire flow of business was improved.

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Categories
Blog Hiring Advice

How Video Changed Our Sales Recruitment Process!

Sales Recruitment ProcessAs I’ve mentioned in other blogs, we love using SAVO Inspire. It has made us tons of money, and saved us tons of time. From the recruiting aspect, this is a monster time saver and changed our sales recruitment process.

At Sales for Life, we are growing our sales footprint around the world. There are also many great sales professionals that apply to our job board. However, not every candidate is a great fit for Sales for Life. This is where video comes in.

We love to send a video using SAVO Inspire to each applying candidate.

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Categories
Blog Sales Sales Advice

How Can An Average Person Succeed?

Average Person SucceedCan the average person succeed? Everyone starts average. However, those who stay there will suffer, and those who continuously strive to improve themselves will win.

Those who wait around for perfection also won’t succeed.

I was once invited by a friend to attend a motivational talk by a gentleman named Rock Thomas. Rock is completely self-made and has enough passion to light up a room. He discussed a lot of points but the one that impacted me the most was:

“I’d rather have sloppy success than perfect mediocrity.”

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Categories
Blog Sales Process Social Selling

The Sacred Cows of Sales

Sales leadership is busy keeping the status quo alive because it’s proven to be effective in the past. However, times have changed and our sales approaches have to change.

Every generation or so, there seems to be a massive improvement in technology. Since the introduction of personal computing, things are evolving faster than ever before. It’s interesting to see that as technology evolves, the world of sales drags its heels.

The department responsible for advancing and propagating the latest and greatest is the one opposed to growth. While there are companies that are exceptions to this rule, status quo is still the rule.

Holding on to the status quo is not just something that we do, it’s something that’s rewarded. Entire systems and leadership brass is there to guard against offsetting and disrupting what works. These are the sacred cows of sales. Like religion, these methods are so holy that they can’t be questioned or touched.

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Categories
Blog Sales Social Selling

Social Selling Tales: The Fastest TV Ever Sold!

Social Selling TalesThe sales process often starts with people searching online. By the time the customer gets to the store, they have already been pre-sold by valuable content and insights.

When I write blogs about people I know, I don’t use real names out of respect for the person’s privacy. My friend Bruce and Michelle are good examples.

Today, however, I’m happy to use my own personal example. Here is one of my personal social selling tales. I don’t watch a lot of TV but decided to splurge on a really nice LCD Smart TV recently.

I walked into my local Best Buy and walked out with a TV 20 minutes later. Has this ever happened to you?

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Categories
Blog Social Selling

Social Selling in 60 Seconds: Twitter is a MUST for Content Curation!

If you’ve been afraid to use Twitter, and you’re still uncertain of its value… watch this video. Here is a simple way for you to start using Twitter for content curation and finding the best content for your buyers.

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