Sales Driven Marketing Hub

When it comes to sales management, it's funny to think about how many “no win” situations managers can get sucked into. These can lead to difficult conversations, and we’ve all been there.

For example, employees often complain about how their manager didn’t train them on “something.”  Yet when the manager schedules a formal training, those same employees complain about losing valuable selling time.

Another example revolves around the idea of micromanagement. The employee who at first complains about needing space, will later turn around and accuse the manager of “spending time with everyone else but me.”

When you're at industry conferences, do you develop meaningful connections that lead to business partnerships, sales opportunities, or even lifelong friendships?

While salespeople tend to be naturally gregarious and outgoing, they sometimes sabotage their chances of making valuable connections at events and conferences.

Here’s a collection of ideas to help you make the most of your time at professional conferences.

Consistently exceeding sales targets begins with a steady flow of leads into the top of your sales funnel.

Your sales funnel is the path your leads take on their journey to becoming a customer, and all your inbound marketing efforts will go for naught if your sales funnel is not consistently replenished with net-new traffic.

While each of your leads will follow a different path through the sales journey, there are a few steps you can take to keep a greater portion of that traffic moving forward towards the end goal of becoming a qualified lead, converted site visitor, and/or a verified customer. 

HubSpot recently introduced its new mobile app for iOS. The app, which includes a mobile CRM, offers everything you need from HubSpot.

According to the company, “We've taken the best parts of our existing CRM, Sales, and Marketing apps, and combined them into a single mobile experience.” The new app provides users with “a view into the full lifecycle of your contacts, from top funnel marketing efforts to in-progress deals and sales tasks.”

Do I talk too much?

Once I start talking, I just can’t seem to stop. Even noticing people’s discomfort doesn’t stop me. I somehow don’t care enough. My problem sank in when my boss told me that some of my clients won’t work with me because “I suck the air out of the room” with my pontification. Do I need some sort of personal stop sign?

I don’t need a stop sign. I need a traffic light.

Most new appointments are not set on the first call attempt. It often takes six or seven attempts to even get your foot in the door.

The key to a successful selling process comes with establishing a pattern of pipeline building and follow-up, and the best reps master the art of managing their leads through a CRM.

Many reps will tell you that they're organized and that they have "their own" system, but look at their work space and you’ll find that they have paper lists and sticky notes spread across their desk. You're laughing because you know exactly who I'm talking about.

Do you ever feel like you're losing control of the conversation during a prospecting call or sales appointment?

You quickly realize you better regain control of the sale, or you're going to lose the deal.

Some prospects engage you with a multitude of questions around product features. Can your software do this? Can it do that? At first, you think "Wow" this customer is really interested! Thirty minutes later you realize...wait a minute, we're nowhere close to getting this deal.

I spent the early part of my sales career believing that leaving sales voicemail messages was a waste of time.

Why? Because return phone calls are rare, and I preferred calling multiple times until I finally got a voice-to-voice connection with the decision maker. I felt like it kept me in control of the follow up process and was the most efficient way to crank out more calls throughout the day; I figured I’d save 45+ seconds per call by not leaving messages.

But the game has changed: Prospects are hiding behind caller ID and aren't answering their phones. No matter how often or what time of day, they just aren’t answering. When I call over and over again and never get an answer, it’s like spinning my wheels.

You think you know your target audience, but do you really know what they want and how you can help them?

Just take your email marketing for example. Are your emails actually adding value? According to a TechnologyAdvice survey, 49% of respondents said they received irrelevant emails on a daily basis from companies they’d opted in to hear from. What’s more, almost 32% flagged irrelevant email as spam!

So what can you do to really uncover customer pain points and give your customers what they want? 

The most difficult part of a salesperson’s job is finding interested prospects and getting the appointment. 

The solution is to create prospecting alignment between marketing and sales. We need to be more strategic about our prospecting list. Stop calling everybody and start focusing on real prospects.

Executing on the strategy can appear complicated, highly variable, and overwhelming at first, but teamwork between marketing and sales determines its success.