Sales Tools

Where Deals Go to Die: 5 Sales Administration Steps You Should Automate Today

September 17, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 2 Comments

Today’s guest post is from Chris Bucholtz, content marketing manager for CallidusCloud and a speaker, writer and consultant on topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. I worked with Chris a few years ago and he is brilliant. Oh and he is the kind of guy you can talk to about anything including baseball, model airplanes, and the Tuskegee Airmen. Here we go:

Anyone who sells in large companies has seen it: a deal that races through its early stages and seems like a sure thing, then abruptly grinds to a halt – not because the buyer suddenly got cold feet but because the salesman has become hung up on internal processes.

These administrative tasks are important – your company wouldn’t do them if they were not. They provide a means of control for sales managers, a record for marketing to evaluate its performance, and even help out the sales rep once in a while by offering up some insight about a customer. [Read more…]

Filed Under: b2b Sales, Inside Sales, sales, Sales Tools, SocialCRM

Quality Fuel for Your Sales Engine Using Compile

July 10, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 1 Comment

At Compile, like most companies these days, we prefer an open office where engineering, sales and operations sit side-by-side. As a result, I am now spending a lot of time with developers (they will helpfully point out that this keeps me grounded in reality!).

In some ways it’s the classic yin and yang: methodical programmer versus instinctive marketer. But moving beyond the stereotypes, it seems to me that sales and marketing has evolved from a “gut-driven” discipline to a more “data-driven” science.

Whether it’s A/B testing your outreach, measuring lead conversion or tracking prospects, everything we do can be tracked and measured. So even though I’ll not admit it in front of the developers, there’s a lot we can learn from engineering. For instance, the concept of GIGO or garbage in, garbage out. This is a central tenant in computer science which says that a machine is only as good as the data you put in — the smartest computer will spit out nonsensical output if you feed it nonsensical input.

It’s the same with your sales pipeline. Your organization may have a great sales machine and well-defined processes, but if you feed your team bad leads, your conversions will be low. Besides losing revenue by tying up your sales team, poor leads demotivate even the most efficient and dedicated reps. And no amount of process or people optimization can undo the damage of a bad lead.

Leads that result in a sale

When Ari Gold Sells “Silo” – A Sales Lesson From Entourage

July 6, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 7 Comments

I took a break this weekend. I don’t watch movies that much anymore. I am one of those people that when I have time, I binge watch TV. So this weekend I watched some Entourage on HBOgo.

There was a scene (Season 4, Episode 10) that caught my eye where Ari Gold, the agent for the star of the show, Vincent Chase, has to go sell a movie to the studio boss where he has absolutely no chance in hell. I don’t want to bore you on too much background. Just focus in on how he sells the movie. [Read more…]

Filed Under: b2b Sales, Inside Sales, sales, Sales Tools

Social Selling: The LinkedIn “Who’s Viewed my Profile” Play

April 12, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 7 Comments

Before I go any further, I have an important announcement: On Thursday April 17th from 8:30-Noon is the Funnelholic Virtual Sales Summit feat. Jill Konrath, Jill Rowley, Matt Heinz, and Dan Waldschmidt. Please click here to learn more.

I want to start this post with a simple story that is a great use case on using LinkedIn. I am a strong advocate for sales (sales development and sales) to live in LinkedIn. One screen: CRM; One screen: LinkedIn. There is a lot of things you do in LinkedIn, but one that I love is to think about it as a personal inbound marketing machine. Let the story unfold and then I will come back to this point.

Dateline July 11, 2012:

Yes, July 11, 2012. Yes, a long time ago in internet years. While I haven’t written about it, the experience left a lasting impression and I mention it to clients all the time. Ok, so I look at the profile of Marge Bieler. At the time, I don’t believe she was a LinkedIn trainer, but now she is. As soon as she saw that I viewed her profile, she sent me this:

Your Content is the New Cold Call

March 31, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 11 Comments

Editor’s note: Today’s post is from myDocket CEO Jason Wesbecher. Jason did a previous post on the Funnelholic: The “3 Ps” of Killer Drip Campaigns. The post absolutely blew up — tons of traffic, lots of compliments. So when Jason had another idea for the post — I jumped on it. Jason and the team at MyDocket are taking on a challenge that is near and dear to my heart — helping sales leverage content when selling. This is a great post…enjoy.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend Forrester’s Sales Enablement [Read more…]

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, b2b Sales, Content Marketing, Inside Sales, sales, Sales Tools, Social Selling, Uncategorized

Matt Heinz’s 10 Sales Productivity Hacks

March 27, 2014 by Craig Rosenberg 3 Comments

April 17th from 8.30AM – Noon PDT: The Funnelholic Sales Summit is BAAAACK! Come join Jill Konrath, Matt Heinz, Jill Rowley, and Dan Waldschmidt as they provide real, tangible advice, tell at least one joke, and challenge your status quo.

Click here to check it out!

Speaking of brilliant minds in sales and marketing, one of our amazing speakers for the event is Matt Heinz. His topic will be 15 Must-Have Sales Technologies. He is great with tech, tools, and efficiencies with sales teams and is one of be the best presenters I know. As we getting pumped for the summit, I thought we would showcase some of Matt’s work. Matt had a great post on sales productivity and I thought I would share his tips and add some funnel-commentary.

First a note on sales productivity: As an organization, your goal in life is to strip out as many inefficiencies as possible and allow sales to focus on what they do best. It’s 3-4 years old now, but in 2011 CSO Insights released data that showed sales reps only spent 41% of their time selling face-to-face or by phone. (If you know any updated data on this — let me know). So 49% of the time sales reps are doing something else besides selling. Can you imagine if that happened on a manufacturing supply chain??? The six-sigma guys would have a field day with that one. Sometimes, I wonder if some companies plan to continue to add administrative duties every month to their sales person’s plate until they spend 1% of their time selling. I can imagine them saying: “Hey, we need to track this, let’s add the 150th field to the Opportunity Tab!”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: b2b Sales, sales, Sales Tools

Leads that result in a sale

Keynote: Jill Konrath on The Agile Selling Mindset

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