A Sales Compass – A Blog by B2B Sales Connections

Although there are many out there who promise they have found it, there really is no magic bullet for lead generation.  When you get right down to it, the best marketing automation tools are the ones that put you in the right place at the right time, that being when the prospect is most likely to buy. 

Studies have shown that 2 of 3 sales are made to prospects who have said “no” not once, but 5 times!  In fact, someone has to hear your company name at least 3 times before it even registers.  One very successful sales rep stated he must leave an average of seven to ten voice mails before his messages are returned. (more…)

Don’t automatically offer a discount when a customer asks for one.  Justify your value first.  Before you drop your price, ask the customer what they would like to remove from the package.  Psychology proves that people would rather pay more than lose something they see as valuable to them.

For more quick sales tips, download a copy of our eBook ”Quick Sales Tips – Practical advice, in bite sized pieces!” from the B2B Sales Connections Free Download Centre.  It is available for free for a limited time! 

Aim Higher!

Susan A. Enns, The B2B Sales Coach
B2B Sales Connections

www.b2bsalesconnections.com, www.linkedin.com/in/susanenns, or www.twitter.com/SusanEnns

Do you wake up every day excited to face the world, finding new ways to motivate yourself?  Are ready to tackle the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that have crossed your path?  Do you find yourself delirious with joy at the thoughts of what’s possible for you?  If your answers to the above questions are no; why not?  Why aren’t you leading an inspired life?  Why don’t you find yourself jumping out of bed in the morning, ready to leap over the tallest obstacles in a single bound?  Living an amazing life is about inspiration.  It’s at the heart of everything we do.  If your job, your family, your house, your car and your hobbies don’t inspire you…then what’s the purpose?  Inspiration doesn’t just come to us, it’s planned.   Success is more than just setting sales objectives and learning how to set a goal.  We have to find that inspiration and nurture it within ourselves.  Build the flames of inspiration until they are a raging torrent of passion ready to be released in pursuit of all the incredible wonders life has to offer.  The age old question of how to stay motivated becomes a matter of inspiring yourself to take the necessary actions on a day to day basis.

So I say seek inspiration.  Allow yourself to live a passionate life.  Find inspiration in the songs, the words, the movies and the stories that are all around you.

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end there it is.”– Winston Churchill.

“We want more than this world’s got to offer, we want more than the wars of our fathers…we were meant to live for so much more.”  -Meant to Live by Switchfoot.

You could stay up all night and not think of those words or lyrics.  There are vast resources of information out there just waiting to teach you how to live an amazing life.  It all starts with inspiring yourself to do more and to become more.  Not just for yourself, but for your family and in a larger sense the communities in which we live and serve.   By following this formula you can answer the question how to reach your goals, with ease.

You never know where you will find the word, the phrase or the song that changes your life forever.  The most successful sales people hoard knowledge.  They have extensive libraries because they understand a single thought or idea that connects with another idea can create a ripple effect that will change their personal life or business in a way they never imagined.  This can happen for you too, put yourself out there.  Choose to become inspired, let that inspiration turn into passion. Take that passion and use it to fuel  your greatest success in life.

Christopher Scirpoli

Invoke Selling,com

Happy New Year! It’s at this time of the year when many of us evaluate the past and look forward to a better future. To help you make 2012 everything you want it to be, we wanted to offer you some of our most popular sales tools for free from the B2B Sales Connections Free Download Centre. (more…)

This post comes to us from Paul Letendre, a sales executive with extensice experience in food service sales.

Half-Empty?

It’s part of the ballgame, we will get discouraged from time to time.  At this time of year, it is especially common.  There is a lot of business uncertainty as to what the New Year will bring.  When a sales rep gets discouraged, that’s a good sign.  Reps are supposed to get discouraged; the work is not supposed to be easy: if it were easy, then anyone could do it and it wouldn’t pay crap.  (more…)

A task.fm website visitor recently asked me to how can you increase the productivity of your sales team.  As it is a question I receive regularly, I thought I would share my answer here.

The best thing a sales manager can do to increase the sales productivity of their sales team is to show them the difference between being busy and being effective.  Just making more sales calls will not make a sales representative more productive, but making more of the right type of calls at the right time will.  It may be an old cliché, but you just need to teach your team to work smarter, not harder.

For example, I was working with a sales representative who was a cold calling buzz saw.  From morning until night, he would bang on doors, rarely stopping to even eat.  Was he busy?  You bet!  Effective?  Not even close!  In fact, this sales rep was on the verge of dismissal for lack of sales production.  (more…)

I was sitting in on a sales meeting recently. One sales representative whose sales results exceeded all the other representatives combined was being praised for his outstanding sales results by his manager.

Another sales person whose results put him very close to the bottom of the leader board asked what the secret was to the quota buster’s success. After he received the answer, the first thing the under producing rep said was “well, that will never work for me.”

The first thing I thought of after hearing this was the saying, “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by those already doing it.”

The bottom line is if you want to improve your sales performance, you have to be open to new ideas and willing to change the way you are doing things now. You also have to be prepared to take some new course of action. Otherwise you will only be repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Our Coaching Services have helped many achieve their sales potential. For some, it was helping them make the right career connections. For others, it was improving their sales or sales management skills. And for others, it was showing them some simple techniques to maximize their marketing efforts online.  As I believe I can help you succeed too, I would like to invite you to enter to win a free sales training and coaching session with me, the B2B Sales Coach.

Aim Higher!

Susan A. Enns, B2B Sales Coach from B2B Sales Connections

www.linkedin.com/in/susanenns, www.facebook.com/B2BSalesConnections, or www.twitter.com/SusanEnns

Technology has changed our lives forever.  We can now communicate with virtually anyone, anywhere at any time.  However, technology has also created a new set of rules for what I consider acceptable and unacceptable behavior. 

Some believe this new business etiquette to be generational in nature; that since those who are younger grew up with technology, it is only them who make these faux pas. Since I have personally experienced people of all ages make these mistakes, I say age has nothing to do with it.

Let me give you some examples.  (more…)

Whether you are dealing with customers or managing a sales team, if you keep saying yes to exceptions, they will become expectations.

Aim Higher!

Susan A. Enns, B2B Sales Coach from B2B Sales Connections

www.linkedin.com/in/susanenns, www.facebook.com/B2BSalesConnections, or www.twitter.com/SusanEnns