5 Tips for Lead Nurturing to Grow Your Sales Funnel

As a seller you are working hard to create a full pipeline (funnel) and now that you have all of these companies and some actual sales opportunities on your radar, how will you bring them to closure?
Here are 5 tips to help you gain and nurture more sales opportunities:

Re-educate yourself and all that you know about selling. Start by reading about the Buyer Experience Funnel and how the buyer’s process has changed to being nearly unrecognizable by old school sellers. Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions has written a four-part series called, Capitalize on the Content Marketing Continuum where she talks about the BEF and the very fluid content marketing continuum. She is one of the smartest people I know on the topic, and anything she writes is worth… continue reading

Talking or Writing Too Much in B2B Sales

Just a quick post to share a tip posted today over at Jill Konrath’s Fresh Sales Strategies Blog encouraging sellers to be more succinct, and to communicate in the way that your prospective customer wants. Can’t stress it enough – this is one of the biggest foundational issues for success in selling.
Jill is doing a whole series on what salespeople should never do – based on an interview that Forbes Magazine did with her.

Talking or Writing Too Much in B2B Sales originally appeared on Score More Sales on February 16, 2012.… continue reading

People Skills Grow B2B Sales While Tools Make It

Years ago when I started in B2B sales, there was one way to keep track of customers and prospective customers – writing on lined, yellow note pads and putting these precious notes into manila file folders. appointments were kept in our Daytimers and planners – all paper based. Some of my sales colleagues would hand-write on the tabs of the file folders  and add tabs to hanging folders– these tools were our “lifeline” to keeping track of potential sales opportunities and all our connections.
Once Microsoft Outlook came out, well – life was anew. Some of us cutting edge sellers gradually started to trust this system to corral all of our contact information, flawed and all – and then the advent of big, high-end customer relationship management systems started to… continue reading

Fall in Love With Sales Success Today

Today in most of the Western world, Valentine’s Day is celebrated. Valentine’s Day makes me think of passion, love, and romance. From a business standpoint, you can fall in love with the process, methodology, and tools you use to build sales – because your mastery will result in you growing sales. If you don’t love it, or even like it –  we highly recommend outsourcing some of  it. Why? Because when you love what you do, it does not seem like work, it is simple, and it can become a strength. For those who think that follow up to prospective customers is a chore, I would ask if you think it is a chore to go online to your bank account and watch your money grow? It’s all relative, isn’t… continue reading

CRM Is the Tool and Sales Follow Up Is Key

What is the value of a saw if you never sharpen it? Having a dull saw will not allow you to get the results you desire when cutting wood. What is the value of dental floss if you don’t use it? The same is true with any cloud-based (SaaS) tools to help you in your business – they must be used, and used properly for you and your company to benefit.
Many still think that CRM tools are underutilized because of two things:
1) many that are widely in use are still deemed too complicated and
2) because most salespeople don’t want to spend time on administrivia. We need to bring the value of the tools – whatever they are – to the sales reps and show them what is… continue reading

B2B Sales Podcast With Ziglar on Football and Goal...

Since the beginning of my sales career I knew of Zig Ziglar – the Southern, memorable motivational speaker that sales people loved to hear preach about life, about setting and attaining goals, and creating the life of one’s dreams. His “Zigisms” or sayings that many of us remember years later make for perfect Tweets, according to Tom Ziglar, his son and CEO of Ziglar, Incorporated. Zig’s stories, seminars, and quotes have made a great impact on my life and in my success after starting out as a teenaged, single mom. We had a fun conversation talking football quarterbacks, Super Bowl,  sales, and creating dreams. Listen for the Ziglar tips for success, and find great resources plus a free chapter of the Ziglars’ new book at Born to Win.
Special thanks… continue reading

Sales Tips for the End of the Pipeline

You’ve listened online and are following your prospective customer – the one you are about to close a big deal with-  socially via every means possible.  If they have a Twitter account, you’re there.  Through LinkedIn you found a company profile, your contact’s professional past, and all of his or her colleagues’ as well. You know these guys through dozens of web searches and references.
The sales opportunity has stalled – which we talked about last week. Through a very strategic conversation with your prospect, both they and you are in agreement, and things get moving forward.  Still, the deal has not come to closure.
At the end of the pipeline, deals come to fruition. In simple transactions, it can happen from prospect to closure in a single series of steps… continue reading

Middle of the Sales Pipeline – Acceleration

Most everyone focuses on the front of the sales pipeline, and there is much written about all of the things that happen early on. But what about once you have potential sales opportunities? How are they moved forward to closure, and what happens during that “dark phase’ when your once-wonderful prospective customers are not returning your calls or e-mails?
Welcome to the middle of the pipeline, or for those of you using a funnel approach to track sales opportunities, welcome to MoFu (as coined by Hubspot, for middle-of-the-funnel). This less talked about period is where your prospects live, breathe, and sometimes hide – and during that time many opportunities disappear due to lack of nurturing from you.
We need to work on ways to accelerate the pipeline. In simple terms,… continue reading

Five Attributes of Top Sales Influencers

Being recognized this month as a Top Sales Influencer made me wonder: What IS an influencer, and how can this help build a business or a brand?  I mean, it is a great thing to have happened – quite an honor –  but what is it, really?
Wikipedia talks about identifying influencers:
Market research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using pre-defined criteria to determine the extent and type of influence. For example, Keller and Berry propose five attributes of influencers:

Activists: influencers get involved, with their communities, political movements, charities and so on.
Connected: influencers have large social networks
Impact: influencers are looked up to and are trusted by others
Active minds: influencers have multiple and diverse interests
Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in… continue reading

B2B Sales Podcast With Michael Boylan on Value...

Last week we shared a recent interview with Michael Boylan, best selling author of The Power to Get In, Accelerants , and TEETH – Does Your Value Proposition Have Any? Michael is an award-winning keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences and Fortune 500 company meetings. Michael can take any organization through the sales process with dramatically increased results. We were honored to speak with him not just once but twice.
Today’s conversation shares how once you gain access to the C-level decision makers you wanted to get in front of in the first place, now what do you say to move the conversation forward? Many organizations have poor value propositions and their visit to the C-level suite is short-lived. Listen as Michael talks about a proven framework – a common sense… continue reading