Sales Cloud

In a lot of small and medium-sized businesses when it comes to sales leads, particularly in the B2B, when customers download an asset like a white paper, click on a call to action in an e-mail message or actually pick up the phone and leave a voice mail, companies aren’t always quick to respond.

If you're on LinkedIn daily — and many business professionals are — you've likely seen a growing list of notifications that nearly outnumber requests to be connected to new and former coworkers. These notifications usually say something like this:

There’s probably always a hope, at least when the employment contract is being signed, that every new hire on the sales team will turn into a star. And by “star,” we’re talking about someone who not only meets their quota, but brings in net new business, collaborates well with the marketing department and is generally so self-sufficient that they need only the most high-level management touch.

The past 15 years have brought about a lot of change in the technology world. Flashback to the year 2000: a tablet was a piece of stone and birds were the only things that tweeted. It’s not just technology that has changed dramatically—the state of sales and how businesses engage with customers has too.

We all have our items to check off before the work day is truly done. A sales leader might need to conduct a staff meeting, for instance, or follow up on a deal that may be moving in the wrong direction. Reps have calls to make, presentations to create or in-person pitches.

Not everyone is a born actor, but make no mistake: selling involves a degree of performance where a customer is shown the possibilities of a better future. And to do that well, you’re going to have to practice.

The next time you're presented with trend information about the market you're serving as a sales team, think through a few areas to determine whether it's worth your while and if so, the best way to move forward.

By this point in the year, many organizations are either just about to host an annual gathering of their sales teams or have already wrapped it up. As with any conference, however, it’s easy for most of it to get forgotten once you get back to your desk.

There’s probably no greater compliment in sales than being so successful at generating revenue you get a nickname like “The Closer.” For most sales pros, though, even a small improvement in the ratio of deals they close compared with those they lose would be a huge boost.

Sales professionals spend a lot of time cultivating deep, meaningful relationships with customers in order to grow their business. If they’re successful enough to be promoted to sales manager, though, they often have to start focusing on building a different kind of relationship: the one between supervisor and team.