We’ve just entered the 2020s, and for the last two months, we’ve been fielding calls from companies planning their 2020 kickoffs and sales training. As we dove into their existing sales processes and methodologies, we’ve found that many of these processes and methodologies have been acquired from third-party sales training companies like Sandler, Corporate Visions, … Continue reading “You Don’t Have A Prospecting Methodology. Now What?”
At Sales For Life over the last couple of months, we’ve been analyzing our content marketing performance, and of course our content marketing spend. Looking back historically, only a few years ago in 2017, we had a $1 million per year spend in our marketing department, and for lead generation. Our content marketing was truly … Continue reading “The 2020s: The Age of The IP (Intellectual Property) Influencer”
I was on a call with a couple of customers recently, and the reality is fiscal year (“FY”) 2020 planning is starting to hit them square in the face! They’re realizing that with under a month to go until the new year, the pipeline that they’ve been creating for months or even years will be … Continue reading “Are You Scrambling for Prospecting Sales Plays as You’re Building Your FY 2020 Plans?”
When I started as partner at Sales For Life in 2012, I’ll be honest – I didn’t know much about content marketing. I came from the traditional sales world (translation: cold calling), and had just started experimenting with social selling via LinkedIn and Twitter. In short, the idea of content creation was pretty foreign to … Continue reading “Welcome to 2020: Content Marketing as You Know It is Dead”
In 2019, we noticed a particular trend that we fully expect to continue into the 2020s: companies are looking at selling as a team sport. Role-based, prescriptive learning is still critical, there are nuances to every role, and when learning a new sales methodology or new global method strategy, companies focus on regionalized learning, because … Continue reading “2020s Trends: Team-Based Selling & Regionalized Learning”
Over the last few years, I’ve been taking note of all the global sales methodologies in the world, whether value-driven, customer-centric driven, or challenge-driven, and we’ve integrated them all inside our Social Selling Mastery program. However, in my observations, I noticed an alarming—but also incredible—opportunity. Virtually all major sales methodologies created since the 1960s have … Continue reading “Where Sales Methodologies Fall Down: Prospecting”
Lately, sales leaders have been asking me how to overcome social selling objections from EMEA leadership teams. There’s no question that there’s a tremendous growth opportunity for social selling, or modern digital prospecting in EMEA because of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a relatively new European privacy law, which has dramatically restricted the … Continue reading “Overcoming Social Selling Objections From Your EMEA Leadership Team”
Times are changing for sales enablement, and it’s not good news. The sales enablement function is at a crossroads. Why? What we’re seeing is an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new type mentality regarding sales enablement leaders. Unfortunately, sales enablement has been an afterthought for many organizations, and is treated as a second-class citizen inside the sales function. It … Continue reading “What skill-based capabilities are your sales enablement teams mastering in the 2020s?”
I’ve probably have heard the above statement 20 or 30 times per year for the last seven years. Whether we’re planning kickoffs, doing business reviews, or any kind of live, virtual, or on-demand training programs, sales leaders give me the same excuse time and time again, no matter what the industry: I DON’T WANT TO … Continue reading “Why are you so afraid to “pull your reps out of the field”?”
A couple of days ago I received an email from my business partner, Jill Rowley, who shared the following diagram with me to highlight some incredible research done by Gartner.