Over the past year, I have written  blog  post after blog post at my site, http://www.thesalesblog.com.  Most of what I have written was written to be published later as book.  That book is coming in the not too distant future.      Of  all  the  topics I have written on, what I have written about cold calling has always struck  a  nerve, eliciting strong opinions—either for or against. Much of the email I receive is for advice and  ideas  about  how to be more effective at cold calling, or it is to remind me that Sales 2.0 has replaced cold calling (an idea to which I am vehemently opposed with every fiber of my being).      I collected a few posts on cold calling here to serve as a guide for those who would endeavor to improve their cold calling skills.  I hope you find it useful in improving your effectiveness and that you adopt these ideas into all of your prospecting activities.  

Not long ago it was reported that more than 12% of all U.S. jobs are full-time sales positions. That’s a lot of sales reps in need of a whole lot of training.   This demand puts a tremendous amount of pressure on B2B companies to effectively develop and enable their salespeople from the moment they first step through the door. It’s certainly not easy, as developing a high-powered, internal sales onboarding and training program requires investment, planning and, most importantly, time.   Time spent away from the phones.   Time spent out of the field.   Time spent learning instead of selling.

In an effort to test the impact of different incentives, a global telecommunications firm worked with BIWORLDWIDE to study the performance of its call center employees. Our findings confirmed previous research: non-monetary rewards drive greater performance than cash and cash equivalents.  We also found that individual goal setting delivers stronger results than tiered goals. In other words, setting your own goal improves performance significantly more than receiving pre-assigned goals.

Over the past several years, Qvidian has surveyed hundreds of executives and sales leaders around the world from various industries, markets, and company sizes to create a comprehensive ongoing study of the changing objectives and challenges facing sales leaders.   This Sales Execution Trends Report investigates new obstacles sales organizations face to meet these objectives, as well as explores current conditions and investment areas needed to improve sales execution; providing further market insight into the state of sales today. 

Sales are the lifeblood of every business. A company that is more effective at selling its products will out perform its competitors, even if they offer higher quality or better value. It is, therefore, essential for businesses toemploy a highly dedicated and motivated sales staff. While many companies reward salespeople on a commission basis, research demonstrates that non-cash incentives such as gift cards are more effective at improving motivation, boosting performance, and increasing a company’s bottom line. 

Common wisdom to increase production would dictate a change in the monetary compensation plan. Pay more cash and get more results. Everyone likes money - it is a simple and rational choice. And if money is so desirable, why not use it as a reward to induce more desired behavior? Many corporations do just that. It is undeniable that money works to drive behavior, and money used as an incentive yields positive results - up to a point. The fact, however, is that money is not the optimal reward to get extra effort from people.

Think about the best manager you ever had. We are assuming, of course, that you’ve had at least one good manager in your lifetime. C’mon, there’s got to be at least one. Think back to all the teams you’ve been on. This person could’ve been your boss at that horrible minimum-wage high school gig that you only showed up for because this person made it worthwhile. Maybe you had a strong leader during your college part-time work. Or, like many in today’s workforce, your first full-time, professional manager played a major part in developing you during your formative years into the kind of executive you are today.

Team selling today is no longer required just for blockbuster business-to-business sales pitches. Whether you are in consulting, investment banking, or technology or are a financial advisor, home remodeler, or lawyer, pivotal meetings with customers and prospects now often involve more people — on both sides of the table. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, "…the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today."

In today’s sales environment—where product and service solutions and customer relationships are growing more complex—there is an increasing need to continually raise the skill level of salespeople. Managers play a critical role in making sure those skills are learned and used. Statistics speak loudly that manager support/coaching is the number one action that can amplify organizational sales performance: Organizations can gain a 29% increase in top-line salesforce performance due to the skills of sales managers, independent of the skills of their salespeople. Manager coaching has a great impact on performance over and above the impact of training alone. In our study, while just training salespeople resulted in a 43% improvement in performance, when manager coaching was added, overall performance improved 67%, a 24% improvement over training alone. Unfortunately, sales manager coaching is at an all-time low, resulting in as much as 85% of sales skills never being used to drive performance. Why aren’t sales managers dialing up the decibels?  

Competing in the world of selling today means understanding the changing world of your buyers and adjusting your sales approach accordingly. The biggest change for sellers is that the game has gotten harder, and sellers need to execute at a higher level than ever before to compete. Committing to this level of change is the difference between college sports and pro. The players are bigger. The game is faster. The conditions are more challenging.

Business leaders look for predictability. They seek insight from mounds of data to get just a glimpse of the future. They demand their sales and marketing executives put the business on the right path to meeting or exceeding sales and margin goals. Sales executives create detailed business plans to identify new opportunities and retain existing customers.  They train sales reps and channel partners on product benefits and teach them to overcome objections. They develop compensation plans aligned with corporate goals to encourage growth. Marketing leaders identify competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. They define buyer personas and construct profiles to ensure the right messages reach the right prospects. They carefully map out every step of the buyer’s journey to know when and how to influence behaviors. All this to increase the likelihood of success, to gain more certainty and predictability. Shouldn’t your sales incentive program work this hard to engage your participants? Knowing how and when to nudge your participants could mean the difference between blowing past your goals and scrambling to explain a disastrous failure. This eBook maps the sales incentive journey which participants embark upon when engaging with a program. We’ve developed it from insights gained during almost 50 years of observing and influencing participants, and it can help put your program on the road to predictable success. Click below to download this eBook.​

Why Your ROI Story Is Stronger Than You Think If you’re in charge of training a sales team, you know how hard it is to ensure they properly receive and retain training while in the field. But since organizations often treat sales training as an unavoidable cost of doing business, you may find it even harder to justify investing in technology that would improve your learning program. Sales, sales enablement, and sales training leaders often don’t realize how much investing in sales training technology contributes to a stronger ROI. That’s because most companies haven’t instituted best practices for identifying the business impact of better sales learning. Most limit their tracking to activity metrics like usage and adoption, or they capture anecdotes about how a recent training contributed to closing a specific deal. Quantifying the full return on your sales training investments helps you more effectively champion your initiatives and win more resources. That way, you can improve your team’s performance and create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. Here are four sources of ROI you’re already delivering that you should capture to demonstrate how sales training contributes to the bottom line of your organization. Click below to download this eBook.

A sales rep turns a corner while driving to one of the biggest calls of the year when a jolt from under his car forces a change of plans: he just ran over a pothole and now needs to swap out his tire, except he’s never actually done a tire change by himself before. There’s no time to wait for AAA so he must figure it out himself. What does he do? In 2019, he calmly pulls up YouTube and watches a user-generated video demonstration of exactly how to perform the tire change on the make, model and year of his car, before turning around, grabbing his tools, and successfully executing the task himself. Within twenty minutes he’s back on the road driving toward the meeting feeling ready for anything. This is what it feels like to be ready in a world where you can pull a device out of your pocket and extract whatever day-to-day lessons you need from somebody else’s life experiences. Sales reps already use consumer apps like Waze to learn about open routes in real time based on other drivers’ experience of current road conditions, or Duolingo so they can practice and learn new languages using friendly competition with other would-be travelers. But what about the tasks involving the actual substance of salespeople’s work? What if our rep were to hit a different kind of "pothole" that day: one in the form of a text message from his internal champion letting him know that the company’s CFO would be joining the call unexpectedly? He doesn’t normally call on CFOs, and would need a five-minute debrief with a colleague to understand the pertinent discussion points to use, but no one is available right now. Click below to download this eBook.

Are your prospects singing the blues like Ray Charles and telling you, "Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more!"  Or are they screaming like James Brown, "You got, you got, you got WHAT I NEED!" Listen up! If you’re constantly turning people off and getting nowhere...and you’re not rocking the right approach to connecting with your buyers...you’re going to be hitting sour notes and going broke in a hurry, my friend! Fortunately, there’s a way to change your tune to one that strikes the right tone with your prospects. And it involves embracing just a few mindset shifts and learning a simple but powerful 3-step formula we developed called the PVC Sales MethodologyTM — which stands for: • Personalization • Value • Call-to-action Leveraging the PVC Methodology will turn you into a rock star connector, prospector and seller! But before we dive into the details of the PVC Sales MethodologyTM, there are a few other things we need to cover as we set the stage for your success. So sit up, and get ready to learn how to strike the right chord with your prospects!

Welcome to the 100 Sales Enablement Best Practices! We set out to curate best practices from sales enablement practitioners in the trenches so we could publish them for the benefit of the sales community. We invited the community to submit their best practice suggestions. As we reviewed all the submissions, it was difficult to find ones to exclude, as so many contributed valuable tips. When we narrowed the submissions to the 100 best practices provided by actual practitioners, we found found they naturally fell into five categories: Strategy, Leadership and Management, Training and Development, Content and Cadence, and Sales Coaching. While there were common threads, each best practice is a unique perspective on what all sales enablement leaders struggle with: how to provide sellers the right tools, skills, methods, content and processes to enable them to create more pipeline, nurture prospects, and improve win rates. We sincerely thank all those who took the time to submit their best practice. We hope you find these sales enablement best practices as valuable as we did. Mario Martinez Jr. CEO and Founder, Vengreso  

Companies around the globe have canceled sales meetings and training sessions and are enacting work from home policies to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Yet sales enablement professionals must get new hires up to speed and keep teams on track in a world where face-to-face meetings are impossible. Traditional training and sales enablement approaches won’t solve this challenge. But building a virtual training program when you’ve relied on in-person sessions can feel like an overwhelming task. Fortunately, there are proven tactics that organizations can employ to train across geographies and time zones. Use this guide to learn how the right strategy and technology can help you manage high-performing virtual teams.

It's not WHAT you do, it's HOW you think. Your Mindset Impacts Your Sales Results You've probably paid thousands for sales training, read every book on sales, and devour all the weekly tips sales gurus have to offer. You may have applied some of this knowledge fleetingly, but never achieved any results you could brag about. Deep down, you've wondered, 'I know what I should do, but why can't I seem to make myself do it?' What if you could discover what common beliefs hold you back, learned how to change them, and could create a process that would unleash better results and higher sales?   Download the eGuide: Mindset Matters and discover how certain beliefs impact your ability to be successful and improve in sales. Get actionable steps you can do now to develop a sales growth mindset and get the results you seek.

The world of business has changed — especially for salespeople. The better you are, the more likely you are to get fired or retired - especially if you’re at the very top of your profession. Robert Workman’s Hired Gun II is the sales bible used by salespeople who want proven methods to defeat industry politics and stay at the top of your game. As a #1 salesperson, sales trainer and entrepreneur for over four decades, Robert shows you step-by-step how to ensure that adversity and politics don’t destroy your high-performance salescareer. He locks and loads both barrels with invaluable tools and secrets like: The risks of being the best and how to use them to your advantage. How to choose a mentor or coach who will provide the most value. Identifying internal company changes that aren’t in your best interest and leveraging them for your benefit. Using your single greatest asset to achieve top sales status and stay there.   Hired Gun II is the ultimate resource for top performing salespeople to maximize sales, crush the competition and use today’s hardball business tactics to your advantage.

Good onboarding is critical for sellers—it sets them up for success or failure. Yet too often, it's overlooked or poorly conceived.   In our new guide, you'll learn how to ensure your onboarding process is efficient, engaging, and effective.   Download the guide to discover: Proven onboarding frameworks that drive results A simple checklist to build a seamless onboarding experience Real-world success stories that highlight high-impact onboarding ...and much more. Get your copy today.

A year into virtually all sales teams working from home, salespeople have adapted to the new normal of selling and organizations have updated their tech stacks to help their teams through the remote process. However, now that teams have acclimated to remote selling, it’s time to turn your sales team into a data-driven machine and accelerate pipeline, advance deals, and close more revenue. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered guided coaching is an investment in your sales team’s productivity. AI assistants identify coaching needs in real-time, providing your reps with the right messaging during live calls to improve performance and progress deals. With the guided coaching capabilities of conversation intelligence technology, sales leaders can provide their remote salespeople with even more informed coaching insights than they could while in the office. This guide demonstrates: What sets real-time AI-guided coaching apart from other sales tools How AI-guided coaching can benefit your sales team What to look for in an AI-guided coaching provider Features to look for in a solution, and more!

Sales enablement intelligence is a data-driven approach to learning, coaching, and content to maximize revenue per rep. Sales enablement intelligence harnesses your sales analytics to help you identify strengths and weaknesses—and gives you actionable insights to achieve your goals. More importantly, sales enablement intelligence will help you lead a winning team.

Work isn’t working for a large percentage of employees. If there is any hope of reversing the current challenges of recruiting and retaining skilled, productive workers across all professions, companies must get better at winning the hearts of their employees. This white paper takes a closer look at three core principles that managers should adhere to in order to increase productivity by winning the hearts of their employees. The strategies are offered by Marcus Buckingham, the head of people and performance research at ADP Research Institute (ADPRI).

Today’s buying experience is extremely challenging to navigate - with a plethora of choices, easy access to research, and competing (and often contradictory) voices. Buyers struggle with being overwhelmed, indecisive, and trusting the information that’s presented to them (among other things).   For buyer-facing teams, the struggle is also very real. How can they communicate the value of their solution in a way that meets buyers’ wants, needs, and expectations while meeting their own goals and those of the organization?   We teamed up with Heinz Marketing in a recent research study to discover the roadblocks revenue- generating teams encounter in preparing buyer-facing teams to be ready in today’s market. We did so with a vision of the future to bring you recommendations on how to invigorate sales enablement and facilitate changes for buyer-centric sales strategies to create highly personalized experiences that people and brands will love and therefore increase the bottom line.

Think about the growth your company could achieve by tripling your revenue. That’s what one company was able to do by following this free guide, Why Your Hiring Process Is Broken and How to Fix It. It enabled them to hire more people like their top performers, ultimately achieving a 338% boost in annual revenue. You can do it too, and it’s easier than you might think. Learn how to supercharge your hiring process to build a team of all-stars that can dramatically grow your pipeline and consistently close deals.