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.  

Regardless of industry, organizations are starting to recognize the value of big data and how they can use it to gain new insights about their business. CITO Research has surveyed Qlik customers in healthcare, banking, securities & investments, insurance, telecommunications, and retail. Download this white paper to learn more about how they are harnessing the power of big data to generate business benefits and competitive differentiators. 

Sales manager coaching has the single biggest impact on salesperson effectiveness. Unfortunately, sales manager coaching is at an all-time low, resulting in as much as 85% of sales skills never being used to drive sales performance. Why are the majority of sales managers ill-prepared to coach and support salespeople?

High performing sales managers have a profound impact on a company's bottom line sales results. But, too often training initiatives focus on salespeople and not a company's frontline sales management team.

How does an organization unify a geographically and culturally diverse sales organization around common sales skills, behaviors, and languages? In this webinar, discover how Waste Connections, a leading 29-state solid-waste handling services provider on a quest to gain market share, recently built a more cohesive, skilled, and productive field sales organization.

It's the goal of every salesperson: getting access to senior client executives - the C-Level decision makers responsible for approving top-dollar deals.  Leaders at the highest corporate levels don’t always avoid sales pitches; in fact, they often welcome them, provided the salesperson approaches them the right way.  But how?  

If your sales team isn't producing the results expected, the pressure is on you to fix the situation fast. One option is to replace salespeople. A better option is for you to optimize your performance as a sales leader. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, sales management consultant Kevin F. Davis offers 10 proven and distinctly practical strategies, skills, and tools for overcoming the most challenging obstacles sales managers face and moving your team ahead of the... (click below to download excerpts from this eBook)

Surgeons and pilots save lives using checklists. How can you use sales playbooks to save deals and help your team achieve their goals? How many lives were saved using checklists?  What mistakes do B2B salespeople often do?  How about sales managers - what mistakes do they repeat?  How can a checklist prevent common mistakes and help us sell more?

Do you use PowerPoint on a day to day basis? Would you like to get more done? Get better results? It's possible! This online PowerPoint masterclass is perfect for anyone struggling to make their slides stand out.  

Sophisticated "sales enablement" platforms are becoming more accessible and are rapidly moving into budgets and project plans for middle market sales teams. This trend has the potential to massively impact sales productivity for these firms - but only if sales leaders can nail the implementation process and avoid getting distracted by lengthy projects that add little value.

It is foundational that sales professionals leverage their profile to attract, teach and engage buyers. We will guide the participants to convert their profiles from a resume to a resource, providing so much value that your prospective partners or customers will be excited to take the call.   

Flourish Virtual Conference Sessions

Has your sales team gone from in-person to virtual selling overnight? Selling while physically distancing is a new approach for many teams. It means big changes for your field sales reps and for sales managers.

Sales teams have faced a long list of challenges this year due to the pandemic. Travel restrictions and meeting cancelations have put quotas at risk. Even with some reopening, in-person meetings are rare.

With 2021 looming just a few weeks ahead, you still have just enough time to rethink, redesign and rebuild your onboarding process into a much more effective machine than you were forced into this year: a highly effective and impactful virtual operation that will:   

Optimizing the LinkedIn profile, from a resume to a resource. From search engine optimization to branding you as the vendor of choice, this program will help you position your profile to attract, teach, and engage your buyers.

It has been a tough year for salespeople! As we emerge from the peak business impact of the pandemic, it is clear that we are not returning to the pre-COVID normal but to a new normal of Hybrid Selling. 

Work as we know it has changed. Forever. In order to thrive, organizations must re-invent themselves and embrace the new normal. A Top 200 Global Thought Leader to Watch in 2021 and author of the newly released book, Remote 101: The Secret to Engaging Virtual Workers, Jill understands how organizations operate, and what they need to do to attract, retain, and engage employees. Are remote workers incredibly productive? Yes, but they also say they feel unsupported and disconnected. The companies that will come out on top are the ones which create and execute a strategy to effectively manage remote workers, and the new hybrid work environment.   

The latest Focus Report from Sales & Marketing Management has tactics to increase productivity. Learn how leaders are empowering their sales teams for maximum impact, how the rating system for self-driving vehicles can be applied to sales automation and more.

The role of managing others in today’s environment is chaotic. Many workers are in the office half the time or less. Research shows that more than half of all employees are disengaged and more than 60% report they are currently looking for a new job. Showing that you care for your workers has never been more vital to increasing engagement and retaining top performers. It starts by taking a genuine interest in employees as human beings and allowing them to bring their whole selves to work. Rewarding employees beyond providing a paycheck needs to be part of your company culture. Our Ultimate Guide to Non-Cash Incentives is a new report that provides the latest research on effective reward and recognition in the workplace. It will help you:   Assess how your company’s recognition and incentive efforts compare to similar-sized companies and those that are larger or smaller Learn how other companies are motivating workers and driving improved performance Arm yourself with data that supports allotting substantial budgets for incentive and recognition programs Provide a catalog-like review of the latest options in merchandise, travel, experiential, gift card and turnkey incentive travel solution providers.

Learning online is now commonplace. We know how to use the platform features, but unfortunately, engaging attendees to participate, to come on camera, and to unmute can be like "herding cats," as the saying goes.  

Have you ever watched a customer’s eyes glaze over during a salesperson’s proposal presentation?   Well, expect to see more of that as presentations move virtual.

People call them handouts, leave-behinds, slide docs, downloadables, or just "documents." When you use PowerPoint to create something for distribution and meant to be read by a single person at any given time, it’s not really a presentation anymore—it’s a document. And it should be designed and treated as such. You could use InDesign or Word, but PowerPoint is actually surprisingly powerful for this format when you learn a few tricks and approaches. Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Nolan Haims will show you how to use PowerPoint as a desktop publishing tool to create effective print and PDF materials.

With the Boomers leaving the workforce daily, and GenX right behind them, companies are scrambling for successors. But it’s not as simple as choosing the "right" person. Succession planning has a lot of moving parts which need to be integrated with the leadership development you’re already doing. In this webinar we’ll look at leadership development through a succession planning lens.