Chad Hastings, a sales manager with Alta Equipment, shared a strategy with us that allows sales leaders to hold their salespeople accountable for reaching out to all their accounts – not just the easy ones to do business with. Salespeople don’t exist to sell our products and services as quickly as possible. Rather, they exist to sell our products and services to as many people as possible. That means ensuring salespeople are maintaining contact with all their accounts throughout the year, not just the ones easy to do business with. Hoping our salespeople stay in contact with hundreds of accounts…

One of the smartest minds in sales is Jeff Bajorek, and we were able to sit down with him to talk about making sales Bulletproof. One of the chief challenges we discussed was outbound campaigns to convert conversations – a perennial issue in the world of sales. Jeff made it clear that leads are different from prospects. A ‘lead,’ according to Jeff, “is someone I know I can help.” A ‘prospect,’ on the other hand, is someone we know we can help who has expressed an interest in a further conversation. While drip sequences are fine for leads, prospects deserve…

In an interview with David Copeland, we learned that in 2019, his team was slated to attend 96 trade shows to meet prospects had to take a hard pivot in 2020 – only attending 3 trade shows. Thankfully, David’s salespeople were still able to maintain relationships virtually because they remained relevant. The one thing that didn’t change for his team was the importance of staying top of mind with their prospects – it just became amplified when in-person meetings were no longer possible. That means being (and staying) relevant to prospects. David’s team does that using calendar-driven campaigns that keep…

 In an interview with Brian Haug, we discussed the importance of ensuring changes stick in a sales team. Because our salespeople are learning things every day that allows them to better connect with and serve clients, it's critical that sales leaders take the time to download those lessons for the benefit of the team - and then ensure those lessons creates change that benefits everyone's outreach and sales.No surprise, Brian recommends both gathering change and ensuring it's implemented within a CRM. Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a…

When salespeople are in an industry with long buying cycles or buying windows, prospects will often weeks or months before they are in a buying mode – and a lot can change in that time. A formerly viable account could lose funding, interest, need or even go out of business altogether!We recently sat down with Alex Texeira, a sales manager in just such an industry. He shared the process he uses with his salespeople to ensure they regularly remove unproductive accounts from their pipelines.If salespeople are going to manage pipelines and keep viable accounts in play, it means knowing how,…

It’s a fact that not all buyers are created equal, yet many salespeople spend a lot of time pursuing prospects that either can’t or won’t do business with them. When we sat down with Dale Roznowski, an engineer-turned-sales-leader, we asked him how he advised his salespeople to prioritize their time and decide which prospects actually deserved attention. Like many industries, Dale’s company sells to buyers who have ‘buying windows’: times of the year when budget becomes available. If Dale’s salespeople and company are not top of mind when those buying windows open across their prospects, their competitors will likely get…