Sales 2.0

Are you frazzled?

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I had an interesting discussion with a friend last week. They reminded me that the biggest problem facing many salespeople and business owners is getting anyone to speak to them. This problem has gotten worse as we add new ways to communicate with each other. There’s so much to do and so much noise in our life that the last thing we want to do is waste our time with some salesperson.
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But buyers are not the only “frazzled” ones…sellers are too! Sellers feel like they don’t have any time either. (Jill Konrath wrote a whole book about time management for salespeople!)

There are ways to get your time back. I’ve personally gotten a lot of time back over the last few years. If you’re time-starved try a few of these tips to get started.

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Send Your Proposals to the DEA, Part 2

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In my last post I was ranting about how I hate proposals.

My preferred solution to this is not developing proposals at all. I highly recommend not spending your time generating beautiful documents for every person that says, “send me a proposal”. It’s a surefire way to eliminate your prospecting time and have a sick pipeline.

However, if you have situations where you have to generate a proposal, or a part of a proposal, consider the remaining two options from The 4-Hour Workweek: Delegate and Automate.

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AI in Sales: Freeing up sellers to be more human

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This is number 9 in a series of interviews I am conducting with subject matter experts and practitioners in the sales profession. I am examining where we are today with AI in sales and where we are going.

This interview is with Miro Putkonen and Anton Dobrzhanskiy of Epicbrief. Epicbrief’s mission is to make human work in sales more meaningful and valuable. Here’s a summary of our conversation and below this summary is the full transcript of our interview.

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Book notes: The Sales Acceleration Formula

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I’ve been using the summer to review some of the classic books in sales and marketing and refresh some of the fundamentals to building world-class “revenue engines” described.

I started with Mark Roberge’s book “The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million”.

The part of Mark’s book I like the most is about hiring salespeople. If you’re going to take advice on hiring salespeople, Mark seems like a great guy to trust in my opinion. He hired hundreds of salespeople over his time at Hubspot, while building their sales and services area from 1 employee (him) to 450 employees.

The first point Mark makes in this section of the book is a killer: “World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success”. He goes on to say, “Even if I was world-class at sales training, managing, coaching, and forecasting, it would not be enough to offset a team of mediocre salespeople.”

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Make time for sales “magic”

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“Win the day by noon”.

I love that expression and I’ve found great happiness in trying to implement it. There’s something really great about having lunch and knowing the day is already a good one. It certainly does not happen every day, but it’s a great goal to strive for.

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Account Executive Inc.

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If you’re an AE, I recommend appointing yourself a small business owner.

Just like most small business owners you probably feel like you have no time. You may also feel unsupported by your company and that you need to do everything yourself.

Just like small business owners there are things you can do to make this situation a lot better. By doing so you will (a) sell more, (b) get a bigger commission check, and (c) be less stressed. Not a bad combo.

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