Digital Selling and Sales Training Journal

How to sell and engage buyers in the digital, remote, and noisy world is definitely a challenge we all face. Without a learning pathway, very few of us salespeople will ever get to master the sales skills to be truly successful. The spray and pray days of contacting buyers with little more than a sales pitch to hit our sales targets have long since passed. The modern buyer demands more and expects a more personalized, tailored experience. So, we need to be experts in our market, an advisor, a trusted source of data, a credible resource, and a consultant all in one. We are no longer just selling; we are a sharer of information. And we need to be bring more value and insights than the information the buyer can read freely on the web without us!! How to sell and engage buyers Buyers whether B2B or a consumer are re-evaluating how they buy, how they want to be dealt with, the experience they want when purchasing and the values of the salespeople they communicate with. T

 Learn how to create sales prospecting emails that will get read and generate responses from prospects and customers as part of your sales tactics. The role of sales prospecting emails in the sales process gets questioned from time to time. Well, we do live in a fully digital age, we make online purchases; we communicate with family and friends via texts and social media posts. Any business engaged in marketing and sales must use all the digital means at their disposal, from stunning websites, engaging, and compelling blog posts, social media promotions, online advertising, and more. All of these are designed to keep existing customers and to attract new ones. How About Email? One primary method of finding prospects is through emails. In fact, if done right, research shows that Email marketing has a high ROI of all marketing activities and tools. For every dollar spent, marketers can expect an average return of $42. The question becom

Re-posted from original article at Sales Prospecting Guide - The Digital Sales Institute : A sales prospecting guide to help reconfigure your sales efforts to align with the new reality that surrounds us. Attracting and engaging new customers is going to take more effort, planning, strategy, and tactics within the sales process. Sales leaders everywhere will need to take responsibility for putting their sales teams in a position to compete in the new reality of remote selling. If the stated aims of all business are to “Acquire, Develop and Maintain Customers at a Profit”, then to grow (even at a slower pace) will require companies to have a customer acquisition strategy where prospecting plays a key role. It is important to note that the building blocks for successful sales prospecting o r lead generation are not solely down to sales skills but a combination of buyer personas, data, accurate targeting and understanding the buyer’s journey. What is Your Sales P

Sales Discovery Questions - The Digital Sales Institute : Sales discovery questions are used to move a sales conversation with our customer or prospect into the “why care” stage. To make the customer care about what we are saying, we need to uncover information, a pain point, or a problem we can solve. Without discovery questions, we cannot move to the why care (our unique and personalized value proposition for this customer), and if we cannot get the customer to care then there is little opportunity to continue a sales conversation. Real and impactful discovery questions should give us a deep understanding of our customer, their challenges, and problems. No problem means there is no sales opportunity. Discovery calls set the path of how we approach the deal and we rely on the answers obtained as we walk alongside the buyer on their journey. It is important to understand that the purpose of discovery questions is to determine whether you and your buyer have reas

Sales Prospecting Training – Social Media Selling and Marketing – Medium : Sales Prospecting Training will teach you the entire process of searching for potential customers, clients, or buyers in order to develop a new business relationship. Learn how to engage, qualify and move prospects through the sales funnel until they eventually convert into revenue-generating customers. Sales Prospecting is the first step in the sales process and the key which unlocks future relationships with paying customers. It is also a critical part of the sales process for increasing the customer base of the company and generating new profitable revenue streams. Core Steps in Sales Prospecting Learn the core steps in sales prospecting. The online sales prospecting training course covers: Formulating Prospect Definitions  Searching Out Potential Accounts  Engaging with Prospects  Qualifying Prospects against Criteria  Determining Needs and Pain Points  Matching Solutions to Prospect’s Ne

Sales Prospecting Training : Sales prospecting training that improves sales skills in prospect identification, profiling, cold calling, cold emails, buyer engagement and lead nurturing. Sales Prospecting Training Our SalesProspecting Training will teach you the entire process of searching for potential customers, clients, or buyers in order to develop a new business relationship.Learn how to engage, qualify and move prospects through the sales funnel until theyeventually convert into revenue-generating customers. Sales Prospecting is the first step in the sales process and the key which unlocks future relationships with paying customers. It is also a critical part of the sales process for increasing the customer base of the company and generating new profitable revenue streams. Core Steps in Sales Prospecting Learn the core steps in sales prospecting. The online sales prospecting training course covers: Formulating Prospect Definitions Searching Ou

Cold Calling Techniques : Cold calling has evolved from a standalone blunt prospecting activity into a tactic that when combined with social selling and data is a powerful customer recruitment method. Not every business can rely or wait for inbound marketing to produce enough leads to grow revenue, so more outbound sales tactics need to be implemented, to reach out and engage potential customers.  It may surprise you but 1000’s of buyer meetings and webinar attendance have come about as a result of “cold calling techniques”, in fact the success rate of cold calling is improving not declining. Cold calling techniques Cold calling is NOT DEAD but it has evolved. The reason for the improvement in cold calling success is that it has become more data driven, more targeted and blended to work with social selling and social media. Cold calling techniques now form part of a planned sales prospecting strategy and not just a numbers exercise. Remember that selling is fundamentally

Sales Prospecting Definition : A sales prospecting definition is the sales activity involved in profiling, engaging and nurturing prospects so they become paying customers. Sales prospecting is NOT about trying to find buyers in the market now to purchase your particular product or service.  It’s not that easy!! The end goal is to eventually move prospects through the sales funnel until they convert into revenue-generating customers. It is associated with a goal of increasing the customer base of the company and generating new revenue streams.  This definition can be customized to a particular business to account for their ideal customer profile, market, products and business model. Without new customers, a business will have limited potential to grow, while some sales growth will come from existing customers, it is not sustainable due to customer loss, churn and circumstances. This is why sales prospecting is one of the most important sales activities any salespers

These cold calling tips and tricks are designed to give some guidance as part of a salespersons sales prospecting efforts. Despite what youread, cold calling when used correctly still has its part to play in the sales process. If as a salesperson, you feel overwhelmed by cold calls, you’re not alone. So hopefully these cold calling tips and tricks can help you improve your results. Does cold calling still work? Cold calling tips This is a question you are probably asking yourself. The answer is Yes, cold calling does work, but only if part of a wider strategy to engage prospects. Proactive sales calls can still be an effective tactic to target new customers and create opportunities for your sales pipeline. Remember that picking up the phone to engage a prospect isn’t as simple as having an opening pitch and a script, you need a structure and a strategy. Stop and ask yourself – Why would a prospect listen to me? What am I offering that would trigger them to engage with

These sales prospecting techniques will hopefully assist you in your prospect engagement and lead generation activities. It may sound oblivious, but the biggest challenge in sales prospecting is getting a sales opportunity started in the first place, and for that to happen you need to get the prospect to listen. Sales Prospecting Techniques Every prospect goes through a number of phases on their buyer’s journey, where they make certain decisions on the priority of solving the pain point, the solutions available and the suitability of the vendors to make their buying easier. In the early and middles phases of their buyer’s journey, the decision to keep progressing with you will include the clarity and value proposition on the solutions you offer. They will also consider how familiar they believe you are with their business needs and comfortable they are with your company. These decisions and considerations can be directly linked to how much trust and confidence you have b

Using video sales prospecting techniques whether via social media or social selling is a hot topic right now. Video can be used in general sales or as a prospecting tool for lead generation or to boost buyer engagement. Video has now become a key sales and marketing tool. Buyers watch marketing videos on websites, on Facebook and on Instagram. Video may be the coolest content on the block, and there are two place it can have a massive impact – sales and prospecting. Using video sales prospecting and video across the entire sales process is becoming an increasingly critical selling tool. What makes video appealing is that our attention span is decreasing and it is currently measured in seconds not minutes, in fact it is approx. 8 seconds. To attract time poor but digitally engaged audiences, companies are turning to snappy, concise videos to engage buyers and consumers. In an article published by Forbes, 60% of business respondents said they would watch a video o

The Guide to Effective Sales Prospecting The Guide to Effective Sales Prospecting Despite the rise of inbound marketing, sales prospecting is still a key skill to be successful in sales. The activity of searching for potential customers in order to nurture a relationship with can be time consuming, so it’s important to get it right.  To many sales people, the thought of picking up the phone or sending a cold email can be daunting especially if they work for a company whose brand name might not have instant recognition. 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting. [Source: The B2B Lead] So, here are some tips to help sales prospecting for business success:   Build a Social Presence that overcomes any lack of name recognition. Building social credibility and influence can remove one of the bigger obstacles for smaller and more specialized companies. As Confucius stated “Worry not that no one knows you; seek to be worth knowing.” So, start by really understand