Digital Selling and Sales Training Journal

A sales call guide with tips on how to maximize every sales call to its full potential and leave with the result you planned for.  The sales call via telephone, remote video, or face-to-face is still the most important business activity for any salesperson. Today, however, the approach must be different—same sales activity as old, but it now needs a different approach.  What is needed is a mindset shift from a call-and-chase mentality to a connection mentality. The shift moves from pushing the customer to compelling the customer. The shift moves from shouting our sales messages to conversations about desires and needs. What is a sales call? According to Salesforce research, 92% of customer interaction occurs by phone, but as many as 85% of customers say they are unhappy with their phone experience. The sales call is an outbound sales method that involves actively reaching out to prospective buyers to generate new or repeat business. It includes everything f...

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 b...

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 So...

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 Searchin...

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 fundamenta...

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 ...

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...