Signals from the Field

Today I opened the Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) Monday Metro Business section and read an article titled “Website mistakes to avoid for small businesses”. It appears to have been picked up from an article in the Charlotte Observer.

Studies by sales organizations have consistently identified the two most difficult selling skills:

Trade show season is upon us and lots of money will be spent by participating companies. This article provides 6 steps to send your trade show results through the roof.

Industry experts report that marketers this year will spend $171 billion on paid advertising. Those advertisers, and their bosses, will experience much anxiety because in many cases they won’t know what worked and/or how well it worked. Here’s a quote from a famous man that underscores this -

Cold calling isn’t dead but it’s challenging. Most salespeople don’t like it. Personal networking is effective but can be very time consuming. This all leads to a question, “in today’s environment, how do you generate high quality B2B sales leads?” This article presents a way more firms these days are answering this question.

Why is that most people put their guard up when approached by a salesperson? I mean, c’mon – we are normal people just like you! The reality is that salespeople have a bad rep. This comes from many years of salespeople trying to sell you things you don’t really need nor want. A annual survey is done about the most and least respected professions, and certain types of salespeople always seem to land near the top of the list for least respected professions. So, this article describes 5 easy steps to get beyond the “salesperson stigma” and connect with your buyer.

Now that the new year is upon us and we all have new sales quotas, we need a plan to build our sales pipelines in order to get in front of enough prospects to exceed our goals. Here is a 5-step plan to build your sales pipeline.

Welcome to the New Year – a time when we all think about how we can do and be better. I did some research and found the 3 most popular blog posts from 2013. This article is a condensed version of the three - Best B2B Selling Behaviors, Managing Your Sales Funnel, and Improving Your Closing Ratio.

In today’s business environment there are ever-increasing ways to connect with your buyers. Who do you know that hasn’t complained about too many emails? Have you heard enough yet about how social media will transform business? And who doesn’t have (or at least want) a smartphone? With so much information about how to market and sell, we must ask ourselves “what’s the best way to connect with my particular buyers?” This article provides a summary of consumers’ expectations and a method for matching what your buyers want and how to deliver it.