Sales Tips to Ring in a Happy New Year

Deck the halls with signed sales contracts! Fa La La La La La La La La! Okay, so I have no future as a songwriter, but nonetheless, December is a prime time to reach out to your sales prospects. Sales guru Kendra Lee explains why. We’ve also collected some other advice from Lee to get you through this holiday season ringing the bell.

So make it a really Happy New Year with these great tips.

December is Here: Are You Prospecting or Punching Out?

December is actually one of my favorite times to prospect. Why is that? Because, like most of us, prospects are often more relaxed and cheerful this time of year. They’re more apt to take your call and be more charitable with their time (even if they are busy with end-of-year planning). And, as you might have guessed, those psychological shifts often give savvy salespeople an opportunity to change the entire dynamic of their prospecting calls.

The Party’s at Your House — Are You Inviting Your Prospects?

Our homes are the places where we can more intimately engage our friends and allow them to see who we really are and what we’re all about. In business, the same is true of your company’s website.

While it’s become absolutely critical for businesses to expand their prospect engagement horizons beyond their website, interacting with customers through outside channels such as social media, email marketing, blogs and industry forum, your website is still your home—the place where your sales prospects can find out more about who you are and what you do, and discover why they might want to build a deeper relationship with you.

You’ve Got 3 Seconds to Convince Prospects to Read Your E-Mail. Are You Succeeding?

In today’s world of busier schedules and shorter attention spans, most of us have become incredibly adept at determining if we need to read an e-mail based solely on that message’s first line. In many ways, it mimics how we used to treat voicemails or direct mail. If a message failed to immediately grab our attention, we ignored it. Now, the same is true for e-mail. So, how can you ensure that your messages stand out? Here are six simple tips that can make a big difference:

Why Incenting Your Support Staff Can Pay Big Sales Dividends

When a pitcher throws a no-hitter, it’s generally lauded as an individual feat. His teammates swarm and congratulate him; the media hails his skill; and, in some circumstances, his team presents him with a financial bonus for the accomplishment.

Talk to the pitcher, however, and they’ll almost always acknowledge that a no-hitter is not something that happens in a vacuum.  In business, the sales process is no different. Yes, a salesperson is largely responsible for many of the key final steps that lead to a sale, but there are often myriad people in the background who contribute to that accomplishment, as well.

What Obamacare Can Teach About Appealing to Executives’ Value Curve

Every executive has unique priorities that are most relevant to his or her company’s strategic vision. Those priorities can be ranked on what I call the “value curve”—a ranking system shaped like a bell where the most important priorities reside at the top and the less relevant issues fall to one of the left or right flanks. For President Obama, the Affordable Care Act likely sits at the very top (or close to it) of his value curve. Good sales reps know that appealing to this “trigger event” would give them the best chance of getting the president to agree to a meeting.