Sales Blog

Negotiations are always a high-stakes, high-pressure period for salespeople and prospects who both have serious skin in the game.  Each team involved may have their own conflicting agendas. As a result, it's unlikely that every person at the bargaining table will walk away with exactly what they wanted.   Negotiation breakdowns in sales can happen for a number of reasons, including poor communication, short tempers, and sudden changes in an established plan.  Here are some strategies to avoid losing deals when negotiations go sideways: Consider Integrative Bargaining Historically, most sales negotiations have taken place with reps and prospects both holding their…

What Is An USP?  How many times have you stood between two seemingly identical coffee shops, unsure of which you should go to for your morning fix? It’d be easier to decide if one had a distinctive edge. Your choice here will be based on that coffee shop’s "unique selling proposition", or USP. What is a USP? A USP is a statement of the central features that differentiate your product from homogenous competitors, and pulls clients in. In saturated markets, prospects will likely have a hard time deciding between options. Your job is to assist them by having an obvious,…

Do you remember your first ever field sales role? Driving around frantically trying to find house numbers or business names in a neighborhood you’d never heard of? If your onboarding wasn’t efficient, you most likely kept this sense of disorientation for a few weeks or even months. We already know that the average new sales hire takes 11.2 months to start producing ROI. Starting a sales role is generally hard and confusing for your new reps and inefficient for the organization too. But this doesn't mean you should close the door to new hires and grads. After all, they can…

We are living in the age of the customer. The modern buyer has nearly unlimited access to customer reviews and product information. It does not matter if you are in sales or marketing, a customer-centric mindset is essential. To develop an organizational culture that puts the customer at the heart of everything you do both sales and marketing must align with the customers’ needs and pain points. Therefore, sales and marketing must join forces and understand each other better to optimize every step of the buyer’s journey and make it 100% customer-focused. As Jill Rowley, chief evangelist and an expert…