Sales 2.0

Book notes: The Sales Acceleration Formula

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been using the summer to review some of the classic books in sales and marketing and refresh some of the fundamentals to building world-class “revenue engines” described.

I started with Mark Roberge’s book “The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million”.

The part of Mark’s book I like the most is about hiring salespeople. If you’re going to take advice on hiring salespeople, Mark seems like a great guy to trust in my opinion. He hired hundreds of salespeople over his time at Hubspot, while building their sales and services area from 1 employee (him) to 450 employees.

The first point Mark makes in this section of the book is a killer: “World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success”. He goes on to say, “Even if I was world-class at sales training, managing, coaching, and forecasting, it would not be enough to offset a team of mediocre salespeople.”

[Read more…]

Account Executive Inc.

by Leave a Comment

If you’re an AE, I recommend appointing yourself a small business owner.

Just like most small business owners you probably feel like you have no time. You may also feel unsupported by your company and that you need to do everything yourself.

Just like small business owners there are things you can do to make this situation a lot better. By doing so you will (a) sell more, (b) get a bigger commission check, and (c) be less stressed. Not a bad combo.

[Read more…]

How to be great at sales and still get sacked

by Leave a Comment

This is one I’ve seen several times over my (getting long) career. Someone is one of the top performers in a sales team and they still get sacked. How is this possible?

The trick is be super customer-focused and take the opposite approach when dealing with people in your own company.

The person that achieves this trick often says “I’m too busy selling to deal with the political nonsense in my company.” [Read more…]

Know thy products

by Leave a Comment

For those that have parachuted into this blog from Google, this is part of a series of posts about how to save your sales job. This first batch of ten posts is about preparing to go to market when you get that new sales gig or greenfield opportunity.

One of the things it’s well worth knowing (and the one your boss will likely get fixated on) is the products your company sells. [Read more…]

Build a time fortress

by Leave a Comment

Build a fortress around your prospecting time.

If you want to be a top sales person, this may be the single most important piece of advice I can give you.

In my last post I was talking about goals. You need goals to know where you want to go. You need goals for this week to know where you want to be at the end of this month. You need monthly goals to know where you want to be at the end of the year. And yearly goals to have a life you are happy with.

Blocking out time on your calendar is where the rubber hits the road. [Read more…]