Sales 2.0

Book Notes: The Sales Manager Survival Guide

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A classic issue in sales forces is promoting one of the top performing sales reps to the manager of a sales team, then having them fail in this new role.

It can be a “triple whammy” for the company as they lose the revenue of a top performer, need to fill a critical “seat” in the sales organization and have a group of salespeople that are not performing to their full potential.

I just became much clearer on why this happens and what can be done about it, by reading just one section of David Brock’s book “The Sales Manager Survival Guide”.

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Book notes: No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls.

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I’ve been reviewing some key books in sales and marketing to refresh my knowledge of some of the fundamentals to building world-class “revenue engines”. I’m sharing my summaries here.

The second book I’m covering is No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls, by Latané Conant.

Latané’s book covers an area of marketing that I have long wondered about: Should you “gate” or should you not “gate” your content?

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Sales prospecting made easier

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I don’t understand why it is acceptable for a process like cold calling (now often started via email) to work one in a hundred times–or in email efforts one in a thousand times.

I used to work for a major semiconductor manufacturer. In the chip business “yield” from a silicon wafer is critical to profitability. Teams of people spend their life pushing to get a few more chips out of each silicon wafer.

I picture how a company in the high tech chip business could survive when only 1 in 100 of their chips was usable (or 1 in 1,000). Meanwhile most high tech companies accept this level of productivity in their sales departments. This content is for those who are not willing to accept those success rates.

This post describes a framework that I have found over the last two decades can really change the math on prospecting.

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Go through the motions

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In sales we need to go through the motions.

Our buyers are “frazzled” as Jill Konrath says.

Even if you use social selling techniques that get you a referral or help you connect to a potential buyer using your mutual background, it is still likely to take some follow up before you confirm a meeting time (or virtual meeting time these days).

Research from XANT looked at the optimal “cadence” for prospecting based on the masses of data available to them through companies’ usage of their software. Their study looked at 479,140 outbound cadences from nearly 9,000 companies.

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