For sales teams, the data value chain has never been more promising than it is right now. As your prospects go about their day, interacting with websites, smartphones and the social web, the behavioral data profile about them continues to grow. It’s possible to know more than ever about their product preferences, usage, interactions, peer […]

Bestselling author Chris Voss has negotiated some of the most difficult deals in history. As a lead negotiator for the FBI, he found himself in more than a few life-and-death situations. From his career in the FBI to his transition to being a business consultant, Voss consistently used a tactic to gain a powerful edge […]

The desk phone was once omnipresent in any work environment. But now, more and more companies are making the switch to VoIP. There can be several advantages to using browser-based telephony, including eliminating hardware costs and reducing telephony expenses. A key component of this shift is SIP trunking—a method of sending voice and other unified […]

Whoever said that 3.1 months was an acceptable sales onboarding ramp time must not have realized the implications of that statement, and they weren’t aware that many sales teams experience much longer ramp times. The reality is that this outdated standard is costing companies valuable time and money. Sure, it may have been unavoidable in […]

No matter how consistently you coach your reps or how well they’ve performed in the past, there are always times when sales teams struggle to hit their goals. This can be especially true at the end of a challenging quarter or year. Your reps may be giving it their all, but seem to be running […]

I know. It sounds like there should be a pill for that. Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It’s a well-known phenomenon named after the social psychologists who first documented it. (That would be Prof Dunning and Prof Kruger from Cornell.) The first part of the Dunning-Kruger effect, to put it in sales terms, […]

A predictive dialer is an outbound calling system that automatically dials from a list of telephone numbers, much like autodialers or robodialers. A predictive dialer automatically calls numbers until it detects a connection, then passes the call to a live agent. dialers screen out busy signals, voicemails, no-answers, disconnected numbers, and so on. So what […]

A sales team’s lead response, and everything that surrounds it, makes or breaks their success. At its core, lead response is the amount of time that it takes for a sales team to respond to an inbound lead sourced from their site, an advertisement, or a partner. However, the enablement of a rapid lead response […]

Too many sales conversations are falling flat and failing to engage potential customers. And according to Forbes, 74% of customers choose the first company that adds value. How can sellers use artificial intelligence (AI) on sales calls to engage prospects and help them see value in every single conversation? The key to success lies in […]

One of the most motivating factors for sales reps is their sales compensation, and it can help companies attract and creating top sales talent. Inside sales research from ZS and Reality Works found that 40% of large technology companies plan to increase their inside sales headcount. However, the sales talent space is extremely competitive and […]

Does a sales rep need a sales degree in order to meet quota? Should sales managers be exclusively scouting individuals who studied sales in college? According to a Harris Interactive survey, 35% of companies aren’t hitting quota, and U.S. employment firm CareerBuilder would have you believe that a lack of secondary education programs in sales is […]

What are the best sales books of all time? To find the true answer once and for all, we first took to Amazon and other sites to find the most popular sales books, ranked by the number of reviews and their ratings. We then decided to ask the sales industry itself by running a March […]