Since releasing our Complete Guide to Inside Sales Analytics, I’ve had some time to reflect on what the most important sales metric is. While there are dozens of metrics that I believe sales leaders must track in order to succeed, one metric keeps sticking out in my mind, and it’s a fairly simple one: sales conversations […]

House of Cards is back for its forth season. This is just one of those shows that keeps getting better and better and I can hardly wait to see how the latest season ends (I envision some binge-watching in my future). If you’re new to House of Cards, it’s the story of Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey), […]

In my experience, one of the biggest differences between successful and unsuccessful sales reps has been the amount of sales conversations that they have each day. A lot of work goes into having a single successful sales conversation. The most successful reps follow up relentlessly, leverage tools to connect with more prospects and can keep qualified prospects on […]

Sales development reps (SDRs) are the lifeblood of many successful B2B sales teams. Unless you’re 100% relying on inbound leads, your SDRs need to source enough high quality opportunities for your account executives to hit their quota. If your SDRs are having a bad quarter or even a bad month, it can have catastrophic effects on your pipeline […]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: a newly hired sales rep spends a week or a few studying your sales playbook, then jumps on a phone call. The call is terrible. When so much is wrong with a phone call, do you address style, substance, personalization, opening remarks, the ask, closing remarks, or what? And […]

If your inside sales team is making a lot of calls and using Salesforce, it makes a lot of sense to integrate telephony and CRM as closely as possible. By adding voice capabilities to Salesforce, not only will reps reap massive productivity gains, but managers will also be rewarded with greater visibility into reps’ activities and outcomes. So if […]

I just got finished reading Salesforce’s recent eBook, which features 100 sales tips from a wide variety of sales and marketing leaders. What really struck me about this eBook is the vast ground that these actionable tips covered: from negotiating deals, to leveraging sales technology to using content to influence sales. “If you don’t ask, the answer […]

Recently, I had a conversation with the CRO of exciting SaaS startup. He had built sales development six months earlier and was frustrated with the results to date. Prior to his current role, he was Director of Sales for a well-established, big name company. Now at a startup, he faced no name recognition and next-to-no […]

There are so many factors that go into managing a sales development team. You need the right reps, a solid strategy and a repeatable sales process. However, one of the most important things that sales leaders need is insight into their SDRs’ activities. It seems simple enough, but unless you’re tracking the right data points […]

Sales operations professionals are often the unsung heroes of a sales team. Sure, you need seasoned closers to run deals into the end zone. But unless reps are using CRM properly and adhering to a sales process, deals that could have resulted in touchdowns will end up languishing near the 20-yard line. A great sales operations manager can make closing […]

Opportunities form the lifeblood of any sales organization. They are the glue between sales development reps (SDRs) and account executives. As your SDRs focus fervently on sourcing ops, your quota-carrying salespeople work tirelessly to transform those opportunities into closed/won deals. So if you want to predict revenue, you need to be able to predict opportunities. If you’re leading a B2B […]

The following is a guest post by John Lee Dumas, host of Entrepreneur on Fire and author of The Freedom Journal, your guide to accomplishing your #1 goal in 100 days. About one year ago, I realized something powerful as a result of hundreds of in-depth conversations with some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs: successful […]