Here’s something that can’t happen with virtual selling: your buyer can’t have Security throw you out of their building. Which is too bad. Those are great and painful learning experiences. I flushed a multi-million dollar opportunity with a prospect in the LA area because of a simple driving error. It was an account I’d been […]

Cold calls are one of the most ubiquitous, debated, and disliked activities within sales. It’s very rare when someone actually wants to be cold-called, and very few salespeople actually like making them. Because of this, cold calling is often overlooked or avoided. However, the truth is that cold calls are an essential (and powerful) lead […]

What is the best time to make sales calls? We mined the 2019 call data from millions of sales calls to uncover which times of day are ideal for key sales activities, including the best time to make cold calls. The data in this post is based on connection rates – the percentage of all […]

We’ve said it before and we will say it again: cold calling is hard. But, every single sales team in every single industry absolutely must make them. If your team does any type of sales prospecting, your reps need colds to reach new leads, capture new clients, grow their network, and ultimately generate more revenue. […]

Cold calls can be one of the most difficult parts of sales, but there are some reps that excel at it. We took a look at the cold calling techniques used by the top sales performers to see what they did. They cold call when answer rates are highest A ringDNA analysis of over 130 […]

On average, sales development reps (SDRs) must make 9.1 sales calls before they connect with a lead. Each connection is valuable, and a lot needs to happen in those first crucial moments of cold calling: The SDR must do some relating, and get the prospect to like them. The SDR needs to effectively communicate value […]

There are many methods of communication in a sales rep’s toolkit. There are emails, texts, LinkedIn messages, and more, but nothing works quite like a phone call. Phone conversations the best way to engage with a prospect and elicit immediate results. Emails, texts, and so on are far too easily put-off, saved for later, ignored, […]

Cold calling is the hardest thing a salesperson or SDR is asked to do, and for many, it is expected to take up 70% of their time on the job. The result? 42% of reps struggle with prospecting. An anti-cold-call website claims 63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike about their jobs. […]

One of the best things about being in the sales profession is how much brilliant thought leadership is readily available. Some of the world’s top sales leaders are more than willing to share best practices with improvement-minded reps. And while the vast majority of tips, tactics and recommendations I see are beneficial, there are still […]

In sales, it’s absolutely essential to get your priorities straight. And yet, salespeople are often asked to multi-task.  There are always inbound leads to follow up with, lists to build, demos to give, emails to reply to and new prospects to dial. I even had a job once where I managed paid search campaigns in-between […]

Self-improvement guru Tony Robbins once said “successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” If you’ve just taken over an inside sales team, consider making this quote your mantra. We recently published an eBook entitled The 90-Day Inside Sales Success Plan. Inside, we interviewed some of the world’s top sales trainers, authors and executives. […]