Sales Productivity Tips from the Experts

SALES IDEAS
SALES PRODUCTIVITY
TIPS FROM
THE EXPERTS
Edited by
Mark Gibson and Rajesh Setty
2014 Edition

Table of Contents
Introduction by Mark Gibson and Rajesh Setty 05
Tips from the Experts :
1. Speak Truth to Power by Jeremy Epstein 07
2. Develop an Acute Ability to Listen by Ted Rubin 11
3. Leverage the Channel by Justin Pirie 15
4. Move on. Quickly! by Glenn Gow 18
5. The Sales and Marketing Conversation Should
Never be About You by Bob Apollo 20
6. Increase Your Revenue by Shifting Your Sales-
Energy Use by Nancy Nardin 23
7. If the Deal is Not Right, Make it Easy For Them to
Say No by Peter Winick 27
8. Do You Visualize Sales Success? by Andy Paul 30
9. Newsjacking Leads Buyers Directly Into Your
Sales Process by David Meerman Scott 34
10. Maximize ROI From Your Meetings by Lori Harmon 37
11. Social Selling <-> Thought Leadership <-> Micro
Marketing by Mitchell Levy 40
12. How the Options Strategy Can Grow Profits
by Mark Faust 44
13. Two Confessions of a Closet Slug to Help You Sell
Better by Jill Konrath 47
14. Show Up Powerfully by Mark Roberge 51
15. The New ABC: Always be Caring by Paul D’Souza 54

Table of Contents
Tips from the Experts :
16. Leverage the “Next Step” Strategy by Paul Kirch 58
17. Don’t Turn Hunters Into Beaters by Dan McDade 61
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18. It’s Not How You Sell, It’s How Your Prospects Buy
by Mark Gibson 64
19. Content Reuse can Accelerate Sales Cycles by Anil
Jwalanna
70
20. How to End a Sales Slump by Telling Stories by
Mike Bosworth
75
21. Follow a Sales Methodology by Linda Richardson 79
22. Live in Your CRM by Dave Kurlan 82
23. Kill Your Collateral by Corey Sommers 85
24. Harness the Power of Curation to Sell More by
Rajesh Setty
89
25.
It Is Difficult To Control External Events If You
Do Not Have Control Internally by Jonathan
Farrington
93
Previously Published eBooks 97
Why WittyParrot? 99
This eBook was brought to you by 100

Sales Productivity Tips From the Experts
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What is WittyParrot ?
WittyParrot is a platform for creating reusable content
components and delivering them via a drag and drop Widget
or API to any device or application to improve productivity,
message consistency and speed of response.
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Salespeople love WittyParrot because they can easily capture
and reuse personal information, and share their own best
solicitation emails and follow up letters with colleagues.
Marketers and sales enablement professionals love
WittyParrot as it lets salespeople instantly access the latest
version of sales and marketing content and adapt it for their
context, while preserving the value message.
The WittyParrot Component Content Delivery Platform
Brought you by www.wittyparrot.com

5
Introduction
When this project was first conceived, it took a while to pin
down a theme for this eBook.
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We were looking for that big idea.
We needed something relevant and of immediate value
to current readers but which will remain of value in the
future. In other words, we needed evergreen subject matter
consisting of unique insights from acknowledged experts.
Sales Productivity was a clear winner as the theme.
The entire journey from the day we hatched this concept has
been memorable.
As we started editing and packaging the book, we had to stop
and reflect on the depth of insights that were contributed.

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Illustrations from @gapingvoid were a big bonus. We couldn’t
wait to get it into your hands.
We want to thank all the contributors to this eBook for the
taking the time out of their busy lives to share their wisdom.
We are both confident that you will enjoy the book and we
welcome your comments.
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If you are interested in contributing to our next book or to our
blog, you can contact us below.
Mark Gibson | mark@wittyparrot.com
and
Rajesh Setty | raj@wittyparrot.com
Cupertino, Feb 2014

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1 SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
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About Jeremy Epstein
Jeremy Epstein is the VP of Marketing at Sprinklr
www.sprinklr.com, the leading provider of
enterprise Social Relationship Infrastructure.
Ranked #1 by Forrester Research, Altimeter, CEB,
and Econsultancy, Sprinklr provides a complete
solution comprised of 15 interconnected modules
on a single architecture to help large organizations
be social at scale. You can find him at
www.twitter.com/jer979
www.linkedin.com/in/jer979
by Jeremy Epstein

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SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
by Jeremy Epstein
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Whether you are selling a product or service, people want to buy
from people they like and trust. One of the best ways to gain trust is
to use it as a tool for relationship building.
Buyers know they are being sold. Their antennae are acutely tuned
to the fact that salespeople will try to flatter them, kiss up, and say
whatever they think they need to say in order to “close the deal.”
In reality, this puts a greater chasm between you and the prospect.
A better approach is to listen attentively to what the prospect is
saying and to find an area where you can DISAGREE with him or her.
Respectfully. Politely. Honestly.
But by disagreeing, you are doing something DIFFERENT. And any
sales or marketing professional worth his/her salt knows that
differentiation is critical to winning.
Taking this approach shows the prospect that you are atypical, that
you are not a “Yes-Man/Woman” and that you are going to speak

your mind to try and help them solve their problems.
Too often, people in power are surrounded by those who won’t
confront them. Examples abound.
Business failures (New Coke) or tragedy (Space Shuttle Challenger)
can result. They appreciate and respect those who will “tell it like it is.”
I’ve done this myself many times, but my favorite story comes from a
CEO friend of mine who was talking to the President of a global brand.
(I’ll protect the names, industries, and vendor category, but you’ll get
the idea).
The President had stated his opinion about a certain direction and
my CEO friend listened carefully. Then, he took a deep breath, stared
right into the eyes of the President and calmly said:
“We have a thesis that, as it relates to (the solution we provide) …that
everyone in your entire industry is fucked up.”
Yes, he said it like that.
Risky? Possibly.
But it did get the attention of the President…who said, “ok, tell me
why.”
Which the CEO promptly did.
At the end of the meeting, because he spoke truth to power, my CEO
friend closed the deal.
Not every meeting needs to be that dramatic, of course, but it makes
the point well, I think, wouldn’t you agree?
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So, next time you are in a meeting, do your traditional sales work.
Listen, take notes, seek to understand…and, at the right moment, find
a way to show that you are a free thinker and say so.
It will help you win the deal.
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“Speak Truth to Power” by @jer979 |
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Download free eBook here: http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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2 DEVELOP AN ACUTE
ABILITY TO LISTEN by Ted
Rubin
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About Ted Rubin
Ted Rubin is a leading Social Marketing Strategist,
Keynote Speaker, Brand Evangelist and Acting
CMO of Brand Innovators and in March 2009
started publicly using and evangelizing the term
ROR: Return on Relationship™. You can read more
about him at www.tedrubin.com

DEVELOP AN ACUTE ABILITY TO
LISTEN by Ted Rubin
What if your point of difference was an acute ability to
listen?
What would that look like?
Yes, I recognize listening alone may not set you apart from the
competition. From my experience, you may win more business using
your ears and eyes than with any other marketing strategy. That’s
because, with listening, you can understand your prospect, and that
understanding will help you win new business.
With all the sales training offered out there, the most often overlooked
and simplest to execute is the “art of listening.” Listening carefully
attracts more clients and closes more sales than talking constantly
about anything to do with you or the service you offer. Unfortunately,
the typical sales person always has something more to say and a
difficult time shutting up.
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The following can improve your listening skills:
Listen with your eyes as well as your ears. Use your eyes
and ears to show interest in your discussions with prospects. While
listening carefully, your eyes can detect body language that can
communicate information about what the person is saying and
thinking.
Don’t “overpower” prospects. You will meet prospects
that you know you can win over with your intelligence,
charisma, and confidence. If you treat these prospects
with condescension because you know immediately they
are within your grasp you will overpower and lose them.
Don’t argue with prospects. If a prospect makes a statement
that you strongly disagree with, do not get into an argument.
Diplomatically and respectfully discuss your opinion. Your sincere
respect for his or her point of view will build admiration and loyalty.
Your purpose is to encourage your prospect to speak freely and
opening… making you a friend and confidant.
Never knock off the competition. Remember that your
prospects might be good listeners too. If you speak negatively about
others, prospects may be uncomfortable giving you information
about themselves. Avoid attacking others to raise your status. This
tactic only makes you look petty, lacking in confidence in your own
skills, and will most certainly backfire.
Listen more than you talk. A sales call should be a dialogue — with
your prospect talking more than you. Listen to every requirement,
objection, and make note of as much personal information as
possible. The only time you should monopolize the discussion is
when you’re sure you have what they are looking for… and even that
discussion should involve questions and answers from the prospect.
As you can see, listening does not simply mean keeping your mouth
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shut. The true value in listening is what you learn, in addition to making
your prospect feel like they are being “heard.”
Listen, interpret, and display understanding. Concentrate on your
prospect’s tone, inflection, body language, and breathing. With these
clues, you’ll better understand the prospect, the needs, the wants, and
how you can satisfy that need.
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“Develop an Acute Ability to Listen” by @TedRubin |
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3 Learn to Leverage the
Channel by Justin Pirie
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About Justin Pirie
SaaS and Cloud Product and Go-To-Market
expert, scaling one of Europe’s largest SaaS
companies in America. More at
www.justinpirie.com

Learn to Leverage the Channel
by Justin Pirie
If you’re selling into the Enterprise, remember that most enterprises
prefer to buy though the established channels as they have prior
relationships with them.
For you, selling through the channel can however be a chicken and
egg problem- which one comes first? Without customers, the channel
isn’t interested, without channel, customers may not buy from you.
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But it doesn’t need to be that hard.
You need to execute two broad strategies to make your channel
strategy successful:
#1: Every time you secure a direct deal and it’s looking like it could
close- ask the customer who they like to buy from. Then approach the
channel partner and offer them margin for putting it on their paper.
They’ve just earned money for doing (almost) nothing. We call this
channel “pull”, where the channel is pulled into deals. Now you can

follow that deal up looking for other deals in their accounts.
#2: When you get a partner interested in joining your partner program,
treat them as if they’re part of your actual team rather than a separate
organisation. What are their goals? New business? Upsell? Cloud?
Services? Align your plans with what they’re looking to do, then do
the work for them. We’ll assign resources to channel partners to drive
their business, which drives ours.
Ultimately, sales relationships are built on the dollars and cents
transacted between vendors and partners. New vendors looking to
gain the attention of the channel need to put that front of mind when
engaging partners. They’re not going to do any heavy lifting until
you’ve cemented that relationship in revenue. Until then, it’s up to the
vendor to do it.
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“Learn to Leverage the Channel” by @justinpirie |
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4 Move On. Quickly!
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About Glenn Gow
Glenn Gow is founder and CEO of Crimson
Marketing, an expert in marketing strategy for
technology companies and author of the book
“Revenue and the CMO”. More about Crimson
Marketing at www.crimsonmarketing.com
by Glenn Gow

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Move On. Quickly!
by Glenn Gow
As a sales professional, your greatest asset is your time. The most
important thing you can do is ensure you are spending time with the
people who represent the greatest lifetime value for your business.
Another way to look at this is to spend as little time as possible with
anyone who represents a low lifetime value for your business.
You may be tempted to spend time talking with low value individuals
in the “hope” they can be valuable, or might become valuable. Or, even
worse, you spend time with them because it feels productive. The
more experienced you become, the faster you will realize that it’s a
flawed strategy.
The most important thing a sales professional can do is “Move On
– Quickly!” (politely and professionally) when you find yourself
spending time with the wrong person. This is the only way to guarantee
you will spend your precious time with the right people.
“Move On. Quickly!” by @CrimsonCEO |
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5 The Sales and Marketing
Conversation Should Never
be About You by Bob Apollo
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About Bob Apollo
Bob is CEO of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy
Partners. He works with B2B-focused businesses,
helping them to systematically transform their
sales and marketing performance. More at:
http://www.inflexion-point.com

The Sales and Marketing Conversation
Should Never be About You by Bob Apollo
It’s been said often enough, but it’s worth repeating: your prospects
(if they have any sense) are NOT interested in what you do. They are,
however, interested in what you could help them achieve, and they
are even more interested in what you have already helped other
organisations like theirs to achieve.
They don’t want to hear that what you do is faster, cheaper or better
than your competitors, because they expect all suppliers to say
that, and they expect them all to lie (usually with good justification).
That sort of messaging goes in one ear and out of the other without
stopping in between.
In addition to what you have achieved for other organisations like
their own, they want to understand what sets you apart. They want
to understand how your approach is distinctively different, because
that’s the sort of information that might make them sit up, pay
attention, and remember what you’ve just said.
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They want to be educated. They want to learn from the experiences
of others. They want you to give them the full picture, warts and
all, and not sweet-talk them with impossible to deliver promises or
claims. They want you to tell them how it is. They want you to help
them navigate the obstacles that might stand in their way.
And once you have won their trust, they want (and need) you to help
them sell the need for the change and the benefits of your approach
to their colleagues across the organisation. They want you believe
that you will be a reliable partner before they decide to do business
with you.
But if you insist - as so many other organisations do - on basing your
marketing messages and your sales conversations about what you
do, your failure should come as no surprise.
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“The Sales and Marketing Conversation Should
Never be About You” by @bobapollo |
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6 Conduct a Sales Energy
Audit: Increase Revenue
by Shifting Your Sales-
Energy Use. by Nancy Nardin
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About Nancy Nardin
Top Sales Productivity and Tools Expert: Top 50
Retweeted Vendors by B2B Marketers, Named
Top 25 Sales Bloggers (HubSpot), Named Top 25
Sales Industry Influencers 2013 (OpenViewLabs
and InsideView) Named 20 Women to Watch in
Sales Lead Management 2012 & 2013 (SLMA).
More at www.smartsellingtools.com

Conduct a Sales Energy Audit:
Increase Revenue by Shifting Your
Sales-Energy Use.by Nancy Nardin
Twenty years ago, the connection between energy efficiency and
environmental benefits was poorly understood by the general
population. Today, nearly everyone agrees that it’s important to save
energy. Business owners and corporations are stepping up their
efforts as well, recognizing that saving energy adds to the bottom line.
And that last sentence is a bit of an under-statement.
But there is another way that businesses can benefit by improving
its use of energy. In this case, I’m referring to its use of Sales Energy.
Each salesperson in your team has a limited amount of sales energy
(or sales capacity) to use throughout the year. Tallying up the sales
capacity for your team or entire organization will give you your over-all
sales capacity. As a rule-of-thumb, we estimate there are 215 selling
days totaling 1720 hours per rep.
Here is the important take-away: You maximize revenue when you
optimize the use of that limited capacity. Auditing how your sales
representatives use sales capacity is not much different from
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conducting an energy audit in your home. Home energy auditors take
a look at a number of factors such as the orientation of your home to
the sun and the type of windows and insulation. They can estimate
the energy wastes and tell you what to do to conserve and lower your
energy bill.
To make sure you’re getting optimal use of Sales Energy, you’ll want to
conduct a Sales Energy Audit. The end-goal is to reduce the energy
waste (sales capacity spent on non-selling tasks) and increase the
output of your use of energy (revenue).
The first step in a Sales Energy Audit is to assess the amount—and
use of—energy used during each stage in the sales cycle and for
administrative/operational tasks.
The easiest method is for you as the Sales Manager to make your best
guess at the total number of hours, or the percentage of time, spent
talking with prospects and the total spent on everything else.
A more comprehensive audit would include interviewing reps. If you
were to ask them, you’d likely find that salespeople will report-back
a far different estimate. It can get complicated. That’s why, as with
home energy audits, it’s useful to have an outside company like Smart
Selling Tools perform the evaluation.
Research has shown that on average 35% of a Sales Rep’s time is spent
selling, remanding the bulk of their time—65%—to other activities.
Where it gets interesting is when you calculate the potential increase
in revenue made possible by a slight shift in those percentages.
According to our Sales Efficiency Principle, a small shift of time-use
results in a significantly higher percentage gain in revenue.
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The challenge for sales organizations is to realize that sales capacity
is limited. There are a finite number of days and hours in a sales year.
A close examination of sales capacity utilization will tell you whether
you’re getting the highest amount of output possible from your use of
sales energy.
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“Increase Your Revenue by Shifting Your Sales-Energy
Use” by @sellingtools | cov-er
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7 If the Deal is Not Right,
Make it Easy for Them to
Say No. by Peter Winick
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About Peter Winick
Peter enables thought leaders, authors and
gurus to monetize their content through books,
keynote speaking, the creation of training
services and products and consulting and
assessment tools. More at
www.thoughtleadershipleverage.com

If the Deal is Not Right, Make it
Easy for Them to Say No. by Peter Winick
Sales, especially B2B complex sales involve the buy-in of many parties
and the investment of a significant amount of time, resources and
energy from both the buyer and the seller. You want to get to “Yes”
(assuming the deal is a solid deal for all parties) but the reality is that a
“No” happens. In fact, it probably happens to most salespeople more
than a “Yes” happens.
If a “No” is going to happen your preference should be to have it
happen sooner, rather than later. Value your time and resources and
manage your pipeline like you would a portfolio. Weed out the
non-performers (the no’s) and focus your attention on those that have
the highest possibility of being a Yes. If you are like most salespeople,
you keep deals on life support far longer than you should. When a
prospect is dragging their feet, when they keep asking you to circle
back in two months, when they become unresponsive, when you know
from experience it isn’t going to happen than you need to have “the
talk” with them.
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Many prospects don’t like to say No, it makes them uncomfortable and
they make actually like you but know they won’t be doing business with
you but string you along for months on end. When I have accounts that
are not moving anywhere or are moving at a glacial speed I try to give
them permission to “end our relationship” or “just be friends”. I might
let them know that we’ve been discussing issue X for Y months and
that we’ve spent a lot of man hours and invested a lot in the process
but it doesn’t appear that the timing is right or the solution is a fit.
Would it be ok if I stopped following up?
Often just framing it in a way that makes it less uncomfortable for
them to be frank is in everyone’s best interest.
Give it a shot-- a no is better sooner than it is later.
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“If the Deal is Not Right, Make it Easy for Them to Say No”
by @PeterWinick |Download free eBook here:
http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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8 Do You Visualize Sales
Success? by Andy Paul
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About Andy Paul
Andy Paul is author of the award-winning
book, Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to
Accelerate Every Company’s Sales. A sought-after
speaker and business coach, Andy conducts
training, coaches and consults with CEOs and
sales teams to teach them practical selling
strategies that use responsiveness, speed and
simple sales processes to increase sales. More
at www.zerotimeselling.com

Do You Visualize Sales Success?
by Andy Paul
Do you dream about being successful in sales?
Or do you visualize your sales success?
Do you dream about winning the order?
Or, do you visualize the actual steps you will take to help your prospect
make the winning purchase decision?
You only have only a limited number of opportunities to interact in
meaningful way with each prospect during their buying cycle. As I
write in my book, Zero-Time Selling, the era of the ad hoc sales call is
finished. Your prospects don’t have the time to waste on unproductive
sales calls with sellers that do not provide them anything of value, that
do not help them move closer to making a decision.
This means that when you have the opportunity to engage with a
prospect you should leave nothing to chance. You have to be prepared.
One crucial step of preparation for each sales call is to use a simple
visualization technique. For each upcoming sales call with your
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prospects, whether it is in-person, online or on the phone, do you
mentally establish a goal and a desired outcome for that interaction?
And then, do you mentally walk through the steps you need to
accomplish to achieve that outcome?
This is a necessary discipline that salespeople need to practice and
sales managers have to coach their direct reports to use.
There are three easy steps for visualization that you can exercise to
improve your sales results.
1. Establish a Desired Outcome for Each Sales Call
What is the outcome that you envision for the sales call? (This could be
a phone call, video chat, in-person). The outcome needs to be defined
in terms of an action your prospect will take to move one step closer
to making a decision.
2. Mentally Practice the Steps You Will Take During the Call
What is the process you will follow, what are the series of steps you will
take, that will result in the outcome you desire? Identify and practice
the specific questions you will ask the prospect.
3. Anticipate the Prospect’s Answers and Follow-on Questions
You have to mentally visualize the “if-thens” that could occur during
the sales call. What this means is that if the prospect asks question
A; then what will be your response? If the customer asks Question B,
then how will you respond? You need to know how you are going to
answer those questions before you speak with the prospect. Create
a list of these questions and visualize how you will answer them. If
you want to be extra-prepared use a colleague or a manager to help
you role-play and rehearse important sales calls. You can’t anticipate
with 100% accuracy every question the prospect may ask, but you can
prepare.
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Remember that an important sales call is the time for preparation, not
improvisation.
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“Do You Visualize Sales Success?” by @ZeroTimeSelling”
|Download free eBook here: http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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9 Newsjacking Leads
Buyers Directly Into
Your Sales Process
by David Meerman Scott
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About David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a Marketing & Sales
Strategist, keynote speaker, and bestselling
author of 9 books including “The New Rules of
Marketing & PR” and “Newsjacking”. More at
www.webinknow.com

Newsjacking Leads Buyers Directly
Into Your Sales Process
by David Meerman Scott
The idea of newsjacking is quite simple: it is the art and science of
injecting your ideas into breaking news, in real-time, in order to
generate media coverage and social attention for yourself or your
business.
Thousands of people have used the technique to get their take into
news stories like when marketers at Oreo Tweeted an image with
the line “You can still dunk in the dark” during the 2013 Super Bowl
blackout. That one tweet generated attention from millions.
Today’s online tools can notify you instantly when something is said
about your industry or marketplace. By monitoring keywords and
phrases on the web and Twitter, you will instantly see the stories that
you might be able to contribute to.
Many companies now use newsjacking not just as a PR technique but
also as a tool to generate sales leads and drive new business. It works
even in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.
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For example, consider what Jeremy Harrison of MultiCare Health
System, an integrated health organization made up of hospitals,
primary care and urgent care clinics, multi-specialty centers, Hospice,
Home Health, and other services, located in Washington state did.
Jeremy says that they sprung to action, publishing real-time content to
become a part of a conversation happening online after an emotional
episode of Downton Abbey dealing with eclampsia.
Jeremy and his team wrote a blog post right away and shared it on
Facebook and Twitter. The post “Doctor Q&A: ‘Downton Abbey’
Highlights Dangers Of Eclampsia” that was available the day after
the episode aired in January 2013 right when people were discussing
eclampsia. Within the blog post were links where interested people
could learn more or book an appointment with a physician.
The team shared on Facebook and on their @MultiCareHealth with
this tweet: “Wondering about #eclampsia after last night’s Downton
Abbey? We’ve got answers here.
The blog post quickly generated well over 1,000 pageviews, with people
spending an average of five minutes on the page.
Jeremy can directly trace about 30 clicks through to the MultiCare Find
a Physician page in their Women’s & Children’s careline, with some of
those people booking appointments.
Newsjacking helped drive people into MultiCare’s buying process.
Being a part of the conversations around breaking news stories can
drive sales for your business too.
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“Newsjacking Leads Buyers Directly Into Your Sales Process”
by @dmscott | Download free eBook here: http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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10 Maximize ROI From Your
Meetings by Lori Harmon
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About Lori Harmon
Lori Harmon is a veteran high-tech executive
with more than 25 years of strategic and
operational experience in all major functional
areas including, sales, support, and marketing
for some of Silicon Valley’s leading companies.
Lori is the CEO and Founder of Quantum Sale
helping companies maximize revenue through
optimizing their Sales and Sales Operations
organizations.

Maximize ROI From Your Meetings
by Lori Harmon
Did you know? Sixty-five percent of a typical sales rep’s time is
spent on activities that do not generate new sales. With only 215 selling
days in a year, Sales management has to be very conscious that they,
the executive management team and other functional groups, do not
create time wasters for their Sales team. The individual reps have to
stick to the sales process and push back on unnecessary interruptions
in order to manager their time.
Meetings if not planned well, can be big time wasters. In a best practices
environment, meetings should be limited to two hours per week and
scheduled outside of the optimal calling hours.
This means if there is an important company meeting one week;
another regular meeting may have to be cancelled. It also requires
meetings be run efficiently and on time. Whenever possible, represent
your team at meetings with other functional groups.
Often sales is invited to meetings that have no value to them, so these
should be declined or pre-screened by management.
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However, some meetings are unavoidable! To maximize the
effectiveness of meetings for your team, a sales manager has to be
an effective meeting planner, organizer and leader. Set an agenda
with specific times for each topic and stick to it. If you are doing a by
person forecast update and each rep has three minutes, stop them
when they have used up their three minutes and have the rest of the
conversation one-on-one so they are not taking time away from the
other reps. Train and expect your reps to come to meetings prepared
and able to efficiently explain key updates and points to their forecast.
By avoiding these time pitfalls, your sales team will have more time to
sell and will be able to maximize their sales.
Think about it: What can you do to make the most of your meetings?
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“Maximize ROI From Your Meetings” by @loriharmon |
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11 Social Selling <==>
Thought Leadership
<==> Micro Marketing by
Mitchell Levy
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About Mitchell Levy
Mitchell Levy is the CEO and Thought Leader
Architect at THiNKaha and co-host of Thought
Leader Life. Read more and connect to him at
About.me.

Social Selling <==> Thought
Leadership <==> Micro Marketing
by Mitchell Levy
Thought leadership is a heavily used term these days, but is it
overused?
Some may say so.
You shouldn’t.
For the sales professional, it represents the opportunity to change
with the times. With the growing customer empowerment, 60-80% of
the buying cycle is now transparent to the sales professional and the
seller. Good for the customer, bad for the sales professional. How can
you stay relevant in these changing times?
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Social selling.
It’s no longer the task/privilege of the sales professional to educate

the buyer at the beginning of the sales cycle. It’s the sales professionals’
responsibility to be a trusted advisor.
You need to be the expert on your product and its use in the vertical
that you sell into (e.g. the thought leader).
Aha #10 from my book #CREATING THOUGHT LEADERS (2013,
THiNKaha) says “The thought leader you want to be is one who wants
to share knowledge and help people be more successful.”
The buyer needs to feel comfortable that you have their best interest
at heart, that you will guide them to the right solution that fits their
needs and that you’ll be around when they either need help or have
problems using it.
Aha #47 says that “Thought leaders are known; they are recognized.
Rightly or wrongly, they are more trusted.”
This is social selling. Two of its key advocates are Jill Rowley @jill_rowley
from Oracle and Julio Viskovich @JulioVisko from Hootsuite.
The change in the sales cycle they are advocating is to encourage all
sales professionals to be thought leaders. From this sharing of thought
leadership, sales professionals essentially become their own micro
marketers. This doesn’t mean they have to come up with the thought
leadership content to share.
It’s sales responsibility to look to marketing to supply the thought
leadership content they need. Marketing should be supplying content
that sales can curate to make their own. Check out the THiNKaha App
on iTunes to help with this sharing.
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To stay relevant in this shift of the buying cycle, you must start deploying
social selling (e.g. become a thought leader, a micro marketer). Who
knows, you may even like it. Aha #140 “Being a thought leader is one of
the most rewarding positions in life. Why not work to make it yours?”
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“Social Selling <-> Thought Leadership <-> Micro Marketing”
by @happyabout | Download free eBook here:
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http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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12 How the Options Strategy
Can Grow Profits By Mark Faust
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About Mark Faust
Mark is a growth advisor and professional
speaker and founder of
www.EchelonManagement.com.
His bestselling book “Growth or Bust! Proven
turnaround strategies to grow your business”
is available at all retail Barnes and Noble
stores. Sign up for Mark’s 1000 tweets towards
growth at @MarkFaustSr

How the Options Strategy Can
Grow Profits By Mark Faust
I have used this sales productivity strategy to literally save clients from
bankruptcy and it has done more to increase sales productivity than any
appointment setting ploy or time management tactic. It will improve
your closing ratios, average customer share and overall profitability.
The point is to give a set of options to say yes to. Customers can’t
spend more with you if they aren’t aware of the value offered through
your highest priced and best options.
Because many are vexed by the question, “What should we charge?”
“What is their investment threshold?” or worse, “Did we leave too
much on the table?” an effective way to overcome those concerns,
reduce haggling, unnecessary negotiations and close more deals is
to offer a set of options rather than just a yes / no decision. Buyers
can negotiate with themselves as to how deeply they want to engage
your services or invest in your products by choosing just one, all or a
combination of your options.
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Some call it “giving a choice of yeses.”
Give your team the tools to offer flexibility in options without implying
to customers that there is flexibility in price. Negotiate value/options,
rather than negotiating away your profits by cutting your price. If your
team is concerned about going over your customers’ budget, show
them how they can reduce the amount of services/product/value
you will deliver, keep price integrity and yet still secure a profitable
engagement.
Big Sales Increases Can Come from Little Tweaks
Imagine a company that is struggling for survival, and your sales team
has a current closing ratio of 25% and with ideas like the above you
can increase it to 35%. Now imagine with the tactic of asking for more,
by offering bigger options, you are able to increase the average size
of orders by 25%. The synergy of these two leverage points may very
well enable you to increase sales by 50% to 80% and profit margins by
a few significant points as well.
Most every company can create a “gold, silver and bronze” version of
their offerings. Whether gold is adding guarantees and added service
offerings or simply longer term engagements, gold offerings will deliver
more value to the right customers as well as improved profits for your
bottom line. Investing time on a regular basis to innovate how you
package your offerings will often be as profitable as R&D and at much
less the costs. Give your customers a choice of yeses, and watch “no’s”
decrease and profits increase.
“How the Options Strategy Can Grow Profits”
by @MarkFaustSr | Download free eBook here
http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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13 Two Confessions of a
Closet Slug to Help You
Sell More by Jill Konrath
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About Jill Konrath
Jill Konrath’s career is defined by her relentless
search for fresh sales strategies that actually
work in today’s business environment. She’s the
author of two bestselling sales books and is a
popular speaker who helps sellers crack into
new accounts, speed up sales cycles and win
more business. You can learn more about her
at http://www.jillkonrath.com/

Two Confessions of a Closet Slug to
Help You Sell More by Jill Konrath
How will I get it all done? There’s more here to do than is humanly
possible. All this email is killing me.
That’s what’s going through my mind right now. I’ve been at my desk
since 7:30 this morning. I ate lunch in my office because there was no
time to go out. I was on the computer or on conference calls for hours.
Yet, at the end of the day, I’ve barely made a dent in my To Do list. Is it
any wonder that I’m feeling overwhelmed?
But here’s the truth. I like telling people I’m crazy-busy. It makes me
sound important. Necessary. In demand.
And, even worse. I use my time poorly. I make bad choices all day long
that contribute to this predicament I’m in. Just this morning, a
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hyperlink in newsletter article resulted in me squandering a half hour
on interesting but low priority work.
I let this happen too often. I know better. On days when I identify my
key priorities upfront, barricade myself from interruptions and don’t
check email all the time, I get a tremendous amount done. Plus, I have
lots of time to do fun things.
In reality though, I default far too often to this slothful behavior. I
know I’m not alone in this area. But, it does have its upside …
How I Learned to Compensate for Being a Slug
Because efficiency is not my strength, I developed other strategies
to be successful. You see, being productive isn’t just about being a
disciplined taskmaster. It also is about being highly effective.
Here are two strategies I leveraged to achieve sales success.
1. Precision Prospecting
Working with companies that have urgent and compelling needs leads
to shorter sales cycles and less competition. When I stumbled across
the concept of “trigger events” over 20 years ago, I was ecstatic.
What are trigger events? They’re happenings either in a company,
industry or general business climate that create opportunities for
someone to use your products or services.
Examples might be a new VP of Sales, stagnant 1st quarter earnings,
a new strategic direction, new legislation, increased gas prices or
multiple visits to your website.
When I first started using this strategy, I leveraged the local business
press to identify those opportunities. It’s still a good resource. But
today you can Google Alerts as well as services offered by technology
companies.
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Using these “alert services” is the best way I know to get good business
– quickly.
2. Quality Connections
To me, every contact with a prospective customer is invaluable. I’m
talking about every email, voicemail, phone call, online meeting or
presentation.
I know the key concerns of my primary decision makers. I invest time
doing research on the company or industry.
I spend time planning, to ensure that ruthless relevance in my
messages. I try to quickly demonstrate my knowledge so they know
I’m a credible resource. I write down the questions I want to ask. And, I
know the logical next step that I’ll suggest at the end of a conversation.
What is the impact? Fewer phone calls or emails. Fewer prospects. But
more sales and bigger sales.
The Big Challenge
But it all comes down to this. For maximum impact, we need to be
both efficient and effective. And, most of all, to lead the kind of life you
really want to live – meaning having time for all the things you want to
do – it’s important to gain control of how you spend your time.
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What are you doing to make that happen?
“Two Confessions of a Closet Slug to Help You Sell Better”
by @jillkonrath | Download free eBook here:
http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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14 Show Up Powerfully
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About Mark Roberge
Mark is Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot
Inbound Sales Division. Prior to this role, Mark
served as HubSpot’s SVP of Worldwide Sales
and Services from 2007 to 2013, during which
time he increased revenue over 6,000% and
expanded the team from 1 to 450 employees.
You can learn more about HubSpot at
www.hubspot.com
by Mark Roberge

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Show Up Powerfully
by Mark Roberge
1. Be a Digital Thought Leader to Your Prospects
Imagine this. Prospects are willing to rearrange their schedule to
hear you speak. Better yet, the topic of the discussion is the value
proposition that your company brings to the market.
That can happen! Make a goal for 2014 to become a respected
thought leader to your prospects on the topics they care about and
the problems you solve. Here is how to do it.
Take two hours per week that you would have spent prospecting and
re-invest the time in digital networking. Follow the current thought
leaders in your space on Twitter. Retweet, their stuff. They will likely
follow you. They will likely Retweet, your stuff. Follow their blogs.
Comment on their blogs. They will comment back. Ask them if they
will guest post on your blog. Offer to interview them. Offer to submit
a guest post for their blog. Prospects follow these thought leaders

today. Now they will start following you and, in turn, asking for your
advice.
Follow this process for two months and then reflect whether those
two hours per week would have been better spent prospecting. You
will be amazed on how game changing that time becomes. I am not
saying stop prospecting. I am just suggesting that sales people re-think
prospects start their buying journey with an online search.
2. Use Technology to Listen to the Market
Your last sales call just ended. You have 20 minutes before your next
appointment. Time for some prospecting. Who do you call?
As an industry, we have done a poor job of addressing this question.
Sales people often bring up their prospecting list and sort by Last
Touch or even worse, alphabetically.
A better answer would be the last person that opened a prospecting
email or visited your website or connected with your CEO on social
media. The number of online buying signals from our prospects is
increasing every day but we are not listening. There is an explosion
of tools built for the sales person that help save time and increase
productivity. I believe there is a big opportunity for sales people to
adopt these tools in 2014 and make more money in less time.”
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the way they invest their time in an era when more and more
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“Show Up Powerfully” by @markroberge |
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54
15 The New ABC of Sales …
Always Be Caring ! by Paul
D’Souza
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About Paul D’Souza
Paul D’Souza is the Author of the sales book
“The Market Has Changed... Have You?” Paul
is also a Speaker on the primary subject of
accessing one’s creative genius while engaged
in the business of life and living. Paul serves
as the Vice President of Sales at Top Gun Sales
Performance in Cincinnati, OH. You can learn
more at www.topgunhq.com

The New ABC of Sales … Always Be
Caring ! by Paul D’Souza
“The market has changed”! could really be the understatement of
the decade. ABC in sales used to mean “Always Be Closing”; as most of
you would remember.
It came from a time when customers tolerated obnoxious and
manipulative sales people. Simply because they (the customers) did
not have very many choices available to them, like we do now today.
In those days, they referred to “Closing” a deal as the transaction that
really, if you think about it … “Started” a new relationship.
The market “Has” changed and buyer behavior has changed and so
should your thinking, speaking and acting.
Linguistics really do set the stage for how we act. They set the mood
if you will. And our thinking impacts how we speak. So thinking about
how you can serve your clients, will create the space for you to ask a
different type of question. A question that will demonstrate how much
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you really “Care”, once you do that; simple math takes over. The
more people you care about, the more opportunities you will have to
start relationships of trust.
Ok, so that is the outline of the strategy but you would really like to
see how this impacts everyday sales activity, right? You want a tip for
crying out loud! I get it. I present to you my...
Hybrid Cold Calling Strategy
This strategy is hybrid, because it leverages Google Searches, LinkedIn,
Cold Calls via the Telephone and email. It has produced a conversion
rate of over 65% in the last 3 months that I have used it. It is totally
anchored in demonstrating how much I care.
Step 1 - Identify Your Prospect
I take the time to get clear about who I am reaching out to and why I
believe it would a valuable relationship for both of us. This is key. Do
your research and be clear about how you can have a positive impact
on your prospects life. Do it right or go find something else to do.
Step 2 - Reach Out
1. Leverage LinkedIn to see who they are and what is important to
2. Find their office number and leave them a VM and refer to the
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them. Send them a LinkedIn Request to get connected as a
friend. In this email be brief and tell them you want to talk
about something that you think will help them.
LinkedIn Request.
3. If you have their email address, send them an email as well.
Introduce yourself, be brief and tell them why you believe in all
your heart they should get back to you.

Step 3 - Care
Once you connect, talk about how you want to learn more about
what is important to them and take the conversation down the path
of brainstorming how you could potentially help them solve their
problem. Create the space for them to talk about their problems
and the consequences they will have to face if they do not get them
fixed. Offer guidance and genuinely find ways to help them; either by
something you do yourself or make a referral to someone you know
and trust who can help them.
If it makes good sense to do business … then do business.
In Conclusion:
This approach works - because it will always produces trust; a basic
a requirement for any meaningful relationship between two people.
Now since sales is fundamentally a human relationship; anchored
in a transaction, you have a high probability of having a meaningful
relationship that is beneficial to both parties.
Whether someone transacts with you today or not is secondary. They
might very well make a referral to someone else who needs your
services tomorrow and then come back to you when the time is right
for them to transact with you.
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“The New ABC: Always Be Caring” by @pdsouza |
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16 Leverage the “Next
Step” Strategy by Paul Kirch
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About Paul Kirch
Paul Kirch is known as an accomplished sales
and sales management professional, though his
background is so much broader. He is currently
the President/CEO of Actus Sales Intelligence, a
sales intelligence agency, known for helping its
clients “sell smarter.”

Leverage the “Next Step” Strategy
by Paul Kirch
First, understand that I’m a firm believer in building relationships with
my clients. Note, I said clients and not customers. We build relationships
with our clients, leading to greater loyalty. Whereas customers tend
to be more transactional interactions, which are less focused on the
relationship and more on an exchange of currency for goods.
My goal is to establish trust with my clients and any prospects I hope to
turn into a client. Therefore, I look for ways to make their lives better,
in hopes that they’ll think of me first when they need my services or
even my advice. My goal isn’t to provide value, but to provide the
most value possible, leaving them wanting more. If you really care
about them, then this is not hard. My favorite approach is to always
be thinking about how you’re going to serve them next. Also, you
can’t build a mutually beneficial relationship with them if they do not
become a client. This doesn’t mean you can’t have loyal prospects, but
generally that leads to a one-sided relationship where you’re doing all
of the giving and not receiving any benefit.
Therefore, it’s important that our efforts lead to a sale. We do this
by remembering to always leverage a “next step” strategy. Every call,
email, webinar, or other sales effort must be focused on the next move.
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If you pre-plan your interactions, you can develop a strategy that keeps
the process flowing. For example, if you meet a new prospect at an
event, how can you schedule the next meeting? If you just provided
a capabilities presentation, perhaps you can set them up with a
demonstration tool, letting them know that you’ll follow up to find out
their experience. What’s the next step? Perhaps it’s introducing them
to your support manager. No matter the interaction, keep focusing on
the next step. This requires planning and engaging them, but there’s
no faster path to a sale than this. What if your sales process is online?
It’s no different. All communication must lead them to another stage.
If you make the communication valuable, they will come back wanting
more.
There’s a time and place for marketing material, but it doesn’t always
fit into a next step strategy, unless there’s a follow up strategy in place.
For example, you might have a one page overview of your product
offering that you know they’ll be interested in. Immediately schedule
the follow up conversation. Case studies, white papers, articles,
competitive intelligence and countless other value-based items can be
powerful tools to execute that next step in the sales cycle. No matter
your strategy and the tools you have, focused on getting them to buy
while providing value. Once they purchase from you, the opportunity
to get them to be a repeat buyer goes up exponentially, especially
with a value-based approach, such as a next-step strategy.
Stop finding customers and focus on creating clients. If you do, you’ll
never struggle for sales again
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“Leverage the “Next Step” Strategy” by @paulkirch |
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17 Don’t Turn Hunters Into
Beaters by Dan McDade
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About Dan McDade
Dan McDade founded PointClear in 1997 to help
B2B companies with complex sales processes
drive more revenue through effective prospect
development.
Dan is the author of The Truth About Leads, an
insightful book that sheds light on the little-known
secrets that help focus B2B lead-generation efforts,
align sales and marketing organizations and drive
revenue.

Don’t Turn Hunters Into Beaters
by Dan McDade
Don’t Turn Hunters into Beaters. Hunters need to focus on closing
business, not beating the bushes looking for it!
A dedicated lead qualifying and nurturing group to keep your hunters
focused on closing business.
Set up a hybrid marketing/sales function in the form of a dedicated
group that can be either internal or an outsourced prospect
development firm. This group applies qualifying and nurturing skills to
assure all steps in the qualifying and nurturing process are correctly
addressed. Real, sales-ready, leads are then handed off to sales for
engagement and the close.
The group’s approach combines multiple touches, multiple media
(outbound calls, voice mail messages, personalized email and direct
mail), and multiple-cycle contact across the number of sales cycles
needed until the window of opportunity is reached.
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How this fixes the forecast: Sales is able to more efficiently focus on
what it does best: engage with highly qualified prospects and move
them toward win status.
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“Don’t Turn Hunters Into Beaters” by @dandade |
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18 It’s Not How You Sell, It’s
How Prospects Buy
by Mark Gibson
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About Mark Gibson
Mark heads the global marketing team at
WittyParrot as VP - Marketing.
Mark is an experienced sales and marketing
professional and consultant, with 30 years of
international sales, marketing and business
development success.
Since founding Advanced Marketing Concepts
in the UK in 2004, Mark has consulted to B2B
companies selling to the early market and has
helped established companies to overcome
the weak pipeline, no lead-flow and weak sales
engagement problems caused by weak messaging

It’s Not How You Sell, It’s How
Prospects Buy by Mark Gibson
The 2013 sales results are in for B2B companies and they are
disappointing.
Sellers are struggling and buyers are in charge.
Is it time to align our sales and marketing organizations around how
buyers actually buy and to develop a language and process that
efficiently facilitates the buyer’s journey?
Findings in CSO Insights 2014 Sales Performance Optimization Survey
indicate that in 2013:
• Only 58.2% of reps made quota,
• The burden for surfacing leads continues to fall on salespeople
• Salespeople are having more difficultly converting qualified leads
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to first conversations.
• Win rates of forecast deals are lower on a year-over-year basis.
• Poor forecast accuracy is a sales management problem to be
addressed

Scott Santucci from analyst firm Forrester, suggests that leads fail to
make it through the sales process at least 80% of the time.
What is poorly understood is why and what levers to pull to address
the issues above.
Looking through the Wrong Lens?
Sales performance metrics are derived from sales qualification steps
and the general approach of forecasting based on the sales funnel is
obsolete.
Sales funnel process and metrics were inherited from an era when
salespeople were “masters-of-the-universe”, as described by Tom
Wolfe.
While buying behavior has changed radically, sales and marketing
organizations are change resistant and struggling to adapt.
A symptom of the problem and contributor to forecasting inaccuracy
is that salespeople typically think their sales opportunity is one or two
steps in advance of where the buyer actually is in the buying cycle.
Buyers are in Charge of their Buying Process
Much recent debate about the point at which salespeople are
engaged in the buying process motivated me to write an in-depth
review of buying-selling process, which is soon to be published under
a provisional title, “The End of Selling”
Buyers acquire technology products with or without the help of the
vendor and will engage sellers based on their tolerance for risk. Early
adopters have a higher tolerance for risk and will engage vendors
earlier in their buying process.
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A Universal Buying Process
There is a universal process that all organizations and individuals follow
to reach purchasing decisions exceeding the disposable monetary
threshold. This process is universal and linked to human nature,
which explains why it does not vary across cultures.
Every purchase goes through predictable steps formally or informally,
with or without the vendor.
It’s easy to remember as it has huge I-M-P-A-C-T on organizational
performance.
IMPACT is a concept from the book “Why Killer Products Don’t Sell” by
Dominic Rowsell and Ian Gotts
Mapping the Buying Process onto the Selling System.
IMPACT Steps
I – Identify | Someone or something (e.g.: brainstorming) triggers the
need for an investigation into satisfying a competitive disadvantage,
need to reduce risk, or achieve revenue or profit goals.
* First light touch on your Website, assuming you will get found, most
vendors unaware
* Joint Venture discussions start here.
M – Mentor | Someone in the buying organization is designated, or
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decides to run with an investigation into feasibility of satisfying the
need. That someone (we call them Mentor) will become your point of
contact for the initial conversations.
* Reads blogs, downloads your eBooks, views Slideshare which is why
inbound is so important
* Should not appear in the forecast, this is a marketing lead
* Early adopters will engage innovative vendors
P – Position | This is where a buying process starts becoming real –
meaning that a need or objective is defined, funds and resources start
being allocated to achieve the objectives outlined.
* Not qualified until it passes this phase through to Assessment, should
not appear in forecast.
* Most leads die here; lacking a strong champion, consensus, or
outgunned by competing projects
* Mid-funnel, buyer looks at demo’s, webinars, may engage early
mainstream vendors
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A – Assessment |This is the due diligence phase where feasibility is
assessed, risks are discussed and debated.
* Early majority buyers engage mainstream vendors, i.e. 50-70%
through their buying process.
* Opportunity appears in the forecast for the first time
C – Case | Case is where the business needs are converted to a real
project or product specifications.
* Typically when an RFP shows up
* ROI calculators, social proof needed
T – Transaction | Transaction is the business phase for the sale.
Prices are discussed and negotiated and the fit is determined for a
relationship moving forward.
* Beware the late invitation to respond to an RFP, unless you are a
commodity player.
Conclusion
By creating a common understanding and vocabulary, based on
how buyers actually buy, we create opportunities to connect and
communicate with buyers in their process. More importantly by
optimizing our value chain to best our serve buyers, we create
opportunities to reduce COS and improve profitability.
The alternative is continue to decipher the semaphore of the
salesperson’s best guess
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“It’s Not How You Sell, It’s How Your Prospects Buy”
by @rmarkgibson |Download free eBook here:
http://ow.ly/tVtxT
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70
19 Content Reuse can
Accelerate Sales Cycles
by Anil Jwalanna
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About Anil Jwalanna
Anil is the CEO of WittyParrot and the visionary
behind the product and platform strategy. Anil has
built and managed SaaS and technology product
platforms at start-ups and large enterprises for
over 15 years.
Anil previously served as CEO of PushPoint Mobile
and CTO of iCharts, both mobile commerce and
data visualization SaaS companies. Anil holds
business degrees from the Berkeley Haas School
of Business and the Columbia Business School and
an undergraduate in Engineering from Mysore,
India.

Content Reuse can Accelerate
Sales Cycles by Anil Jwalanna
Content reuse is becoming an important priority for B2B sales and
marketing communication.
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Why?
Because buyers will no longer tolerate a different conversation with
salespeople than the one they have been having with the content
being consumed on the supplier’s Website.
Congruence in the story sales and marketing is required and can
shorten the sales cycle when properly aligned.
For companies that intend to pursue a content marketing strategy
and rise above the tide of mediocrity, this means creating quality,
relevance and insight for the intended audience in every utterance.
Here are 5 tips that will help to improve the quality of published content
and the spoken word, while improving consistency of information
across the organization.

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1.Create Modular Content
Break large documents into smaller chunks of modular self-describing
content that can be easily managed and used in multiple places in
various contexts.
Buyers and customers expect to easily consume, precise and contextual
information to find what they need to know, they don’t have time to
wade through voluminous documents. Corey Sommers article “The
Death of Marketing Collateral as We Knew it” is interesting, radical and
relevant to this conversation.
Breaking down large documents into smaller chunks of information
not only makes it easier to consume, but also enables re-use of content
in different contexts. These content chunks can be readily adapted
into multiple documents based on the context and relevance.
2. Assemble Modular Blocks
Instead of monolithic documents designed for one purpose, design
documents, collateral, webpages and information products in such a
way that they can be reproduced instantly by simply assembling self-describing
content modules.
When a child sits down to play with Lego, they are constrained only
by the number and shape of the individual Lego blocks in the set and
their imagination. This is a useful and powerful concept for content
creators.
Think of “Lego Blocks” as a metaphor to build Information components.
Literally anyone with access to these information components can build
any information product by using these Lego blocks of information.
3. Tagging Content Blocks

Finding the right information instantly and consistently is the key to
successful use of information produced. Significant effort goes into
producing effective messaging content, but little has been done to
make it accessible.
Providing contextually correct content to buyers and customers when
they need it will not only help buyers to make decisions faster but also
helps to build the trust and rapport.
Capturing content metadata is extremely important to achieve the
end goal of content accessibility and consumption.
Tagging is the simplest and easiest way of building metadata about
the content.
Careful consideration is essential to identify and assign the right tags
based on the characteristics of the content and context in which it will
be used.
4. Content Collaboration
For successful creation, distribution and management of modular
content components, it is essential to collaborate among stakeholders.
Ownership of these modular blocks is essential to ensure that
information is kept current. Multiple people may be involved creating,
reviewing, approving and sharing the content.
Once an information component is ready for use, it should be tagged
with proper metadata and published for consumption.
Distributed and loosely coupled collaboration on content creation
and workflow management and version control ensures accuracy,
consistency and currency of information. In addition, a mechanism
should be established to capture the qualitative and quantitative
feedback from consumers to improve the quality and usability over
time.
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5. The Right Tool
Choosing the right tool is critical in a successful content reuse strategy.
Few tools exist that truly meet these requirements.
Here is the list of top 5 factors to consider while evaluating the tool:
1. Functional, intuitive and easy-to-use interface is crucial for successful
adoption by stakeholders,
2. Ability to collaboratively create, and manage smaller chunks of
content individually and assemble into documents, collateral and
other output forms,
3. Ability to create, manage and capture rich metadata from diverse
sources about information components and clusters of content, as
well tag, index and comment on use of the content,
4. Intelligence to interpret and infer the user’s context to fin d the
relevant content and present it to consumers instantly,
5. Seamless access and delivery of relevant content anytime, anywhere
on any device is critical to the success of content strategy
“Content Reuse Can Accelerate Sales Cycles”
by Anil of @wittyparrotapp |
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75
20 How to End a Sales
Slump by Telling Stories
by Mike Bosworth
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About Mike Bosworth
Michael Bosworth is noted for founding and
growing Solution Selling®, one of the most
successful virtual companies in the B2B arena.
He is currently involved in two start-ups, Mike
Bosworth Leadership and WeConcile®. MBL
teaches Story Seekers™ workshops. You can
learn more at
http://www.mikebosworthleadership.com

How to End a Sales Slump by
Telling Stories by Mike Bosworth
Mike Bosworth worked as a sales manager at Xerox Computer Services
in 1979 with Neil Rackham when he was researching what became the
SPIN project .
Neil could map the sales productivity rise from new hire to a peak
performance (around 18 months at Xerox), and then almost to the
day, predict the decline, followed by loss of sales rep motivation and
morale.
Xerox knew the problem existed, but it took Neil Rackham to pinpoint
why it was happening. What Rackham found was that sales productivity
rose over time until the salesperson had gained the expertise of having
seen every permutation of buyer problem and need.
The first day of the 19th month on quota, instead of listening to the
prospect to learn what the buyer problem was, the sales rep could not
contain themselves and prematurely elaborated what the prospect
“needed to do.”
Try telling your spouse a few “here’s what you need to do’s” tonight
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when you get home and observe the reaction. Prospects go from
curious and open to defensive to blocking and pulling away from
salespeople who tell them what they need to do to solve their
problem.
Jeff is around 30 years old, working for an SEO software company. He
was one of the original salespeople in the company, and although he
had been the #1 seller for the previous 12 months, he was in a slump.
As with most salespeople and athletes in a slump, if they knew how to
end it they would!
Jeff was ‘stuck’ in his slump and didn’t know how to get out of it.
In a public Story Seekers™ workshop, Jeff discovered why he was in
his slump when he saw the chart from research Neil Rackham did at
Xerox in 1979
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The day after the workshop Jeff had three demonstrations scheduled.
He was able to catch himself wanting to tell his buyer what they should
be doing and what they needed, and instead told each a story about
how a peer had solved a similar problem. This put the prospect in the
story and connected them emotionally to Jeff’s approach.
Jeff’s slump ended that day with three new customers.
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“How to End a Sales Slump by Telling Stories”
by @MikeBLeadership |Download free eBook here:
http://ow.ly/tVtxT
Tweet This

79
21 Follow a Sales
Methodology
by Linda Richardson
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About Linda Richardson
Linda Richardson is the founder and Chairman of
Richardson, a global sales training company and
the author of “Changing the Sales Conversation”.
As a recognized leader in the industry, she
has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime
Achievement in Sales Excellence for 2006 and in
2007 she was identified by Training Industry, Inc.
as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training
Professionals.”
Visit: www.lindarichardson.com

Follow a Sales Methodology
by Linda Richardson
Do you have a sales methodology that your team follows? Let’s step
back. What is a sales methodology? Sales best practices? A sales
process? Documented steps/procedures in the sale? Sales skills?
Tools? All of the above?
A sales methodology is the system a sales organization follows to win
business. In one sense (not the best sense), every sales organization
and/or salesperson has a sales methodology, whether it is the remnants
of one that had once been put in place, the norm people follow, or
what a particular salesperson has figured out for him or her.
An effective sales methodology is one that a sales organization has
thought out clearly and provides to its sales force. The differences
between a sales methodology that just exists because a company or
most salespeople pretty much operate that way and a highly effective
sales methodology boils down to six critical success factors.
1. Documentation: Map out clear steps as a guide for salespeople
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to follow/repeat.

2. Best Practices: Embed it with what your top performers
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consistently do.
3. Training: Prepare your sales force to ensure they have the
knowledge and skills needed to carry out the steps.
4. Tools: Give salespeople and sales managers tools, such as easy
to use CRMs, planners, access to research … to make them more
productive.
5. Execution: Follow it and coach to it.
6. Assessment: Ongoing feedback, tweaking, and refinement.
The goal of having a sales methodology is to win more deals and to
win them more quickly.
The initial question was do you have a sales methodology. The second
question is if not, should you have one?
Take the time to map out the steps it takes to identify and convert a lead
into a customer. Make it a collaborative process your with marketing
team and your top performers. It is more than worth the effort. Ten
percent of your reps will do fine without a clear sales methodology.
But 80% will do better with one.
“Follow A Sales Methodology” by @RichardsonSales |
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82
22 Live in your CRM
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About Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling
author, and sales development expert. He
was a finalist for the Top Sales & Marketing
Thought Leader of 2011. His company, Objective
Management Group, won the award for Top
Sales Assessment Tool from 2011 - 2013 and
his Blog, Understanding the Sales Force, earned
Top Sales & Marketing Blog from 2011 - 2013. He
is also the CEO of Kurlan & Associates, a global
sales consulting and training firm.
by Dave Kurlan

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Live in your CRM
by Dave Kurlan
Most salespeople dislike their CRM application.
Get over it.
Regardless of which app, how many features, and how much data
entry it requires, not using it is not an option.
Not only that, using it sparingly is not an option either.
Rather than living in your email, using your calendar and task list as
tools, and visiting your CRM app as infrequently as you can manage,
try reversing your priorities.
Live in your CRM application.
That is the one place you must start each day.
That is the only application that can show you at a glance, which
opportunities need your attention, which require follow-up, which
need to be moved along, which stage of the pipeline needs to be filled,

whether you have enough opportunities in the pipeline to hit your
numbers, how you are trending, where you are dropping the ball, and
what you need to do today.
Then, in order to support your pipeline building and development
activities, you can use email as a tool, the phone as a tool.
Your calendar and task list are tools to support life in CRM as well.
I’m willing to bet that if you start each day in your CRM app, update
everything in real time, take it seriously, and use your other tools
to support life in CRM, that your pipeline will increase in size, value,
conversions, win-rates, and sold.
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Are you willing to take me up on this bet?
Let me know. Drop me an email and let me know how you made out.
“Live in Your CRM” by Dave of @KurlanAssoc |
Tweet This

85
23 Kill Your Collateral
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About Corey Sommers
Corey heads the Business Development team at
WittyParrot as the VP - Business Development.
Corey leads the channel and partner strategy
and brings more than 25 years experience
in sales and channel enablement leadership
positions, competitive intelligence and as an
entrepreneur.
Corey is the co-founder of WhiteboardSelling,
a visual storytelling company and trained over
50,000 sales professionals globally before being
acquired by Corporate Visions in 2012. He holds
a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
by Corey Sommers

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Kill Your Collateral
by Corey Sommers
Why?
Collateral is a relic from the pre-Internet era. It was printed on glossies
at anything from 2-10 pages.
• It’s not easily consumable on tablets and mobile phones where
most email gets read.
• It’s written in product management jargon and “ground-breaking”
gobbledygook.
• It’s not laser-focused on the customer’s critical business issues
and requirements.
• It’s typically product-centric and uses a “kitchen-sink” feature
and benefits approach so buyers don’t miss anything.
Brochures cannot sell.
Sending them is a waste of time and will not help salespeople engage
in conversations.
Sales Portal Bloat
What’s worse, these marketing “assets” get stuffed into bloated

corporate and sales portals where they become stale the moment they
are published. Forcing salespeople to waste valuable time accessing
it.
Salespeople and channel partners use keyword searches to try to find
the right information for their customers, and get back a list of 20
documents, which they then have to download and wade through to
find what they need, cut -paste and then repurpose.
A better way is to boil down these overblown fluff pieces to their essence
– hard-hitting “knowledge nuggets” or information components – that
get right to the point, and that are targeted directly at customer needs
and pain points?
Re-purpose and Reuse Information Components to improve
sales productivity.
Information components can be repurposed in any number of sales
information products; from outbound solicitations, to follow-up letters
to respond quickly to sales inquiries, proposal responses to RFIs and
RFPs.
Salespeople and channel partners no longer need to negotiate the
network and wade through portals and other repositories that contain
monolithic documents that they then need to cut and paste from.
What if salespeople could keyword search for product, solution, value
messaging or buyer persona information components and cherry pick
content they need in the exact context of the buyer’s interest and then
simply drag-and-drop from their desktop into any application to use
it?
What if that content was succinctly structured so it could be consumed
on any device?
And what if Marketing could actually measure every time who used
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one of these knowledge nuggets, and in which situations so they could
present the most effective content based on actual usage.
They could then understand customer business requirement trends
and market intelligence in a way that is impossible today by tracking a
simple document download from some sales portal.
Bottom line
Componentized sales-ready information that is available at the
salesperson’s finger-tips enables responsive engagement and
eliminates the lost time salespeople spend searching for and
modifying documents.
An extra hour a day of selling time will improve sales productivity more
effectively than almost any other sales enablement initiative.
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“Kill Your Collateral” by @WhiteboardSell |
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89
24 Harness the Power of
Curation to Sell More by
Rajesh Setty
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About Rajesh Setty
Rajesh Setty is a serial entrepreneur and business
alchemist based in Silicon Valley. Raj is one of
the co-founders and serves as the President of
WittyParrot. Raj has also written and published 14
books with his first book published at the age of
thirteen. You can follow him on his
blog www.rajeshsetty.com/blog,
on Facebook www.facebook.com/rajesh301 or
on Twitter www.twitter.com/rajsetty

Harness the Power of Curation to
Sell More by Rajesh Setty
The definition of curation is “The act of curating, of organizing and
maintaining a collection of artworks or artifacts”
Of course, the meaning has evolved and it is now an overloaded word.
For the purpose of this article, think of curation as “the deliberate act of
thoughtful filtering to extract and separate the signal from the noise.”
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What has it got to do with selling?
While directly it may not lead you to the next big deal tomorrow
morning, indirectly it will help you build thought leadership and trust
and hence your capacity to sell more.
Let me explain.
Let’s assume that you follow these steps religiously:
1. Identify and record what matters most to the key people with whom
you are building a relationship. These people could be your prospects,

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clients, partners or influencers.
2. When you consume content on any media or through your social
network, stop when you find something valuable. Reflect and record
the one or more insights with a link back to that resource. It could
be an article, a podcast, a video.
3. Think about all the people that will benefit from this articl e. One
size does not fit all so don’t blast this out via a mini-email campaign
of your own
4. Write a personalized note to everyone you have identified wit hout
expecting anything back.
5. Repeat steps #2 to #5 at least on a weekly basis.
As you can see this is not rocket science but most people don’t do it.
Why?
Because if it is simple to do, it is simple not to do it.
Think about all the benefits (and the side benefits) of the above
mentioned simple curation process assuming you do this in a
disciplined fashion with a reasonably meaningful frequency, (in other
words you are NOT doing this just once a year).
Here are three of them:
1. Personal Growth:
This is probably the biggest indirect side effect of engaging in a
thoughtful curation exercise. Unlike before where you could get away
with quickly skimming through the content that comes your way, now
you will spend a few more minutes to digest the essence of the article,
reflect to see to whom and how it will benefit them and actually take
the time to personally send the content with a relevant note. Every

individual mail will be a gift to the recipient and the collective exercise
is a gift of personal growth you give to yourself.
2. Thought Leadership:
Creating original content takes a LOT of time, energy and mindshare.
You should do that when you can make that investment. In parallel,
curation will give you a kick-start on building thought leadership on
topics that matter most to your audience.
As you are aware, the benefit of being a thought leader is that it
immediately reduces the cost of getting attention and mindshare
when you share something. Why? Because people know that they will
get a good return for investing their precious time on what you share.
3. Trust:
This is a derivative of you demonstrating thoughtfulness (relevant
and personalized content on topics that matter to your audience) and
thought leadership over a long period of time.
In summary, engaging in thoughtful curation helps you to accelerate
your sales cycles while helping you become a better person. It’s a
double-win.
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“Harness the Power of Curation to Sell More” by @RajSetty
| Download free eBook here: http://ow.ly/tVtxT
Tweet This

93
25 It Is Difficult To Control
External Events If You
Do Not Have Control
Internally by Jonathan Farrington
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About Jonathan Farrington
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized
business coach, mentor, author, keynote speaker
and sales thought leader. He is the Senior Partner
of Jonathan Farrington & Associates, and CEO of
Top Sales World, based in London & Paris. Jonathan
is also the co-editor of Top Sales Magazine and The
Sales Thought Leaders Blog

It Is Difficult To Control External
Events If You Do Not Have Control
Internally by Jonathan Farrington
Even companies that enjoy the luxury of clearly superior products
realize that those products will not sell themselves. As a minimum,
companies need a sales force comprised of skilled professionals who
understand the application of the product range, have an in-depth
knowledge of their customer base, market sector and of course the
competition But even all these elements together are not sufficient
to ensure optimum performance levels and profitable sales. We must
have a sales process.
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So What Is A Sales Process?
Put quite simply, it is a set of procedures, which determine how a
company wishes its sales team to operate - “The way we do things
around here”

The most successful organizations have implemented a process and
an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards.
This involves assessing, appraising, developing, reviewing, providing
continual feedback on performance, as well as implementing efficient
and relevant process tools.
From the Sales Director’s/VP Sales perspective, developing a consultative
sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic,
and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This
is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as
it is for external pro-active ones. This outline includes the activity and
calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with
prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues
they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals
they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale in order to
achieve maximum effectiveness.
It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can
be in a position to:
Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,
Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,
Redirect individual sales representative’s efforts efficiently.
Although many organizations appreciate the importance of being
customer-focused and talk in vague terms about their “consultative
sales process” surprisingly few sales leaders invest the time and
energy required to develop a formal sales process - a sales process
that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide their salespeople
and permit effective management of their efforts.
Overcoming Implementation Inertia
Even when a consultative sales process has been developed,
understood by sales managers, written down and circulated, it’s often
not enough.
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No matter how brilliant, a sales process will only be effective to the
extent it is followed and used by front-line sales staff. And this is where
most organizations fall down: overcoming inertia among managers
and salespeople alike and implementing the process.
The hurdles that must be cleared in order to get people throughout
the organization to actually implement it are enough to cause Sales
Directors to tear their hair out. But a select few, of the very best, have
found some innovative strategies that have enabled them to achieve
the Holy Grail: “Sustained sales growth achieved efficiently, reliably
and by design.”
Can there be a downside to sales process? Yes, if it restricts, and if it
suffocates creativity, and if it removes individual identities.
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“It Is Difficult To Control External Events If You Do Not Have
Control Internally” by @TopSalesWorld|
Tweet This

Previously Published eBooks:
Building Highly Responsive Teams eBook
Being Responsive is not a LUXURY anymore, it is REQUIRED
if you want to survive and thrive. Learn how WittyParrot in
combination with inbound marketing methods facilitates the
building of a responsive sales force.
WittyParrot is a new technology platform that can be applied
to achieve five of the top seven sales initiatives for 2013
combined. It saves sales, marketing and channel sales reps
time and improves effectiveness of the sales enablement
process.
To learn more about why responsiveness matters and how
WittyParrot can help in Building Highly Responsive Teams;
download this free eBook today.
Sales and Marketing Messaging Alignment with
WittyParrot eBook
Being responsive is definitely a MUST, but equally important
is to maintain consistency and control over your interactions.
Speed combined with consistency can be the differentiating
factor. WittyParrot is a disruptive content distribution platform
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with a potential to change the way marketing and sales people
work, manage information and interact with client.
If you are interested in learning more about Sales and
Marketing Messaging Alignment using WittyParrot
methodology, download this free eBook right away.
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Why WittyParrot?
Let’s see.
You want your sales team to be responsive.
You want them to be consistent.
You want them to provide your customers and prospects the
RIGHT information RIGHT NOW.
You want to know what’s hot or what’s not among your products
and services based on the ongoing conversations
You want your distributors and resellers to have the same
information as your salespeople.
You want changes to sales collateral and information to be current
ALL THE TIME.
WittyParrot gives you ALL THE ABOVE and more.
Learn more at
www.wittyparrot.com
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This eBook was brought to you by
Mark Gibson | VP of Marketing at WittyParrot
Rajesh Setty | Serial entrepreneur and co-founder of WittyParrot
Girish Karachiwala | Vice President - Engineering at WittyParrot
Subashini Iyer | Manager-Marketing cov-er
& Sales at WittyParrot
Amruta Shukla | Graphic Designer at WittyParrot
Illustrations by @gapingvoid
and
All the wonderful CONTRIBUTORS who generously provided their
tips.
100 Brought you by www.wittyparrot.com

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