You know that your pipeline is the foundation of a successful sales process and the root of all revenue.

When you understand the power of its metrics, you have all the information you need to create more opportunities, generate more leads (from the right kind of customer), and encourage existing customers to buy more. Within this book you’ll find the answers:

• How to properly measure your sales pipeline
• The KPIs that you need to track
• How to predict your sales with accurate and insightful pipeline measurement

Quantify the performance of your pipeline and you’ll be able to identify gaps, proactively tackle the challenges that kill your conversion rates, and close more sales.

Download this free ebook and learn more.

If you understand the metrics within your pipeline, you will have access to the information you need to create more opportunities, generate more leads (from the right kind of customer) and encourage existing customers to buy more.

One fact about Germany’s performance in the World Cup is that they played as a team.

Salespeople need to learn this same lesson. They are, by nature, loners; setting their own goals, being responsible for their own incomes, and following their own instincts. In one respect that’s a great thing—it’s what makes them great salespeople. But today the sales landscape has become far too competitive and, more importantly, too complex for a salesperson to go it alone.

How can you win your ultimate sales challenge with as much elegance and ferocity as German team did at the 2014 World Cup? Download our free ebook to make an unforgettable kick-off for your business.

While we’re learning, there are other factors that have entered into the sales landscape in the last few years that substantially aid the needed changes both for sales and sales management—and interestingly can be likened to the German victory in the World Cup.

What is insight selling and how can you benefit from lost leads and opportunities? How do you manage the information within your sales process – the quantity and quality? Most importantly, how do you keep it accessible, organized, and accurate?  Within this ebook you find the answers to how to develop and improve your sales system. You’ll learn:

• What is insight selling and how can you blend it into existing sales best practices?
• How can you analyze and capitalize on lost sales opportunities?
• What are the best ways to qualify leads and opportunities?

Improve your pipeline with the basic principles of insight selling and learn the power of new sales techniques and strategies. Download this free eBooklet and learn more.

Today’s forward-thinking sellers gather much more information than just about the general industry. They learn as much as possible about the specific prospect company itself, its role in the industry, its competition and any problems particular to that company.

We’ve got a new ebook just perfect for anyone planning to attend an in-person event or conference! — The Little Black Book for Conferences and Conventions.

Four experienced event attendees have written all their secret squirrel techniques and ideas for how to make the most of these opportunities — from preparing ahead of time, to what to do during the event, to following up afterward. Our experts:

• Barbara Giamanco — Leading social selling author, speaker, and advisor
• Joanne Black — Renowned authority on referral selling
• Peri Shawn — Award-winning sales and coaching author, speaker, and trainer
• Chad Porter — Co-founder of Invisume (“The Invisible Resume”)

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Building Relationships – Numbered lists for preparing and making the most out of relationship-building activities
• Keeping Organized Amid the Chaos – Secret methods and apps that help maintain control — scheduling, what to bring with you, and using your time wisely
• Before the Event – Activities, planning, and creating a state of mind that sets the stage for success
• During the Event: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques – Contacting people, using social media, and managing meetups
• After the Event – Putting all your hard work to good use — don’t fall short at the finish line!
• Techniques That Really Work – Experts’ secret squirrel ideas that might just work for you
• Etiquette Pet Peeves – What to do — and what not to do!

Download this fun and free ebook, and you will be prepared and productive at your next in-person conference!

What does selling products and services—or the failure to do so—have to do with Napoleon’s march on Moscow, Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, and David’s epic battle with Goliath? According to sales expert John Golden, a lot–and not just because sales calls can feel like gruelling battles.

In this eye-opening sales guide, Golden reveals the surprising parallel between the steps of successful selling and the steps of successful warfare.

Winning the Battle for Sales delivers selling best practices based on examples from history’s battlefields Organized into three parts–the Sales Call, Account Strategy, and Sales Management–these tales reveal key takeaways that you can apply to every sale, including:

• Pyrrhus of Epirus vs. the Romans (280-279 B.C.)—vital points on avoiding the pursuit of victory at all costs
• Captain Bligh vs. Fletcher Christian (Mutiny on the Bounty)—important lessons about understanding customer needs and desires
• The Siege of Petersburg (U.S. Civil War, 1864)—indispensable guidance on delivering “outside-the-box” solutions
• The Gunfight at the OK Corral (1881)—the keys to preventing sales objections to ensure smooth negotiations
• Brian Boru vs. the Vikings (Battle of Clontarf, 1014)—essential information on turning unseen opportunity into a value driver

Just as generals pore over every aspect of a battle after it’s fought, you no doubt review your sales tactics in a similar fashion. This guide is a quick, snappy, entertaining read.

Sales management is anything but easy—just ask anyone who has done it. The sales manager is supervising people who are innately self-sufficient loners and who really don’t want to be supervised. Salespeople make their own observations and conclusions and commonly don’t take directions too well. Add to all of that the lack of accurate analysis tools on the part of sales management and you have a recipe for uncertainty at best.

No single book could cover everything there is to know about sales management—not by a long way. But this ebook provides some powerful, basic tips to make sales management considerably more bearable.

Today a sales process is essential to a smoothly functioning sales force. Considerable time and care should be taken in its creation, for it is as essential to your business as a business plan or product specifications. You wouldn’t skimp on those—don’t skimp on the sales process, either.

Traditional CRM systems, despite all their “bells and whistles” of advanced technology, have not made the necessary changes to become the streamlined tools they need to be. In today’s highly competitive business environment, a CRM solution must be far more than a complex method for measuring potential and accomplished quota achievement. In fact it needs to be the backbone, memory and mind of a sales force and all who must interact with it.

Sales management is anything but easy—just ask anyone who has done it. But there are 4 steps which, if fully applied, will at the least greatly ease sales management’s burden.

Instability and turnover within a sales force can be one of sales management’s worst nightmares. There are five key elements to recruiting—and far more importantly, keeping—a stable team of high-powered sales reps.

The key to improving the sales force is through coaching from sales management. While this has been known and discussed for some years, what might not be so obvious is the importance of sales analytics to the process. Here are four ways to improve sales force skill through the use of those analytics.

“Hockey-stick” is a fairly common descriptive term that describes a revenue graph that creeps along the bottom or the middle of the graph for most of a period, usually a quarter, and then in the last few weeks jumps up to the top (resembling a hockey stick). The skillful implementation of a sales process, CRM solution and the right sales analytics will do away with “hockey stick” revenue performance—along with the severe stress brought to bear on sales reps and the rest of the company.

Download Tips for Sales Management now.

At Pipeliner, we operate on principles instead of values. The difference between these two terms is significant. Values are dependent upon: culture, time, era, language, business sector, geographical location, and other factors. They are highly contextualized.

Principles, on the other hand, are universal and are totally independent of such factors. An example is the principle of gravity. Gravity is obvious, because if you jump from a height, you will fall down. This is true no matter where you are, what language you speak, what business you are in, or your culture.

The principles we are talking about aren’t in the realm of Physics but in the field of commerce. These principles were defined and developed within the Austrian School of Economics, and more recently by management educator and author, Peter Drucker.

Why have we based our company, and our product, on principles instead of values? Simply because we want Pipeliner CRM to be a tool for everyone. And since these principles apply to everyone, any solution based on them will be extremely beneficial.

Today many companies are asked, ‘What kind of value system do you have?’  To answer the question, they set out to formulate their value systems and express them through mission statements. But at Pipeliner we are operating on principles, which are radically different from values.

Nikolaus Kimla
CEO of Pipelinersales Inc.

The 6 fundamental principles are:

The primary measure of any organization could be said to be its results—what it achieves. In fact an organization is actually founded for the purpose of achieving results. Along with this, management could be defined as “a profession of achieving results”.

Every aspect of an organization contributes to the whole. Any executive attempting to lead a company to success should not only realize this, but must be able to visualize how each piece contributes; in other words, to see the big picture.

If one is interested in obtaining results, it is accomplished by limiting oneself to concentration on a few things, to a small number of carefully selected key factors.

In business, as in society, we tend to focus on weaknesses in an effort to fix or strengthen them. A much more powerful method is to concentrate on strengths and bolster them.

Positive thinking can be applied by looking at it this way: In every problem there is a hidden opportunity for change.

That is the difference between someone who is just trying to “think happy thoughts” in the face of adversity, and someone who can bring about truly positive change. Effective people actually look at a problem or issue and face up to it, instead of glossing over or ignoring it. Beyond that, they seek possibilities and opportunities in every problem.

Finally, we arrive at the most important principle for the future: Trust. From the beginning, trust is a crucial component for ongoing success. Without trust, you can apply management techniques and still miss by a mile. If your employees don’t trust you, how closely will they adhere to your policies, strategies and orders?

Just as values differ from principles, this book differs from others in that we not only express these principles and define them, we show multiple examples, in each case, of how each principle is used in Pipeliner CRM.

Download and read Theory Made Real: Pipeliner CRM Puts Principles into Practice.

There are many vital factors that go into building a business. But the careful building of a sales teamis probably the most important task any business owner or sales manager will undertake. It may seem rather easy: you hire salespeople who, at least by prior recommendation, have proven they can sell. You hire an experienced sales manager. You start selling.

Take it from one who knows: it’s nowhere near that easy. In fact, as I repeat several times throughout this ebook, it is probably the most difficult task that can be undertaken personnel-wise. You have to make sure your reps’ training and experience aligns with your market and the size of company you’re selling to. You have to hire reps that can be self-sufficient, not always relying on inbound leads. Your reps should be focusing on customers and their issues, not simply the product or service being sold. Then, after all that, you have to properly manage them.

While this ebook won’t give you everything there is to know about building a sales team, it will give you the vital essentials which you cannot do without. Start with them, and the rest will fall into place.

When you first start a company, you have immediate priorities. If you don’t make building a sales team one of the first of those priorities, you won’t make it very far at all as there will be no revenue. When you first start up, how can you ensure you’re building a sales team that will truly fuel the company as it grows?

As you’re growing and your sales reps are having to do all of these extra functions, they certainly need to spend as little time as possible on data entry and administration with CRM. Pipeliner, with its totally visual, intuitive interfaces, makes it possible to rapidly manage and control opportunities, making sure all needed tasks are done and that no opportunities go off the rails or are lost.

So in the beginning, make sure you build a sales team of entrepreneurs—and that you have Pipeliner backing you up the whole while.

When you first start a company, you have immediate priorities. If you don’t make building a sales team one of the first of those priorities, you won’t make it very far at all as there will be no revenue. When you first start up, how can you ensure you’re building a sales team that will truly fuel the company as it grows?

Commonly a salesperson learns, in the main, about the products or services they are selling. If a sales team is really going to succeed, it must go well beyond this approach.

The next step is to ensure that a sales team is precisely focused on the industry they are in. The primary reason for this is that buyers in each industry will have completely different actions. The seller’s actions must be customer-centric for those specific buyers and tailored for that industry.

The sales process and all sales activities must have a precise industry-specific focus. It goes a bit deeper than that, however—for the personality profile of the reps you are hiring must also align with your target industry and even size of business you are selling to.

It used to be that salespeople, by necessity, had to drum up their own leads. Today it’s not the same. The majority of salespeople are dependent on inbound leads—those leads which come in off a web site, through advertising or from social media. What might be the more successful approach?

Overall I believe sales management is certainly one of the hardest jobs there is. You have a multiple burden: finding the right people, putting them in place, developing the right sales process, utilizing the right technology, evolving sound lead generation strategies both inbound and outbound, working with Marketing, working with the Board, and much more. In addition, it all must tie together.