Experimenting with different ideas and learning from trial and error is a solid way to improve. Not only can you hone your skills, but you can also identify and scrap the stuff that doesn’t work.

But the reality is that to get really good, you need to practice — a lot — and that takes time. In fact, some experts argue that to master a skill, you need to accumulate 10,000 hours of practice. Now most of us haven’t got the time to wait that long! So here’s some good news that can shortcut this learning process significantly. It’s simply to learn from the thought leaders in the industry by studying the right books and following three main points:

1. Accelerate your learning and get an edge
2. Stay up to date
3. Develop the right personal skill set

The challenging global economy, changes in consumer buying habits, and the shift toward customer-centric selling have made sales a challenging and exhilarating profession. Download our free ebookand learn more.

In the past, a lot of selling was done via cold-calling. The problem with this tactic is that it has turned sales into a numbers game. But as you’ve probably experienced, this approach misses the point of what a skilled salesperson can achieve.

One of the first decisions in a startup should deal with how your salespeople are to be regarded and empowered. This will determine a critical path for the future of your company – and its level of success.

As startups get off the ground, they have numerous choices to make regarding automation. Due to a fledgling company’s financial status, these choices are often mitigated by cost. When it comes to the choice of CRM systems, however, there are four other important factors to take into account in addition to its price.

There is a lot of theory on operating a startup (just check the curriculum of your local college or business school). But in the real world, due to the demands of getting a business up and operational, much of the time any theory goes right out the window while entrepreneurs struggle to keep clients happy, keep the bills being paid and seeking out new business. Here is one real-world story.

With a startup, an entrepreneur or several entrepreneurs are quite literally diving into the unknown. As anyone who has done it will tell you, there is a great deal of “learn as you go” involved, along with unpredicted obstacles, unforeseen expenses, and many other factors. The evolution of a sales process early on, along with the correct choice of CRM solution, are two ways you can guard against unforeseen circumstances. Here is another real-world story of how one startup proceeded.

Startups come about due to entrepreneurs and their innovative actions. In addition to spotting and seizing an opportunity that others have evidently missed or not taken full advantage of, an entrepreneur will find all kinds of nifty ways of getting a startup off the ground while cutting costs and keeping everything within budget.

In today’s automated world, one of the important startup costs is that of software. But despite the hell-bent effort to get the business up and running, time should be taken to evaluate software ROI (return on investment) as accurately as possible.

Download and read Startups, Sales, & CRM Solutions now.

Discover the advantages of making your sales and marketing work together.

A huge part of the buying decision is made before your customer reaches out to your brand or meets your sales team. What does that mean for your sales department? Learn more about recent changes in the customer’s buying journey and explore the benefits of aligning your sales and marketing departments. Configure your sales process to match this new buying landscape.

In this ebook, you learn:

• The powerful benefits of aligning your sales and marketing efforts
• How and why  the buyer’s journey is changing
• How to take control of the front end of your sales pipeline

Download this free ebook and learn how buying decisions are made – and how you can be there at the right time.

Pipeline management means the difference between accurate, successful sales and hit-or-miss sales that mysteriously make it to the close or don’t. Pipeline management therefore even affects the success or failure of a company, and the attainment of company goals.

This ebook shows you the relationship between pipeline management and sales success, as well as the vital role played by the choice of CRM solution.

Chapter 1: Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

Much has been written (and spoken of) regarding the need for an accurate sales process – also known as sales pipeline management. Companies generally fall into a rough range of possibilities with regard to pipeline management.

Chapter 2: Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals

What may not be clear until you take a closer look is the fact that accurate and effective pipeline management is essential to the attainment of long-term company goals. For that reason, pipeline management might also be called “opportunity management.”

Chapter 3: Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

Laying out the separate steps of the sales process and making sure they are followed is the only way of bringing control to sales, both for the salespeople and sales management. If played right, pipeline management is also a self-sustaining success.

Chapter 4: Pipeline Management: The Vital Importance of Automation

When allocating a budget in an enterprise, automation often takes somewhat of a back seat to other matters. While the causes for this are many and varied, we will not attempt to examine them here, but simply demonstrate the vital importance of IT support for one crucial activity: sales pipeline management.

Chapter 5: CRM and Booming Your Company

Automated tools for CRM have been around in one form or another since the advent of computers. CRM today goes well beyond simple contact management, however, and if intelligently utilized can help steer an enterprise into whole new levels of profitability.

Chapter 6: Where CRM Can Go Wrong

CRM can and often does become almost more of a hindrance than a workable solution. Why does this occur, and what can be done about it?

Download Pipeline Management: Success with CRM now.

In our previous 2 ebooks, Theory Made Real and Reducing Risk, we demonstrated how Pipeliner CRM is the sum total, in the real world, of sound philosophical business principles. Theory Made Real explored the 6 basic principles that form the foundation for Pipeliner, with examples of how they are expressed in the product. Reducing Risk laid out the Pipeliner Selling System, which follows the basic pattern of a sales process against the backdrop of the buyer’s journey, and how this, too, embodies the basic principles.

In this our third ebook in the series, we explore all the specific Pipeliner CRM features—many of which are totally unique in the CRM market—and how each of these reflects the philosophy which inspired it.

Our goal with this book is to bring the reader an understanding of the power that Pipeliner can bring to a sales organization and business, and also to provide a continuing overview of the applicable principles on which any business is based.

The first stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Focus, deals with:

• Focusing reps on deals that matter
• Honing in on specific aspects of the deals themselves
• Focusing the buyer in on your solution

Under the heading of Focus are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

• Dynamic Contact Management
• Effective, Efficient Leads Management
• Pipeline View: Visual Key to Your Processes
• Your Instant, Visual Sales Timeline
• Archive: Understanding the Past is Key to Your Future
• Pipeliner CRM Profiles: It’s Your View
• Template Designer: It Really Is Your CRM
• Pipeliner CRM’s Built-In Help

The second stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Engage, means reaching out and touching this prospect, getting involved with their particular company and issues, and accomplishing the actions necessary to move them to the next stage toward a sale.

Under the heading of Engage are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

• Sales Activities—Your Path to Sales Success
• Social Selling Made Easy
• Tracking Sales Efficiency: Pipeliner Hit Rate Manager
• Online or Offline: Full CRM Functionality
• Notes Management and Integration
• Apps Integrations
• Pipeliner App Integrations
• Auto-Profiling: Saving Hours of Admin Work
• History Log: Tracking Changed Data in CRM
• Sales Reports: See More to Sell More

At the third stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Convince, you are convincing the buyer—and all decision-makers and influencers at the company acting as evaluators—that purchasing your product or service is absolutely the right thing to do. It is at this stage that the sale is made.

Under the heading of Convince are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

• The Pipeliner Task Board: A New Way to Work
• Dynamic Target: Constant Focus
• Smart Org Chart & Buying Center
• Filters: Zeroing In on Deals That Count
• Getting a Handle on Sales Velocity
• Sales Dashboards—Insights On Demand
• Customized Auto-Calculations
• Sales Document Management
• Microsoft Office Plug-In

At the fourth stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Close, your buyer has become a customer. Ultimately your aim is to move that customer into the next and final stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Cooperate. At that point your customer has become an advocate—and is much more of a partner than a customer.

There are 2 final features that are particularly applicable to the Close and Cooperate stages of the Pipeliner Selling System:

1. Multiple Pipelines
2. Bulk Update Feature

It’s an age-old argument that still persists today: is sales an art or a science? The old timers will firmly argue the former, and the modern-day salesperson armed with the latest smartphone and steeped in technology will often argue the latter. But the truth is, that both are true for a sales force – but only in the right combination.

A sales rep today is armed with plentiful technological assistance. But he or she still must be able to rapidly relate to a prospect and engender trust, know when to pitch and when to hold back, and be able to read the prospect well to ascertain when to go in for that close or when to address other issues.

The job is far easier with the pattern of an agreed-upon sales process, an intuitive CRM solution, and instant access to an infinite amount of data through the web – but in the end it is still ability and skill that will bring the sale finally to its close. A sales force operates with both art and science. A skillful combining of the two will mean steadily increasing sales for your company.

Managing a reliable sales process is undoubtedly one of the most important functions of a sales leader. All you need to do is gather the data, right?

In actuality it is not enough to rely on sales process metrics alone. Those metrics must also have context — and especially a relationship to each other so you can put them to work for you. In this eBook you will learn:

• How sales process metrics have changed over the last decade
• How to measure each and every step of the sales process
• How to understand and leverage the context of your sales process metrics

Download this free eBook and and discover some great tools for effective sales process measurement and control.

A good part of the reason you want a sales process is so you can actually view and measure the progress of sales as they go along, and monitor sales rep performance. Without a sales process, the only real measure of success you have is the total number of sales closed and the total dollar figures.