College sales programs are disproportionately low to the number of salespeople. The sales industry is a giant one, and many people who enter the industry aren’t prepared when they graduate. With sales making up so much of the business world, why don’t we have more college sales programs? Daniel P. Strunk, interviewed by John Golden, explains why.

In this expert sales interview, learn about college sales programs, including:

• The number of college sales program opportunities
• Why college sales programs support career development
• Why exploring the reality of sales is uniquely possible through a college sales program

College Sales Program Statistics:

“I think some of these specialty career opportunities aren’t communicated at high schools, and more importantly are not very well known in college advising offices,” said Strunk. “Specialty careers like b2b sales or category management aren’t communicated to these students early enough for them to choose the career tracks, and there aren’t enough schools teaching students.” In fact, there are only 138 schools in the United States that teach sales in some way. About 75 of those schools offer only one sales course and only 13 schools that have six or more sales classes. There are also only 26 sales teaching centers.

Looking for a career:

Business and business related degrees are available at almost every university in the country. But the sales specific courses are few and far between. Many people who enter the sales world graduate with marketing degrees. 80% of marketing students take a sales job for their first position, and they’re not prepared to enter the sales force. 40% of those people end up failing their first year. “They don’t have the right attitudinal mindset,” said Strunk. “They’ve taken a job, always looking for a better one, instead of looking for a career. When students choose a sales program, they are looking for careers.” College sales programs help students foster long-term success by promoting a career, not just a short-term job.

What sales is really like:

Sales have negative connotations in many ways, or it’s seen as a default profession. The misimpression that students have about sales is that it isn’t analytically based. As sales have developed and changed, it has also changed the way that salespeople are viewed, and the value that is placed on sales professionals. Salespeople have gone from disseminators of information about a product to someone that forms relationships with their customers. “When our students begin in our sales programs, we immerse them in business analytics,” said Strunk. “What they come away with is an understanding of what sales is really like.”

A new era of sales:

This understanding of sales breeds salespeople that are more motivated, more equipped, and more-well rounded. Plus, working in sales has shown itself to be far more rewarding than many other business related career options. Once a person sees that they can add value to someone’s life, and understands that sales is about building relationships and managing the resources of their company, they start to understand what sales truly is. This enlightenment is uniquely available through college sales programs, which further highlights the need for them in academia.

For more information on why we need more college sales programs, watch the expert sales interview!

About Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM empowers sales teams to utilize their strengths. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

In 2017, we are still having the conversation about the sales and marketing disconnect. But, it seems more critical than ever to create a fluid and a more impactful way for these to parts of a sales organization to come together. John Golden interviews Dan McDade on the truth about leads.

This expert sales interview explores generating leads despite the sales and marketing disconnect, such as:

• Why is there a disconnect in the first place?
• The importance of getting in the game early
• Creating concrete steps to unify sales and marketing

Why the disconnect?

Part of the hypothesis for why sales and marketing have such a disconnect has to do with what each team is responsible for. Marketing is responsible for generating leads, and sales are accountable for revenue. “Until we get both sides working on the same goal, we’re going to continue to have problems,” said McDade. “What I think has also happened is that a lot of the marketing technology has made it possible to get more bad leads to sales faster than ever before. And unfortunately, it’s breaking down because sales are still complaining about lead quality and quantity.”

Get in the game – early:

For years the market has ignored outbound, and have focused primarily on inbound sales. In fact, some sales experts are saying that 70% of the sales process is complete before a sales rep gets involved. But there’s also a lot of people saying the opposite. The opposite being that buyers want to engage with salespeople throughout the entire buying process. If you wait until the buyer is 70%, 80% or 90% through the sales cycle, you’ve waited too long.

Concrete step #1:

There are a few steps organizations can take to get sales and marketing better aligned. The first may sound rather simplistic, but it’s a back to basics approach that works. “What it comes down to is that the marketing people and salespeople need to share a common definition of what the market is,” said McDade. “If you have different views of who you are selling to, the first thing is to define the market accurately.” Know your target market and who you are specifically trying to sell to, know who you will be able to work with, and communicate it to the entire organization.

Concrete step #2:

Step two is to come together on the standard definition of a lead. If you don’t have the same expectations of marketing generating leads that sales will accept and follow up on, then you’re going to continually have a disconnect. McDade has a few ideas on how to remedy this problem using what he calls the “judicial branch.” This is a separate group made up of marketing people, salespeople, as well as other people from the organization, such as the CEO or COO. This creates a dynamic group of people to watch and see if expectations are being met. “The only way you’re going to fix the problem is to isolate it and remedy it as a group.

For more concrete steps on how to unite sales and marketing and get more leads, watch the expert sales interview!

About Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM greatly enables precise lead management.  Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

Sales and marketing alignment is a much talked about problem, yet remains persistent in the sales world. This is at a detriment to many companies and organizations. As Matt Heinz, interviewed by John Golden, points out, there are tremendous benefits to unifying the sales and marketing teams.

This expert sales interview explores the importance of sales and marketing alignment, including:

• Why there is a separation in the first place
• How transparency can fix the problem
• The importance of mutual understanding

Why the Separation?

In most companies, sales and marketing are on different planes and have different objectives. “As a marketer, I believe this is mostly marketing’s fault,” said Heinz. “We as marketers have not embraced a level of revenue responsibility that sales have always had. You can’t buy a beer with a marketing qualified lead.” For this process of alignment to occur, a cultural shift is needed. “More marketing leaders need to be willing to step up to the plate,” said Heinz. It doesn’t help that historically, these two sectors have been very different and had very different jobs. The challenge and need for change have come about as a result of the change in the market, and a change in the needs of the buyer.

The Importance of Transparency:

One thing I think you have to have, as a marketing organization, is better empathy and transparency for what the organization requires,” said Heinz. You have to be comfortable managing objectives that you don’t have complete control over. After all, the sales team has never had control over hitting their number entirely. Being comfortable with change is necessary. “Having a level of transparency and flexibility and empathy across the organization is difficult if you haven’t done it before,” said Heinz. “But, you don’t have a choice if we expect marketing to be a contributor to the metrics that really matter.”

Mutual Understanding

To promote this unity between sales and marketing, it’s essential that each team share an understanding of what the other side is doing. For marketers, it’s understanding that their objective actually is sales, they are aiming for a revenue number. Also, marketing could help the unity by understanding the job of the sales reps. Equally, salespeople need to step into in marketing’s shoes. Many salespeople don’t realize how difficult marketing is today when you’re trying to get someone’s attention while 18,000 other companies are pulling for their attention as well. “Both jobs are really hard, and getting harder,” said Heinz.

The Benefit of Understanding

Understand what the other side is going through, and understand that it’s not going to be perfect, but that there is no other choice but to make things work. The integration of marketing and sales objectives has made a difference. “When you speak from the same message, and you’re able to orchestrate your communication between sales and marketing more effectively, it stands out in a sea of sameness in the market, and you’re more likely to get the attention of your prospect and get the call that you want,” said Heinz. “Doing things in silos where sales are doing one thing and marketing is doing another thing, it just doesn’t work.” Creating a mutual understanding from both sales and marketing creates an actionable solution that can help close this gap between sales and marketing.

About our Host:

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM empowers companies to engage in sales and marketing alignment. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

Sales Enablement
#SalesChats: Episode 40

Melissa Madian discusses sales enablement in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

Madian explains:

• The key components of a successful sales enablement programs, including the importance of keeping it simple and ensuring that it’s scalable
• The three key pillars of a successful sales enablement program
• Pillar one, ongoing enablement: what is being sold, who it is being sold to, and how it is being sold
• How to ensure your sellers understand the three key pillars and training them around these pillars
• Why some organizations miss sales enablement, and how it is often confused for product training
• Ensuring that sales enablement is focused around solving problems for customers, and framing it in a context that is buyer centered
• Pillar two, onboarding
• Integrating the new salesperson into the context of a sales process and the culture of the organization
• Pillar three, recruiting
• Why sales functions neglect the recruiting piece
• The importance of understanding the ideal rep profile, and working with HR to identify and locate people that meet the profile
• The long-term impact of having a working sales enablement system
• The consequences of not having a successful sales enablement process
• Ensuring that you are using the right tools, and that they are simply integrated into the organization
• Understanding how to fix a problem, and solving that problem by leveraging current tools are adjusting the sales process, as opposed to bringing on new tools that will overcomplicate things
• The importance of executive management buy in when integrating a new sales enablement system

Our Guest

T. Melissa Madian

has spent the past 20 years in sales, customer experience, and developing corporate frameworks to make sales and customer success teams more effective. She is currently the Principal at TMM Enablement Services. She was one of the first people to pioneer the “sales enablement” role within an enterprise corporate structure, and loves seeing teams grow personally and professionally by leveraging the training and coaching she provides. She has successfully produced over 15 Sales Kick Offs and 50 Quarterly Business Review meetings, built world-class sales onboarding programs and created training academies for several SaaS companies.

Links › melissamadian.com | twitter.com | linkedin.com

Our Hosts

John Golden

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Martha Neumeister

Martha is social media strategist, responsible for all social media platforms of Pipeliner CRM. She is a communication expert with social media affinity, which she has been focusing on throughout her professional career. She has a bachelor´s degree in Entrepreneurship & Management and a master´s degree in Online Marketing which supports her in her career as Social Media Strategist.

About SalesChats

SalesChats is a fast-paced (no more than 30 minutes) multi-media series that provides leading strategies, tactics and thinking for sales professionals worldwide. It can be found on Twitter (#SalesChats), as a live Google+ Hangout, and as a podcast available on iTunes, SoundCloud and right here on SalesPOP! If you think you would make a great guest for #SalesChats, please contact co-host Martha Neumeister.

SalesChats is co-hosted by John Golden, CSO Pipeliner CRM, and Martha Neumeister, Social Media Strategist Pipeliner CRM.

Want to learn how to be amazing at customer service? It’s actually not that difficult. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone regarded you as being amazing in sales? Or a wonderful leader? What if you could transform yourself into a person who was always amazing – in almost every area of life? “Always be amazing.” That is the motto of Shep Hyken, who tells us why it’s crucial to be amazing when working in the sales world. John Golden interviews Hyken.

This expert sales interview explores amazement in the sales world, including:

• The difficulties surrounding being amazing
• What it takes to be amazing
• The importance of consistency

How difficult is it to be amazing?

Learning how to be amazing isn’t that hard to achieve. “It’s really simple,” said Hyken. “Most people think it’s being over the top, most incredible thing ever. But really, it’s about what you can do to have a goal that’s average a little more than average.” If you can start each day with a goal to try to be better than yesterday, you’re doing fantastic. Even if you fail to be better than yesterday, the goal is to continue a forward march with diligent perseverance towards your end goal.

What it takes to be amazing:

I’m all for shortcuts, and more natural ways, providing they don’t interfere with what someone might perceive as excellence. For excellence and amazement to happen, it just needs to be a little bit better than average, all the time. The bar is typically set very low, and being amazing only requires exceeding the bar. Often, fundamental things that could be done to take a company to the next level are avoided. Hyken gives the example of a dealership washing a car after it gets serviced, or a department store having salespeople available to help you. “Common sense should be more common than it is,” said Hyken.

Consistency is Key

So, if being excellent doesn’t involve an exorbitant amount of effort and work, why is it so hard to deliver on basic expectations? “Sometimes people do deliver on expectations, and sometimes they don’t,” said Hyken. “It’s not always a question of if they’re capable of it or not because they usually are.” The problem comes into play when an organization does not maintain the things they were doing that made them successful. When a process is working to expectations (or exceeding expectations), people can get comfortable. They stop doing the little things or small details that were part of what made that thing a success. To maintain consistency, you must maintain the processes that you put created in the first place. What’s additionally detrimental is that inconsistencies in performance will erode the buyer’s confidence in an organization, or in you. Without confidence, there is no loyalty, and you will likely lose customers to a competitor who can provide more consistency.

About our Host:

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM  empowers companies to perform amazing sales and service. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

In the last decade, we have entered into a new era of selling. This has affected all areas of sales, including the sales team, the marketing team, sales management, technology and software systems, and most importantly, it has changed the way buyers buy. In order to keep up with these changes, David Meerman Scott, interviewed by John Golden, explores sales and marketing convergence.

In this expert sales interview, learn about sales and marketing convergence, as well as:

• The history of sales and marketing
• The updated sales process
• Why content creation can be a powerful tool
• Two hurdles to overcome in today’s selling

History of Sales and Marketing:

Historically, the marketing team’s job was to generate sales leads. After finding potential customers, they would pass the customer on to the sales team, who would take the buyer through the rest of the sales cycle. The marketing team worked at the top of the sales process funnel, and sales worked through the middle and end stages. But, the way that sales and marketing teams work together has changed substantially in the last decade. This is partially because of the abundance of information that buyers have access to. Sales organizations have had to adapt to the way that buyers research products and services.

The Sales Process:

The idea between sales and marketing convergence suggests that sales and marketing teams need to work together, throughout the entire sales process. Instead of splitting up and working on individual pieces of the process, the two groups work together to take the buyer throughout the whole process. “Today, its marketing’s job to be responsible for the entire sales funnel, and its also salespeople’s job to understand how they can be responsible for the entire sales funnel,” said Meerman Scott. For example, a marketer can be thinking about the kind of content they can create that will not only drive people into the funnel but will be responsible for pushing people further and further down the funnel. Salespeople have the potential to find leads and work at the top of the funnel. For example, if they’re active in a LinkedIn group that relates to a product they sell, they might message someone that ends up doing business with their company.

Content Creation:

Content creation can be much more powerful and valuable today than ever before. But, there is a caveat. The people who create the content have to understand that the material has to be designed for buyers and focus on the problems buyers face and help them solve the problems. This is contrary to what most organizations do, which is to create content around what their products and services do, which is not the primary interest.

Hurdle #1: Sales Managers

There are two significant hurdles and detriments that companies sometimes face when trying to bring their company into the modern era, and truly embrace the convergence model. The first is in the sales management arena. Most often, sales managers get promoted from successful salespeople. This has some benefits, but the drawback is that it has sometimes been over a decade since the sales manager was selling. “When they were a successful salesperson, selling was different because buying was different. We didn’t have access to all of this content, and neither did buyers,” said Meerman Scott. “Sales management can be a detriment to the convergence model, and an organization’s ability to implement it successfully.” This is because some managers are insistent that things being done the way it was previously.

Hurdle #2: Sales Software

The second hurdle is outdated sales software, like sales force automation tools, customer management system tools, CRM systems, and sales automation systems. Many software tools were developed 5 to 10 years ago, and they aren’t optimized for today’s sales strategies. The tools that salespeople use (or sometimes don’t use!) should be relatively recent so that you can utilize a modern system for new selling.

About our Host:

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM empowers sales and marketing alignment.  Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

It has long been a struggle for companies to get their sales and marketing teams to align. Throughout the last decade, there have been numerous changes in the sales world, and sales and marketing departments have not been unaffected. However, with these changes have come some complications. It has become challenging to integrate sales and marketing, and the standard method of trying to encourage integration has not necessarily been successful. Instead, Mike Bosworth, interviewed by John Golden, suggests that agreement is the way to help sales and marketing align.

This expert sales interview is all about sales and marketing alignment, including:

• The influence technology has played
• The common denominator to unify sales and marketing
• Bosworth’s checklist for getting sales and marketing to agree

Technology’s Influence

Technology, in some ways, has fostered the disconnect between sales and marketing. When a sales and marketing team are asked to integrate, it can the divide between the two. “When they think ‘integrate,’ they think, how well can our computer plug into their computer? How can we get this software running so that we can never talk to these people again?” said Bosworth. “They’re trying to automate themselves out of a relationship.” As an alternative, instead of promoting integration, substitute agreement. “Let’s take any thought of technology out of it. Let humans beings find ways to agree with other human beings,” said Bosworth.

The Common Denominator:

There’s a lot of finger pointing happening between these two teams. Sales say that the leads they get from marketing aren’t up to par. Marketing says that they sent the sales team great leads, and then never hear back about a follow-up. However, despite their differences, there is one touch point between the two: the lead. “If there’s conflict, it’s because they haven’t agreed on a definition of what a good lead is,” said Bosworth.

Bosworth’s Checklist:

To help sales and marketing seek agreement, Bosworth has composed a checklist for companies to help foster alignment.

• Both sales and marketing must agree on who the target market is. Sometimes there is a disagreement on the intended buying audience. Define a specific buyer persona, and communicate it to both parties.
• Agree on hero marketing. Use storytelling to make the buyer the hero of their own story.
• Understand the steps in the buying process. What are the steps in buying from your company?
• Agree on how you want to teach the product.
• Develop buyer personas and sell to them. Have prepared scenarios to help the newly hired sales and marketing people understand the personas and how to sell to each of them.

About Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Pipeliner CRM empowers sales and marketing alignment.  Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.