“Why should I buy from you as opposed to everybody else?” Business consultant, educator and personal coach Roy Osing takes on this killer question in sales.

RAIN Group Sales Trainer, Coach and Consultant Ago Cluytens explains, in easy to understand terms, why technology-based sales forecasting is so important today.

Ago Cluytens,  Sales Trainer, Coach & Consultant For Tech, Financial & Professional Services of RAIN Group, dives deep into the subject of sales management best practices.

How to Create Deeper Customer Relationships
#SalesChats Episode #19

A true customer relationship is an acknowledge and expected commitment based on mutually seen value. It’s understood on all levels within both business, your’s, and the customers, so there’s no confusion around how you work together and the best ways to deal with problems, challenges, and opportunities. Unfortunately, not all salespeople have true, proper relationships with their customers. Jermaine Edwards explores how to create deep customer relationships in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

Edwards explains:

• The importance of setting proper expectations from the beginning of the relationship in order to foster a healthy customer relationship
• Asking your customer key questions in order to understand where they come from and the baseline of how they view relationships, and aligning your engagement with these expectations
• Trust triggers, things that customers are looking for in their salesperson that buyers look for in order to assess their trustworthiness
• The importance of utilizing relationships as a competitive advantage
• How to create rapport and ensure that rapport is transferred to other people in the organization when they step in to assist the customer in other areas
• Handling the emotions that come up for both the buyer and salesperson through the relationship
• How to integrate customer relationship culture within a sales team and an organization
• Examples of organizations that manage customer relationships well, and examples of organizations that manage customer relationships poorly
• Pitfalls to avoid when trying to develop relationships
• The importance of going back to basics, and not getting caught in overly complicated techniques for building relationships
• Adapting to the shortcut culture, and managing unrealistic expectations about response times

Our Guest

Jermaine Edwards

Jermaine is an Inc. magazine featured author, and most interviewed customer growth and B2B  relationship expert. He helps key account managers, sales leaders, account directors and consultants around the world become irreplaceable advisers, and repeat profit sales growth from their value customers.

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.

Sales Prospecting – Are you doing it right?
#SalesChats Episode #18

Sales prospecting is the sales discipline that most salespeople aren’t very fond of. It is seen as a necessary evil, but if it’s embraced properly it can significantly influence success or failure. Dan McDade discusses sales prospecting, and how to understand it differently in order to use it properly in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

McDade explains:

• The many approaches to obtaining a qualified lead
• The tendency of organizations to encourage salespeople to juggle too many things, which leads to prospecting falling through the cracks, and not being done well when it is done
• When to begin prospecting and when to engage prospects
• Various statistics that mislead salespeople on when to engage with customers, and why this information has been disseminated
• How to be professionally persistent and overcome being ignored in the initial stages of the buying process
• The importance of adding value in order to engage with prospects
• Five steps of the sales process: finding the pain, getting an agreement that there is pain, getting agreement to do something about the pain, creating a generic solution, and creating a specific solution
• The tendency of salespeople to avoid the process of selling
• How to train someone to be a top prospector
• Asking the right questions in order to get buy-in from prospects, including pain inducing questions that help the clients get down to specifics about what problems they need solving
• The gap between marketing and sales when it comes to lead follow up, and how to close this gap

Our Guest

Dan McDade

Dan McDade is founder and CEO of PointClear, a lead generation, qualification and nurturing company that helps B2B companies with complex sales processes drive revenue. Dan is the author of the award-winning outbound sales and marketing blog ViewPoint.

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.

The Entrepreneurial Sales Manager
#SalesChats Ep. 17

Most people likely wouldn’t combine sales manager and entrepreneurialism in their mind when thinking about the specifics of each job. But, being an entrepreneurial sales manager is a very real way of managing that creates changes within the sales force, and what their sales team does in the field. Andy Gole discusses how to be an entrepreneurial sales manager in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

Gole explains:

• The anarchy stage of sales management, where nothing is happening
• The motivational stage of sales management, where managers treat their sales team like customers and do not provide tangible coaching
• The rigorous stage of sales management, where they are hyper-focused on the CRM and results, and often threaten to fire salespeople
• The entrepreneurial sales manager, where managers can effectively develop and change the sales team to develop entrepreneurial results and open more accounts
• Failure at the sales manager level caused by unrealistic or unfulfilled expectations set by upper-level management
• How it impacts the sales team whe sales managers that don’t have the proper skills to be entrepreneurial in nature, and how this impacts the sales team
• Embracing bold vision and bold behavior in order to be a successful salesperson
• How sales managers can install a culture and way of interacting that changes poor habits and negative mindsets within their sales team
• The ethos of the salesperson as a hero, and how that can generate respect and self-respect, which then generates motivation and success
• How to start integrating entrepreneurial sales management skills into your management style
• The importance of creating a culture that fosters entrepreneurial sales manager style coaching and includes executives, upper-level management, and the sales team
• Alternatives to entrepreneurial sales management that utilize a hybrid approach to management
• Utilizing the right selling tools to make it easy for the sales manager and geared towards resolving the three fatal flaws in selling
• The three fatal flaws in selling, including assuming you’re in a serious conversation when you’re really in a safe conversation; assuming the prospect believes what you say; and assuming the prospect knows how to make a good decision

Our Guest

Andy Gole

Andy is the founder and president of Bombadil, LLC. His experience brings a unique blend of the theoretical and streetwise to sales training and consulting. Andy has helped senior leaders and business owners re-energize their sales efforts and create a corporate paradigm shift in sales approach.

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.

Customer Advocacy
#SalesChats Episode 16

Customer advocacy is often thought of as something that serves the salesperson, but this isn’t quite right. Customer advocacy needs to be customer oriented and customer focused. It can be tricky to navigate relationships with customers in a way that isn’t self-serving, but rather is service-centric and service-focused. Joel Capperella discusses customer advocacy in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

Capperella explains:

• The concept of being prescriptive to the customers, and understanding their business, almost better than they understand it themselves
• Understanding customer challenges on an individual, personal level, as well as on a large scale across the industry as a whole
• How to become a better professional by knowing the entire landscape
• The tension between marketing and sales, and how to temper it in order to collaborate around what the organization really needs to do and ensure everyone is on the same page for the customer
• Creating campaigns in order to generate opportunities for customer engagement
• Starting a process where there is a win-win, enjoyable experience for both salesperson and customer in order to naturally transform customers into advocates
• The importance of supporting the customer during the critical period straight after they make a purchase in order to ensure the product is successfully implemented, and how this leads to advocacy
• Examples of great customer advocacy and what that looks like in the real sales world
• The right time to ask for references from your customers
• Using technology to your advantage
• The major mistakes to avoid, like not asking your customers to be references, and failing to set appropriate expectations of advocacy from the outset

Our Guest

Joel Capperella

Joel Capperella helps companies get awareness, a bigger pipeline, faster revenue, and empowers sales enablement transformation. He has 20 years of strategic execution in enterprise software, SaaS and technical professional services, with juggernauts like SAP and Oracle.

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.

Editor’s Note: As part of our ongoing Sales Innovators Interview series, we are very pleased to include video interviews of eminent sales leaders by Andy Paul. Andy is a sales acceleration expert and sales strategist, and is the author of the best-selling sales books, Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers to Make Fast, Favorable Decisions and Zero Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales.

Andy has conducted video interviews with well-known sales experts and influencers — practical (and actionable!) talks that he has offered to share with our readers. Ten-minute snippets will appear on our blog over the next weeks and months, whetting your appetite for the full interviews with guests like Anthony Iannarino, Jill Konrath, Jeb Blount, Dave Brock, Kyle Porter, Mark Roberge, and Mike Schultz.

In this snippet, Andy talks with Mark Roberge, veteran global sales executive and, currently, Chief Revenue Officer of Hubspot Sales Products. They discuss how sales acceleration really breaks down into technology to help salespeople sell faster and sell better.

See Andy’s full interview with Mark.

Of course when it comes to sales acceleration, we think that the right choice of CRM solution means everything.Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.