Top Sales Library - a resource of all things sales

Joanne Black

3 Referral Selling Skills All B2B Sales Reps Should Practice

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Ensure your sales team makes time to practice these critical prospecting strategies. Top B2B sales reps acknowledge that building their professional skills is the reason for their success. They know getting to the top of their game takes practice—deliberate practice. Just like running a marathon, mastering a sport, or becoming a virtuoso musician takes practices,… Read More

3 Sales Tips for Earning More Referrals

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What’s your favorite kind of sales call? Do you enjoy hounding total strangers who act too busy to listen to a single word you say? Or do you prefer to connect with prospects who genuinely want to learn more about how you can help them? One of the biggest challenges in professional B2B sales is… Read More

4 Secrets to the One-Call Meeting: Your Powerful Referral Program

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Isn’t your team tired of cold calling? It takes roughly eight touches for sales reps to reach cold prospects. Is that how you want your sales reps spending their time—cold calling strangers who don’t answer the phone or respond to emails until they’ve been pestered EIGHT times? The #1 challenge salespeople face is reaching decision-makers quickly, but getting… Read More

A Social Media Connection Is Not a Sales Lead

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Are your sales reps clueless about how social selling really works? Sales reps abuse social media to the extent that I typically delete more LinkedIn invitations than I accept. They invite person after person to connect using the same old standard invitation, and then immediately blast sales pitches to anyone who accepts. This bad behavior is not entirely… Read More

Are Referrals Your Priority … or an Afterthought?

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There are reasons you’re not getting referrals. How is your sales team generating qualified leads? Using power dialers, email, and social media to reach strangers who downloaded your whitepaper or watched your video, or whose name came from a bought list? Those aren’t qualified leads. You’re just multichannel cold calling. Referred leads are the best leads…. Read More

Are You Expecting Too Much?

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Great expectations lead to great sales outcomes. Sage advice from a sales VP I used to work under: “Joanne, never leave a meeting without giving your buyer a task. That’s the best test for whether the person is serious about moving forward.” His words of wisdom have proven to be true, and this philosophy has… Read More

Are You Getting Duped by the Experts?

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Social selling isn’t a magical cure for all your sales challenges. What is social selling, anyway? Is it just the latest buzzword bandied about by shifty trainers, or an actual sales strategy with teeth? Whenever a new selling term surfaces, suddenly legions of experts appear, ready to take your money. They make outrageous promises that… Read More

Are You High-Tech or High-Touch?

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Forget what you’ve heard about sales tech effectiveness. Here’s why the personal touch still wins. There’s a myth being circulated in the world of high-tech sales. According to some “experts,” buyers know everything they need to know about our companies, products, and solutions before they ever speak to a salesperson—and most buyers prefer not to talk to… Read More

Are You Still Using These Tired Old Sales Buzzwords?

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It has been said that cursing shows a lack of vocabulary. Maybe so, but I find buzzwords to be even more uncreative and obnoxious. Sales buzzwords are as abundant as bees in summer, and they’re so overused that they’ve lost all their sting. This buzzword definition from Merriam-Webster cracked me up: “An important-sounding usually technical word or… Read More

Are You Willing to Walk Away?

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It’s OK to double your price for PITA clients Every buyer isn’t your client. If buyers continue to make unreasonable demands and keep changing requests and deadlines—even after you’ve given them exactly what they need—then you’re dealing with PITA clients. These PITA clients drain your energy, demotivate your team, waste your time, and expect you to… Read More

Cavemen Would Have Been Great Salespeople

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What can we learn from our ancestors about connecting with prospects and clients? A 27-year-old told me, “There’s nothing like meeting face to face.” I was stunned, because we’ve all heard that Millennials are tethered to their devices. But my meeting with him (like so many meetings I’ve had) proved that when we’re in another… Read More

Closing a Sale Is Straightforward: Give Your Prospect a Task

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Giving a winning sales presentation doesn’t guarantee that you’ll close the deal. Asking your prospect to engage in the process does. Consider this sales scenario: You conduct a great meeting with a business prospect, engage in smart conversation, and exchange ideas. The sales prospect:  Thanks you for the insights you provided  Agrees that your solution… Read More

Darn. It’s Here Again

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Times are tough, but a sales success mindset will help you survive this economic downturn. Darn, it’s here again. We’re on the precipice of another recession, which has happened five times since the turn of the 20th century. It’s almost embarrassing we got into such a mess. We don’t need to be economists to recognize… Read More

Do Some Research, Why Don’t You?

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Do you really think I’ll pick up the phone if I don’t recognize your number? I know the phone numbers and area codes of my clients, family, friends, and any other important people who might be calling me. And like most business buyers, I don’t answer calls from unfamiliar or unknown numbers, because I don’t… Read More