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As a sales professional hustling to grow sales and revenue, you’re always looking for new ways to work more effectively, but that can be difficult.

In How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer: The Five Qualities That Make Salespeople Great, Herbert Greenberg found that 55% of salespeople don’t have the skills to be successful.

Desperation turns people off fast. If you've ever cooled on a suitor or friend because of overt neediness and constant invitations to meet up, you'll know what I mean.

Most of us know not to cross the line between eagerness and desperation in social situations. However, when your job is on the line, good judgment can fly out the window.

So you’ve done your homework, and you’ve identified the ideal contact within the account to reach out to.

But three weeks and a dozen phone calls later, you’re still no closer to actually talking to the decision maker.

If you adopt a new sales methodology without simultaneously adopting new sales metrics, you’ll have a much harder time tracking progress. That’s why companies transitioning to an account-based framework should update their KPIs and leading and lagging indicators of success.

If you asked most people what activity they associated most with sales, I’d guess that many of them would respond the same way: Closing.

A company retained a sales consultant to increase sales. After visiting clients, observing the sales team, and quickly identifying ways to improve, the consultant worked closely with the Head of Sales to put in place a plan that yielded a 20% increase in sales revenue for the company over a six-month period.

Soon after I started my current sales role, I realized I was competing with the best and brightest sales talent. Before this job, I’d always managed to excel -- but to stand out here, I really had to up my game.

Many modern organizations ignore face-to-face selling in favor of its younger brother, inside sales. That’s understandable given an inside sales team is anywhere from 40% to 90% cheaper than an outside sales team.

Let’s be real: Most salespeople are annoying. They view their prospects as numbers in their sales funnel, not as people. They believe earning your business is a chess match and a signed contract means they “won the game.”

Following the loss of Advanced Search in the recent LinkedIn update, hundreds of salespeople announced they were cancelling their accounts.

Can you spot the two letters in this line destroying the entire sales pitch?

“If your organization needs help managing X, then Y is the perfect solution for you.”

You’re on a call with a prospect, and everything is going smoothly. You are both cracking jokes like old friends, and there’s a strong rapport.

Your prospect is from Minnesota? What a coincidence! Your grandparents lived in Saint Paul for ten years before they moved to San Francisco. The conversation couldn’t be better.

The traditional breakup email doesn’t work as well as it used to. Prospects are tired of reps asking if they can close their file or if they haven’t responded because they’ve been eaten by a bear.

A pushy salesperson isn’t good for anyone.

Sales today is about helping people solve problems like a doctor or a consultant -- not slamming deals like a used car salesman.

We've launched another episode of Sell Like a Human. Who better to have as a guest than the one and only Queen of Sales, Jill Konrath?

Jill offered the Sell Like a Human audience an amazing number of insights and tips in just a 20-minute interview. 

Who’s likelier to make a mistake: The rookie sales rep who’s never sold a day in their life, or the veteran rep who’s been on the front lines for nine years?

The reality is, they’re both going to screw up. Experienced salespeople simply make different mistakes.

The first hurdle for any sales training program is to capture and keep your sales reps’ attention. If you bore them, you will lose them. According to Xerox, 87% of sales training content is forgotten within one month of the training. 

The good news is that sales training doesn’t have to be boring and unforgettable. 

If you’re a B2B salesperson, you’ve probably heard about SPIN Sales. It’s one of the most well-known -- not to mention oldest -- selling systems. SPIN gives reps a research-backed framework for working and closing complex deals with extended sales processes.

Have you ever walked out of a sales meeting wishing it were always that easy? I’m talking about the kind of call where you're high-fiving after. The client hung on every word, finished your sentences, and didn't flinch at the price.  

Salespeople evolve. In stage one, they’re learning the ropes. It’s usually an epic battle to make their quota every month or quarter -- if they hit it at all.

In stage two, reps have developed the right systems and honed their sales skills. They’re meeting quota almost every month or quarter.

Let’s get real: Sales is freaking hard! It takes a lot to be a great salesperson, but most people don’t understand that. In fact, sales is probably one of the most misunderstood jobs.

But we get it. We understand the pain and the hustle and we want you to know something: You are not alone, my friend.

Figuring out whether the buyer can afford your solution is nearly as important as figuring out whether they can use it. After all, need doesn’t matter without the ability or desire to buy.

But talking about money with your prospect can be tricky. Not only can these conversations feel awkward, but you may not know exactly what to say or how to say it.

There’s a subtle, debilitating disease that affects almost everyone in sales. It can go unnoticed for weeks, months, or even years.

"Autopilot sales mode": Doing the same tasks day after day leads to autopilot, or the tendency to act without conscious thought.

In 2015, Forrester predicted that one million of the 4.5 million B2B sales professionals in existence will be out of a job by 2020. The firm explained there are currently four types of B2B salespeople.

In sales, there is something better than the freebies you get at every event: Warm introductions.

If you ask any C-level executive or above, they are 10 times more likely to respond to your email or phone call if you have been referred by a person they like, trust, or respect.

Most outreach emails with no context generate a 1-2% response rate.

The method of outreach sales reps use for a first connect makes a significant difference in response rates. Rather than deciding whether to call a new prospect or send an email based on personal preference, use the method your prospect will be most responsive to.

Which leads me to the question: Phone or email?

In sales, the occasional closing curveball is inevitable. But if you’re consistently encountering unwelcome surprises in the later stages of your sales process, the problem doesn’t lie with your prospects: It lies with you. Asking the right questions along the way will help you identify potential obstacles while there’s still time to deal with them -- and meet your quota.

Changing your thoughts is the most essential aspect of boosting your confidence. Your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts also produce the emotions you have about yourself and your abilities. If you think you're incapable, not smart enough, or lacking in some way, you're flooded with negative feelings that suck your energy and motivation.

How much of what you say do you think other people receive and interpret correctly? Seventy-five perent? Ninety?

The truth is, we miscommunicate just as often -- if not more -- than we communicate accurately.

What are the differences between a sales call that leads to a closed deal and one that leads to an unresponsive prospect?

When most salespeople try to double their sales, they wing the math and work as hard as they possibly can. This leads to burnout -- and extremely disappointing results.

That’s why I’ve created a mathematical formula that can help all salespeople double their sales, without working more: I call it the 2X Formula.

Picking the right company is a crucial component of your individual success. Every product needs the same foundation: A great customer service team that shares a common goal for excellence, an adequate budget to finance growth, and a management team with the experience and vision to ensure opportunities are utilized. Understanding whether these mechanisms are in place before joining a company requires extensive research.

For a salesperson, persuasion is the ultimate superpower.

How often do you get a call from a prospect you’ve never spoken to before who says, “I love your service and it’s the perfect fit for my business. Where do I sign?”

Probably not that often.

You want your prospects to view you as a helpful expert. So when they ask a question, you should answer it immediately. Right?

Not so fast.

A great sales call depends on what we at Sandler Training call an up-front contract. If you’re not familiar with the term, an up-front contract is an agreement, made ahead of time, about what will take place during a meeting or discussion -- an agreement that clarifies what each person’s role in the conversation will be. In the inbound selling world, this contract unfolds in seconds.

Back in March 2014, the Red Sox screwed up in a big way. They completely bungled negotiations with their star pitcher, Jon Lester, by giving him an insultingly low initial offer -- and as a result, Lester went to the Chicago Cubs.

A major portion of B2B sales phone prospecting calls will end up going to voicemail. For that reason, getting your best results depends on solid voicemail techniques.

When it comes to voicemail messages, here are eight tips that’ll transform your strategy -- and ultimately, your prospects’ responses.

It was the mid-90s in Washington, D.C., and I was a rookie stockbroker at Merrill Lynch. I was your typical rookie -- making hundreds of dials a day from copied pages out of the phone book.

Before the advent of web conferencing tools, “sales” and “outside sales” were synonymous. These days, reps can easily talk to prospects on the other side of the state, country, and even world.

But does that mean field sales has lost all value?

We all make mistakes on social media every once in a while, and that's okay. But the gaffes on this list go one level beyond -- into the realm of sin.

LinkedIn is arguably the most important social media site for salespeople, so a mistake on this network carries consequences. However, if you have sinned against your LinkedIn profile or connections, we're here to help.

I always have lived by the motto, “Time and pressure make diamonds.”
In business, we always have enough pressure but never enough time.

This being said, when new hires start in sales, marketing, or any department, I do something with everyone which is extremely unconventional -- yet always yields amazing results.

Charisma is hard to define -- but when someone has charisma, it’s obvious. Charismatic salespeople have a significant advantage over their competition, since prospects are far likelier to engage with them, respect their guidance, and listen to their pitch.

Walking away is hard. It’s especially hard when you’re walking away from a potential deal -- after all, you’ve spent time, energy, and resources building a relationship, and giving up means you’ll have nothing to show for it.

But in the long run, knowing when to walk away and disqualify a lead will make you far more effective.

Imagine you’re a pilot landing a plane. A long runway is obviously better than a short one since it gives you more wiggle room to adjust your approach. When you are tasked with landing on a short strip of runway, you must be far more meticulous about your movements to bring the plane down safely. 

Like it or not, small talk is integral to your success. Whether you’re networking, speaking with a new prospect, or warming up a customer before upselling them or asking for a referral, you must be able to build rapport with casual conversation.

To help you master this crucial skill, we’ve written a comprehensive guide to small talk.

Today's buyers are complex. They have confusing wants and needs. They're strapped for time. They're hesitant to share information -- yet have endless access to product details online.

To provide value to these modern buyers, we need to ask good sales questions.

Now that social selling is a legitimate way of growing your pipeline, it’s crucial your LinkedIn profile makes a good impression.

It’s the end of the month or quarter, and you’re running out of time to hit quota. A deal you were counting on to close is stalling.

What do you do?

Trends tend to go in cycles. There's a reason for the saying "what's old is new again" -- if something was popular once, odds are it'll come back sooner or later.

Modern sales practitioners and experts spend a lot of time talking about ways to optimize sales emails and social media messages for the best response rates. But could it be that face-to-face is actually the way to go in our digital times?