Before you start the relationship building process with prospects, you need to identify which of your prospects are hot and which ones are not. Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) criteria, you can better qualify what leads you should go after. Originally developed by IBM, BANT criteria can help you determine if there’s a [...]

Sales forecasts can be helpful for time management for sales reps, as they can highlight which accounts they should spend their valuable time selling to, and which accounts are not highly likely to buy.

While faux pas in the world of sales may not be as material as mismatching socks or flood pants, the implications of committing a sales faux pas are arguably more devastating. Committing these five “no-nos” will almost assuredly cost you the sale, or at the very least, will lengthen your sales cycle and hinder your ability to hit your quota.

Structure and continuity are extremely important in keeping a sales team functional and the sales process successful. Keeping things organized and requiring a specific progression of steps in the sales cycle ensures that corners are not cut, the prospect is well-qualified and well-nurtured, as well as making sure that no information is lost. The steps of the process must be clearly defined and simple to follow; the more you can avoid confusion and make this process visible, the more it will actually be followed.

Obviously, just purchasing sales intelligence tools is not enough to decrease research time and increase lead conversion rates, sales cycle time, and reps hitting their quotas. And in this economy, if you are in the bottom 30% and not correctly utilizing these tools, it has resulted in a decrease in performance rather than just minute increases. This indicates that now is NOT the time to slack; it is the time to get your act together.

You cannot just give your reps a map and expect them to drive from point A to point B if you haven’t taught them how to drive, or even more fundamentally, how to read a map.