Mike Schultz's Blog, page 4

How to Make Online Sales Training Engaging

In today's digital age, online learning has become an integral part of sales training and development. Modern learners, having grown up in an era dominated by digital technology, are accustomed to engaging with content online. They expect learning experiences to be interactive, accessible, and relevant. However, engaging sellers in a virtual environment can still be challenging. As an L&D professional, it's crucial to understand the key components of driving engagement and adoption in online training programs.

Business Development Strategy for Professional Services

What Is Business Development?

Business development is the process of growing an organization, fostering opportunities, and expanding revenue. For professionals, business development often means bringing in new business, developing relationships, uncovering needs and opportunities, communicating value, demonstrating impact, and expanding accounts.

When it comes to business development for professional services, one of the biggest challenges professionals face is finding time to do it all. After all, you don't sell full-time. Your work, whether it's consulting, accounting, IT, financial services, or engineering, is what you do full-time. It can be very difficult to find time to create and nurture the relationships necessary to bring in new business.

Value-Based Selling: Benefits and Strategies

What Is Value-Based Selling?

Value-based selling is a sales approach where sellers maximize buyer value by redefining reality, understanding and shaping buyer need, crafting compelling solutions to address need, communicating maximum impact, and driving change with ideas that matter. Value-based selling encompasses both consultative selling and advanced consultative/insight selling.

Driving Sales Enablement Strategy Through Change Management

Sales enablement isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a strategic imperative for driving sales success in today's dynamic business environment. Yet, many organizations struggle to implement and sustain effective sales enablement initiatives. This article explores how leveraging change management principles can transform your sales enablement strategy, leading to lasting improvements in sales performance. We'll discuss:

[Infographic] The 5 Ws of Connecting with B2B Buyers

If you want to connect with B2B buyers, you must contend with numerous obstacles to break through the noise and set meetings. Deciphering buyer decision roles, navigating purchasing processes, and standing out in a sea of content, emails, and social media messages is a challenge.

Mastering the Sales Cycle: Definition, Stages, and Tips

No two deals are ever quite the same, but every seller needs the same set of core skills to win sales. From the first outreach to closing a deal, each of these skills is necessary to move the sales cycle forward.

Sales Skills Assessments: Building Better Training

In today's competitive environment of complex sales, an organization's success is heavily dependent on the skills and performance of its sales team. Sales training is a critical component in equipping sales professionals with the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to effectively engage with buyers, understand their needs, and close deals.

How to Run a Successful Sales Discovery Call

For consultative sellers, having successful sales discovery calls is essential because they underpin the entire sales process.

These calls provide sellers with an opportunity to deeply understand their buyers' challenges, objectives, and operating environment. In turn, this in-depth knowledge of the buyers’ needs allows sellers to design solutions that are tailored to fit the unique circumstances of each buyer.

9 Principles of Selling to Senior Executives

TL;DR? Download the complimentary white paper and browse later.

In complex sales, professionals are facing a set of evolving challenges that impact the effectiveness and efficiency of their sales processes. Our research at RAIN Group has identified key trends that are shaping the sales landscape, notably:

43% of sales leaders have reported an increase in the length of sales cycles.
85% are encountering challenges due to an increase in the number of decision makers involved in each deal.

[Infographic] 11 Best Practices for Sales Onboarding

When it comes to sales performance, getting the most out of your team starts with strong onboarding. Organizations with effective onboarding are 6.3x more likely to prepare their new sales hires to succeed.