#salesengine

[multiplatsystems]

𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐮𝐩𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝.

You don't need a bottomless pit of cash to see your sales graph point upwards. What you need is a smart, cost-effective digital marketing plan that works like a well-oiled machine.

It's about using the right gears-the right platforms, the right message - to get your business moving in the right direction without wasting fuel.

Stop throwing money at the wall and start building a strategy that actually drives growth.

[collectedinc-blog-blog-blog]

Accelerate Sales with these 3 Sales Proposal Elements

Driving high sales conversion often requires a great sales proposal. Your prospect had great meetings with you, but often times the final handshake is never delivered until a sales proposal has fully detailed your services, project timeline, and service fees. 

Source: DTTSP

In order to help nail your sales proposals, here are three great observations from Craig Wortmann's SalesEngine.com article, How to Write a Sales Proposal: The 3 Elements You're Missing:

Sales Proposal Element #1: Brevity

As Craig states, "I have never reviewed a sales proposal that was too short." There is nothing that turns me away from a potential vendor than a wordy, diluted sales proposal. My impression of the vendor can turn on a dime as I start worrying what working with them will really be like - "If they are not able to convey their pitch with any brevity, what about the real value that I need them to deliver?"

So when it comes to your sales proposal, keep it under three pages and remember Albert Einstein who said "Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler." 

Sales Proposal Element #2: References

Reference selling is a great way to drive higher sales conversion. Your prospects want to know that you are capable and experienced in serving their need. As Craig states, "Don't just give a name... go all the way. Give contact information and a short sentence or two about why this reference might be helpful for the prospect." References that are relevant to the current proposal help to demonstrate your value.

And here's a little Collected tip: every time you complete project, write your one or two sentence summary in a document where you keep all your references. Make sure to be overly descriptive to ensure each has flexibility on a case-by-case basis. If you keep this document linked to Collected, you can easily retrieve individual references for every proposal you write.

Sales Proposal Element #3: Not Gonna Do It!

This is a great tip from Craig on how to demonstrate confidence in your skill, experience and ability. Most every proposal needs to have a "Scope" section, but rarely will you see an "Out of Scope" section. 

A clear list of services that are not included goes a long way to removing headaches and frustration with clients further into the project. Also by defining what is out of scope, it actually enhances the focus on what you are doing for the client and bolsters the impression that you are confident and experienced in those areas most.

Next time you are writing a proposal, remember to include these elements to increase your chances of winning new business. 

If you’ve ever felt you waste too much timing trying to find something you know you’ve already written, then try Collected today. It makes you more productive and creative by delivering the most related content from your cloud accounts, right where and when you need it.

Collected works wherever you are - like Word, Powerpoint, Google Docs, and anywhere on the web with our Chrome Extension, like Salesforce or Zendesk!

[collectedinc-blog-blog-blog]

18 Sales Experts Share Their Best Productivity Tip

Source: DTTSP

As a B2B sales person, I often consider how I can better use my time. We have a small sales team with limited resources. So, my efficiency is a critical part of our business. When I think about how effective I am as a sales professional, I ask myself questions like: 

Am I spending too much time researching leads and not enough time actually talking to them?

Am I spending more time saying that I need to set up meetings rather than actually holding them?

Is there a way for me to put more of my time into opportunities with higher chances of being productive, like referrals, rather than cold leads?

One resource I use to help address these questions are other successful sales experts. In particular, I really like the content on the SalesEngine.com blog. Last year, they posted 18 Sales Experts Share Their Best Tips for Maximizing Productivity.

Not surprisingly, the answers from these experts clustered into three main tips. The article posted the verbatim responses from the experts. I've summarized the three tips and provided my favorite response for each below.

Productivity Tip #1: Always prioritize your time and manage your tasks

The sales experts' comments varied from strategic to tactical. On the strategic side, one stated that you should identify which types of leads are likelier to close and spend more time there. While a more tactical suggestion came from another, who recommended leveraging your calendar and CRM system to organize your sales calls and meetings geographically to reduce time wasted driving between meetings.

My favorite productivity tip was from Lori Richardson, Founder & CEO at Score More Sales. 

“Create a habit of doing specific tasks that lead to revenues regularly, such as having real conversations with potential buyers rather than just talking about having them. Set time aside to be on the phone that is separate from planning or research time. Finally start each day with an idea of what you’re doing – and be ready to go with it. So many sellers waste an hour or two each day ‘getting ready’.”

I'm following this tip every day. I spend five minutes at the end of my day making a to-do list for the morning, so that when I arrive the next day, I am ready to dive right into my work.

Productivity Tip #2: Invest in relationships

On the surface, this seems too obvious to be a key takeaway from the experts. But when you dive into the experts' suggestions, you'll find several good tips to incorporate into your sales process like identifying the highest revenue generating activities you do and making sure to pursue those first. One comment I particularly enjoyed was, "Take a blow torch to your time wasting activities with conviction." I also really like what Nancy Bleeke, Founder at SalesProInsider.com, had to say.

“Prepare! Plan first on paper and then mentally just before the contact. Focus on What’s in it for Them (your buyer) during this preparation and ensure that from the first words in initiating through the final closing statements your comments are relevant to them and their situation. Use all the tools available to you to research the person, company, and situation to guide you in this focus. When you make it about Them, every minute of preparation time is gained back two to three times through that sale and follow-up.”

This translated to me as shifting focus from your product (i.e. you!) to your prospect's challenges and needs. If you can invest your time getting to really know your prospects, you will find that they will open up and share with you their real issues, which is ultimately what you need to know to be able to sell them your solution.

Productivity Tip #3: Relentlessly seek efficiency

A.B.I - Always be improving. That's what Alec Baldwin's line was in Glengarry Glen Ross, right? Even if it was slightly different, he would probably talk about the pursuit of efficiency in sales if he were blogging in 2015. Several of these experts discussed tactics for staying aware of your calendar and priorities in realtime to remain efficient.

The one that resonated most strongly with me was from Jill Konrath – Author, Speaker, Strategist at JillKonrath.com. 

“Never, ever multi-task. Your brain is incapable of doing two things at one time. Instead, it bounces back and forth between them. The result? It takes you 30-40% longer to get things done than if you were single tasking. Do one thing at a time — and focus in on it.”

Her comments are 100% true. I try to think of my tasks as blocks of time against a daily agenda where I spend one 30-minute block on email in the morning and afternoon as well as a block of three hours before and after lunch. Major tasks get a full 3-hour block or I may plan out two smaller task during each block. The main point is to make sure I am singularly focused to see a task through to completion.

While I highlighted just a couple of the experts, I encourage you to read through all the tips at the original post on SalesEngine.com. Jenny Poore did excellent work bringing all of these expert opinions together. You can find her on Twitter and Google+.

———

If you’ve ever felt you waste too much timing trying to find something you know you’ve already written, then try Collected today. It makes you more productive and creative by delivering the most related content from your cloud accounts, right where and when you need it.

Collected works wherever you are - like Word, Powerpoint, Google Docs, and anywhere on the web with our Chrome Extension, like Salesforce or Zendesk!

[jemaddux]

Week 3 - Sales Engine

This week we have started working on a new project called SalesEngine. It is a program that takes CSV data files and (when we are done) turns them into objects that returns information on them in an API format to another program or user. It has also been a chance to start using modules in our coding as we are making a program that is sufficiently big to use them. Modules are pieces of code that you write once and reuse in other parts of your code so that you can give the same functionality to different parts of the program without having to rewrite code.

We have also been using this as the first project where we are using test driven development to build our code. I have enjoyed it because by building out the programm the TDD way we can easily test and see which parts of the program any new changes are breaking. This allows us to build out new parts of the program and to not be surprised when some part of the program stops working for unknown reasons (and then spend hours trying to figure out exactly where the code is broken).

Another change to our coding style this week has been working in pairs for our coding. I have been working with Kyle (who you can find over at KyleSuss.com)for this project. The question with pair programming is always how to divide the work up in a way that you can actually improve your productivity instead of just having two people hammer away at the same code and duplicate each other's work. I think that we have been pretty smart about how we have paired so far. We started out by building up the CSV importer and a basic class together so that we would both be clear on how we wanted the program to function. After that we started dividing up the work but our pairing has always functioned well together since we spent that time upfront working on the program and talking about it. Also we still talk back and forth about different parts of the code so that we can se what each other is doing and how that will affect the parts of the code that we are writing. I think that this communication will be the hardest thing the scale up to a larger group.

I have been here just shy of three weeks now and learned lots more than I thought I would at this point. Still don't feel like a developer yet but I feel like I can tackle much larger problems than I would have been able to before coming here. With twenty-one weeks left in the program I am still looking forward to diving into Rails. I want to put programs out there on the web and not just blogs like this one. I can see why we aren't building web apps quite yet though. I thought we would be getting into them earlier but it takes time to not only learn about Ruby and programming tehniques but to learn all of the tools that are available and how to make use of them. The biggest help when I get stuck is still my peers but stackoverflow is a close second in terms of how much it helps.

-John Maddux