Having a bad quarter in sales almost always follow this pattern: Two “lazy” months followed by a frantic third month (characterized by a desperate scramble to get something (anything!) across the finish line). At the beginning of a new quarter, you feel “fresh.” You’re glad the chaos of finishing the last quarter is over, and […]
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I recently got sucked into a heated LinkedIn debate about whether artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually displace the B2B sales profession. These discussions seem to be cropping up a lot lately. Many sales professionals and leaders believe it won’t happen; they predict that people will always want to buy from people and that relationships will […]
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New research confirms that “happy ears” in sales isn’t just some cynical phrase that grizzled sales veterans toss around to poke fun at rookies–it’s actually a real phenomenon, now validated by data (see below). The data illustrates that when buyers respond to your sales presentation a little too enthusiastically (with few objections raised), they are […]
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Even though the B2B sales world is dominated by men, salesmen selling to men buyers kills more deals than any other buyer/seller gender combination. Just as interesting: saleswomen selling to woman buyers brings more deals across the finish line than the other gender combos. Four months ago I wrote an article titled Women Break the […]
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Running an effective discovery call often means the difference between winning and losing a sale. Your discovery call sets the trajectory of the deal. It dictates how you present, what objection handling scenarios you’ll run into, and how much negotiation leverage you find yourself with at the end of the sales process. So, what makes […]
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In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week. . . . A new batch of sales conversation data confirms what some of us know at a gut-level: A key difference between the sales rep who goes to President’s Club […]
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The mission of sales enablement can be summed up in one sentence: To help the sales team sell better from the time each sales rep is brought on board, to the time they decide to leave the company. That mission is best measured in maximizing revenue per rep. Although we can summarize sales enablement in one […]
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Scaling the effectiveness of your sales conversations is what we aim to do here at Gong. That’s why we’re excited to formally announce our integration with SalesLoft, the sales engagement platform: They’ll scale the number of conversations you’re having; we’ll scale their effectiveness. This partnership started with mutual customers requesting that we integrate the two […]
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Much of my job comes down to interviewing sales leaders so we can understand how to help them do their jobs better. Especially when it comes to call coaching and scaling the effectiveness of sales conversations. In the last six weeks, I’ve interviewed 36 of them. As you can imagine, I was able to pinpoint […]
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In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week. . . . The best way to build rapport in sales changes from situation to situation. What works in one case actively causes failure in another. Winning strategies have a way […]
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When sales managers come to the realization they need to take coaching seriously by instituting systematic coaching programs, they have taken a huge step in becoming true professional sales leaders. But knowing where to start (and how to do) sales coaching can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t already have the “muscle memory” of implementing […]
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When your sales coaching activities are done in a random, ad-hoc fashion, moving the needle become stubbornly difficult. I call this “Random Acts of Coaching” (RAoC). The idea is to turn your sales coaching efforts into a steady, systematic, programmatic set of activities. When this is done, win rates trend upward. While this article won’t […]
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In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week. . . . A VP of Sales recently told me he has automatic alerts set up each time his competition is mentioned on a sales call. He then went on to […]
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Focusing on the middle of the pack is where sales coaching has its impact. Unless it’s done randomly. Star account executives will exceed their quota pretty much no matter what you do as a sales manager. And the awful account executives will eventually find a new career. It’s the middle ground, the “good but not […]
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