One of the most satisfying things about writing a book is meeting and interviewing incredibly talented sales executives who are always experimenting with new, innovative approaches to their jobs. Much to my delight, I continue to hear from many of them about their latest ideas. Norman Gennaro, a VP of Sales Consulting at Oracle, regularly…
At a time when even top design firms have been laying off their entire staffs and shuttering their doors, Mark English, a San Francisco-based architect, has tripled his client base in the last year – during the biggest recession and housing crisis almost since The Great Depression. In this interview, I ask Mark about the…
I am honored to be included among the authors of this e-book, including Paul Greenberg, who spearheaded the project for The Customer Collective and asked me to contribute. As always, my content focuses on real sales and marketing people, generating measurable results using social media and networking. Do you have a “social sales” success story…
Last week at the Dreamforce conference, a meeting in San Francisco of almost 20,000 salesforce.com customers and partners, I learned about new features and a user interface re-design planned for salesforce.com’s product set as well as Chatter, salesforce’s “Collaboration Cloud” offering. These announcements, presented at length (no exaggeration – the keynote was about 3 hours…
Many companies miss the huge incremental revenue opportunity of renewal sales: a dedicated phone-and-Web-based sales team that follows up with customers every month or year to insure they renew their contracts or service. By relegating renewals to an administrative overhead function, you could leave millions of dollars on the table. With a quota-and-commission-driven inside sales…
With so many companies embracing phone and Web selling to reach more customers and prospects in a more cost-effective way, we often get asked what it takes to attract – and retain – the best reps. As markets evolve, competition increases (or changes), and new business, sales models, and sales roles emerge, compensation targets and…
I am one of the people who writes and speaks about the importance of phone and Web communications in today’s selling and buying processes. I am passionate about sharing ideas about using social media and sales productivity technology to improve the quality and quantity of customer contacts, accelerate sales cycles, and reduce cost of sales. …
Last Monday, I walked to Moscone Center to join 37,000 people attending Oracle’s annual conference. This is the first time I’ve attended Oracle OpenWorld since organizing the company’s first ever users’ event over twenty-five years ago as part of my job as an entry-level employee at Oracle. You may ask: why should a sales person…
This is post is written by Brent Holloway, sales manager at Verint Systems and coauthor of Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology. I realized during a weekly review with one of my team members last month that I needed to do a better job of practicing internally something we preach…
After a long day of sessions covering Sales Lead Management 2.0, Customer Engagement Strategies, and the Sales 2.0-Driven Sales Process, we knew we had to wow the audience of 250 people to keep them engaged. Along with expert moderator David Thompson, CEO of Genius.com, my social media panel-mates, Kevin Popovic, President of Ideahaus, and Nigel…