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5 Qualities that Top Sales Teams have in Common

1. High Rated Sales Quality Top performing sales teams purpose to rate themselves way higher than underperforming ones. Twice as many salespeople and sales leaders at high-performing sales organizations rate their organization as excellent as compared to those working in average and underperforming organizations. They are proud of their brand and walk shoulder high in confidence of their organization. They also take much pride in the quality of their sales. 2. Employment of a well structured sales process A good sales process is a tool in the success of any sales organization. The sales process is a guide in what to do, when, where and even how. To performing sales organizations have sales processes that are flexible, closely monitored, strictly enforced, encourage accountability and even automated. Yellow Pages Kenya prides itself in a clear well documented sales process and a good support tool known as Sales Force that not only…

How To Find Your Most Productive Hours

How To Find Your Most Productive Hours We all have 24 hours in a day. But not all hours are created equal. Sometimes an hour is enough to blaze through a massive project, and other times all you manage is to tiredly send a couple of unimportant emails. Motivational speakers, performance coaches, and CEOs advocate finding and leveraging your peak hours of the day as the key to being more productive. Following a schedule that utilizes your most productive work hours will ensure that the important projects receive the energy investments they deserve. Here’s an official plan to help you harness those productivity power hours: 1. Follow The (Ultradian) Rhythm Like anything in nature, humans run in cycles. The growing body of research on ultradian rhythms – 90-120 minute cycles that run within the 24- hour circadian day – suggests that our day is driven by cycles that affect how alert and productive we are. At…

How to Separate the Personal and Professional on Social Media

Let’s face it: social media is risky. A single unfortunate post can throw a career off track. And yet in an era in which younger workers are connected with an average of 16 co-workers online and where 40% to 60% of hiring managers use social media to screen potential hires, it is simply not reasonable to stay off social media entirely. So how can we balance the personal and professional online? The increasing adoption of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedInpresents an interesting quandary for people who want to use social media for both personal (keep in touch with family and friends) and professional (network with colleagues) purposes. Do you juggle separate personal and business profiles for each of these networks? Or should you use one account that merges both your professional “brand” image and your personal life? How you should use these social networks depends on your objectives and comfort with…

How to Separate the Personal and Professional on Social Media

by Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Nancy Rothbard Let’s face it: social media is risky. A single unfortunate post can throw a career off track. And yet in an era in which younger workers are connected with an average of 16 co-workers online and where 40% to 60% of hiring managers use social media to screen potential hires, it is simply not reasonable to stay off social media entirely. So how can we balance the personal and professional online? In a recent research study, we spoke with dozens of professionals about their use of social media, and were struck by the variety of approaches they are using. Some professionals, we found, still manage to avoid social media altogether. But most see that as unrealistic in many occupations, and are unwilling to be deprived of the advantages social media affords in terms of connecting to people and collecting information. Many in some way recreate in social media…

Yellow Pages ad sales, having trouble getting an appointment

Hi everyone, I started this week selling for a yellow page advertising company. Today was my first full day of prospecting, I called roughly 50 companies on the telephone and visited about 20 in person out in the field and no appointments. This isn’t my first time in b2b sales so I know starting out is tough but I don’t think I every hit this many contacts without an appointment. 6 or 7 told me to call in a week or so but that’s about it. Just wondered if anyone else here is in advertising sales and has any advice on good cold calling techniques. Here is what I do. I try to be very breif in my opening statement, tell them who I am, how I can benefit their business, and ask for an appointment. I’m very casual and laid back as to not sound like a scripted telemarketer.…

The Biggest Mistakes Made in Hiring Sales People

This article was originally published by quickbase.intuit.com Companies typically spend more hiring their sales forces than any other function in an organization, yet sales managers often aren’t adept at assessing the right skills to make good hires. It’s time to turn that around in order to drive better bottom-line results. If you want people in the field to understand your strategic initiatives and demonstrate behaviors that will drive profitable growth, then there must be a clear roadmap to drive that alignment, says Frank Cespedes, author of “Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling.” He discusses the issue with Anita Bruzzese in the second part of this interview that looks at hiring and how sales will be affected by an improving economy. AB: When it comes to hiring the kind of sales people that will help organizations to better align strategy and sales, what should hiring…

The Biggest Facebook Posts of 2015 and What We Can Learn From Them

For Social Media Today by Andrew Hutchinson The Biggest Facebook Posts of 2015 and What We Can Learn From Them | Social Media TodayThe process of ‘doing’ Facebook got a whole lot tougher in 2015. Organic reach is way down, video views are way up, and Facebook itself is doing its utmost to convince more brands to forget their own blogs and pages and conduct all their business on their network instead. Better reach, better mobile experience – what’s not to like? Working out the best way to utilize Facebook is becoming more complex, with the sheer amount of options available – from ads to Page tools – growing every day. There are ways to ‘win’ at Facebook, there are ways to achieve great results, both organic and paid, but there’s a lot more to consider, and a lot more to learn. With this in mind, it’s worth taking a moment to…

Generation Y, which like advertising

People called generation Y (born between 1980 to 2000), it has a very behavior based on immediacy.Most of these people have are the consumer and the working population. The study called the Millennial Band Advocates, Social Chorus makes an interesting analysis of how this shows the world population deals with brands and marketing companies. The conclusion is that Generation Y does not believe in advertising. Generation Y is a lover of social networks where they appear with a major expressiveness. This inclination for what is immediate and with just one click, makes the marketing department of any company that wants to reach this audience understand some aspects that are specific to this generation. Usually longer believe in experiences that your friends have with certain brands to the detriment of advertising messages. The positive or negative image of that audience with certain brands depends on the experiences in respect of them.…

5 ways to navigate change in business today

“We have this big myth in the technology industry that we like to impose on everybody — disruption is going to happen and it’s going to destroy you. But this pattern of change actually takes time.” And so began Andy Lark, CMO of Xero, launching into an overview of the actual rate of change in the digital era at Xerocon Denver 2015. Why do companies increasingly struggle to stay up-to-date with the accelerating pace of digital transformation? How can individuals and businesses learn to navigate today’s shifting landscape in a way that better prepares them for the future? They key, Andy says, is figuring out what is driving the change in business so you can get in front of it. Here are Andy’s 5 tips for improving change management in an evolving world: 1. Learn how to participate The days of pushing information out to customers are over. Companies will grow…

Oil price briefly falls below $30 a barrel

Oil prices have briefly fallen below $30 a barrel on international markets for the first time since April 2004, before recovering again. Brent crude, used as an international benchmark, fell as low as $29.96, but bounced back to trade at $30.22. Oil prices have fallen by 70% in the past 15 months. Earlier, Russia’s Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, warned tumbling oil prices could force his country to revise its 2016 budget. He said that the country must be prepared for a “worst-case” economic scenario if the price continued to fall. Taxes from oil and gas generates about half the Russian government’s revenue. The 2016 federal budget that was approved in October was based on an oil price of $50 a barrel in 2016 – a figure President Vladimir Putin has since described as “unrealistic”. Government departments have been ordered to cut spending by 10%, repeating a policy imposed in 2015,…

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