A common cause of death among salespeople and marketing professionals is death by quicksand. Figuratively speaking, of course. And by quicksand, I mean being buried by an ever-growing, uncontrollable, gigantic pile of irrelevant, erroneous and outdated customer data. To dig yourself out of trouble before it’s too late, you want to make data cleaning (aka data cleansing) a habit that sticks.

Today we're launching a rebranding of our logo, our visuals, our messaging, our mission and values, and how we operate as a team. A full update to our identity, from top to bottom.

This post is here to explain why.

It's an understatement to say that there's no shortage of information on pretty much any company in the world today. However, as we all know–quality beats quantity almost every time.

To draw reliable insights from company data and subsequently boost sales performance, salespeople must a) have easy access to the data most relevant to them, and b) be sure that the data they're acting on is accurate and up to date. This is why data enrichment and data cleaning have come to play a central role in today's data-driven sales world.

In today's hyper-competitive business landscape, a canned sales pitch is more likely to lead to the person on the other side of the line hanging up on you mid-sentence than an encouraging "please, tell me more."

Company data is the solution to fixing poorly targeted sales efforts. When you only connect with companies when there's a data-driven reason to do so, and tailor your messaging according to the prospect’s situation and needs, you'll significantly improve your hit rate in every step of the sales process.

August is here! We're past the halfway mark in 2019, which means you only have five months left to crush your sales targets.

One way to make your challenge easier is finally taking advantage of sales automation. Automate the repetitive and frustrating parts of sales, so that you can focus on what truly matters: having engaging conversations with your prospects and customers. Stop grinding away at those unnecessarily tedious tasks and let the robots take the wheel.

It’s just selling, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve heard this question a few times after you’ve mentioned you work in business to business sales. Such an assumption makes your eyes roll because business-to-business sales, more commonly known as B2B sales, is a tough field in which salespeople face demanding professional buyers and overzealous decision‑makers.

Yes, business to business sales is just that, sales from one business entity to another, and therefore, requires persuasive communication and strong negotiation skills. However, mastering business-to-business sales is much more than just selling. Due to the complex scope and scale of the business-to-business model, salespeople must achieve a thorough understanding of a prospect’s needs, so they can adopt a consultative role.

Because the way people buy has changed, this is the right moment to review what makes business-to-business selling different, and how technology is changing this way of doing sales.

In sports, many teams use a playbook to chart out potential in-game scenarios, outlining the teams' strategies, tricks for avoiding common impediments, and tips for reaching goals smoothly. Similarly, a sales playbook can help sales teams build systematic winning habits and processes.

Integrating sales playbooks into your business strategy ensures better attainment of quota, increased customer retention rates, and improved lead conversion rates.

If you’re an angler, you might be interested to know that the newest estimates say there are about 3,5 trillion fish currently living in the world ocean. If you’re a B2B sales professional, you probably don’t care about things like how many salmons there are in the Pacific Ocean. What you want to know is the number of companies that can be successful with your product or service, and what revenue these potential customers can generate you–your total addressable market.

Sales calls where salespeople read from generic cold calling scripts convert at an abominable rate: Less than 1 percent. That means if you make 100 calls, you’ll only get one meeting. Unsolicited cold calling sucks for the salespeople but is probably worse for the prospects.

The phrase “always be closing,” popularized in the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross has no place in today's world of informed buyers. In 2019, salespeople have to follow a totally different mantra: always be helping.

If you search for “wordplay” on Google and your humor is as bad as mine, you can easily waste a good part of your afternoon reading jokes on how a scarecrow kept getting promoted because he was outstanding in his field. Yet not all wordplays are time-wasting gags. There are also those that will help you save time and achieve business growth. Have you heard about smarketing? Smarketing is, in short, alignment between your sales and marketing teams created through frequent and direct communication between the two.

What is smarketing more precisely? Is it relevant for your business and, if so, how do you go about implementing this approach into your day-to-day?