Five great sales blogs to inspire you.
The beginning of a new year is the ideal time to establish new habits, and one of those should be scheduling time regularly to increase your depth of knowledge about sales.
When I say this, many people express surprise. Aren’t sales just sales? Don’t they just happen or not, depending on the expertise of the sales person and the budget of the buyer?
Like every other important aspect of your business, sales are impacted by trends, by technology, and by new ideas about how to get the work done.
I am always amazed at how much time and professional development most entrepreneurs put into developing their businesses in every aspect from idea creation to production efficiency, but they rarely consider sales in any other context than whether they are going up or down.
To grow your sales knowledge, there are dozens of excellent sales blogs free for the finding on the Internet. Make a point to look at some of them so you can keep up with the latest trends in selling and consider whether or not they will work for you.
Here are five of my favorite sales blogs:
Best Sales Blog for New Ideas
When I want to be challenged about how I am selling, I go to The Sales Blog (https://thesalesblog.com/). Written by Anthony Iannarino, it is genuine thought leadership on the issue of sales.
You read nuggets like this: “There is only one thing that will allow you to successfully compete against lower prices – that one thing is the perception of greater value.”
Iannarino, who wrote The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, also offers some great free resources including a couple of e-books. One is on How to Master Cold Calling Now and another is Selling Without A Sales Manager. There are even free webinars on this site that offers fresh copy daily.
Most Memorable Sales Stories in a Blog
If you learn best through hearing interesting stories, check out John Barrows’ blog “The Filling the Funnel Blog.” (https://jbarrows.com/blog/).
I love the way he makes his point through stories. One of my favourites is an entire post in which he goes on a well-reasoned rant about salespeople who start every phone call with “how are you doing?” and then proceed with their spiel regardless of the answer. He knows, because he spent a whole week answering “miserable” to that question and nobody asked him why.
And speaking of stories, John also doesn’t tolerate stories from his sales team when it comes to making accurate forecasts for his next year’s sales. When he hears the words “I think” or “I feel” he immediately goes on guard.
He says he knows why sales managers have to shave off 10 to 20 percent of their representatives’ forecasts each month. The problem is lack of formal sales process with identified stages and objective measurements throughout, he tells us.
It is great advice delivered with good stories and a straightforward style that gets right to the point.
Best compilation of overall sales tips in a blog
I’m high on HubSpot Sales Blog (https://blog.hubspot.com/sales) because it is just full of useful tips for the sales professional, regardless of whether they are just entering the business or have been at it for 30 years.
It has a host of high-profile contributors such as Jeff Hoffman, Art Sobczak, Grant Cardone and Anthony Iannarino, among many others. It is highly relevant and includes great tips for blending technology with traditional sales techniques.
Some blogs you can check out periodically for a binge read; this is one you should check every day because you will end up with something useful that you didn’t know before.
Two other great blogs to round out your sales reads
Two other great sales blogs I enjoy are Heinz Marketing (https://www.heinzmarketing.com/blog/) and Sales Hacker (https://www.saleshacker.com/library/).
The former has a lot of marketing insights in its daily posts and covers a wide variety of topics linked to B2B sales. The latter is all about strategies and has blogs as well as videos and webinars.
Paula Morand is a leadership building, revenue boosting, strategy expanding keynote speaker, author and visionary. This dreaming big and being bold leadership expert and brand strategist brings her vibrant energy, humor and wisdom to ignite individuals, organizations and communities to lead change, growth and impact in a more bold fashion.
24 years, 27,000 clients, 34 countries, 15 books, former radio personality, 11x award winning entrepreneur and humorous emcee.
Check out Paula’s bestselling books on Amazon: “Bold Courage: How Owning Your Awesome Changes Everything”, “Dreaming BIG and Being BOLD: Inspiring stories from Trailblazers, Visionaries and Change Makers” book series; and due to be released in January 2018 “Bold Vision: A Leader’s Playbook for Managing Growth”. For speaking inquiries email bookings@paulamorand.com or call toll-free 1-888-502-6317.