Sales quotas can serve as a motivator. They can also cause anxiety, especially if you are racing toward quarter’s end, short of your goal.
No matter how you feel about sales quotas, they are part of the industry. They help track success and offer insight into how sales teams and individuals can improve. While some organizations have replaced “quota” with a less loaded word, like “target,” pretty much every company applies them.
In this week’s trending topics, you’ll find advice on how to conquer your sales quota. You’ll also learn six common sales mistakes to avoid, and get a look into the future of AI and data accuracy.
Here’s What Sales Professionals Are Reading and Sharing This Week:
The Q4 Killer and How I Really Hit My B2B Sales Quota
Phil Terril at Microsoft looks back at his early sales career and offers up advice on how to break your sales quota. Here are four tactics and tenets that helped him:
- Attend your customer’s quarterly earnings call
- Humanize your interactions with customers
- Leverage your sales process, but remain flexible
- Do right by your customers
The first piece of advice about attending quarterly earnings calls is a strategy you can incorporate into your own work right now. The other three serve as reminders that putting customers first is the best way to find your own groove as a salesperson.
Sales Enablement and Revenue Performance
What drives sales enablement? Jay Mitchell at Mereo says that ultimately every part of your organization drives sales enablement.
Sales enablement, Mitchell says, requires every department to work together to empower your salespeople to close deals. It is also about your salespeople continuously improving their own skills. By helping everyone in your organization understand how they can support sales enablement, your entire team can drive revenue.
6 Fatal B2B Mistakes You Must Avoid
Every salesperson makes mistakes, and that’s okay because learning from those mistakes is how we grow. However, as Marc Wayshak says in Entrepreneur, some mistakes should be avoided altogether. He runs through six fatal mistakes to avoid:
- Selling to low-level buyers
- Highlighting your product’s features and benefits
- Giving proposals with only one option
- Relying solely on phone and internet
- Failing to clarify your value proposition
- Rushing to offer discounts
Wayshak goes into more detail on each of these, and the list doubles as a valuable reminder that making a sale isn’t about a binary transaction. It’s about understanding value, knowing your customer, and coming up with real solutions to their problems.
B2B Sales Outsourcing is Dicey. Here’s How to Do It Right
Should you outsource sales? Martin Weiss of BizXpand explores this question on the Sales Hacker blog. His deep-dive weighs the pros and cons of outsourcing your sales operation, exploring scenarios where outside assistance may be especially helpful. Some key areas to consider include:
- Expertise, experience, and skill
- Cost efficiency
- Scalability
Weiss ultimately says that whether or not you should outsource depends on your own business. It may be efficient to outsource in the short-term, for example, if you are launching a new product or entering a new market that requires resources you don’t have on staff.
Why Data Accuracy Is Critical to the Evolution of Artificial Intelligence in B2B Sales
In an article for Forbes, Henry Schuck of DiscoverOrg looks at how artificial intelligence will affect the B2B sales industry. His key takeaway is that AI will be driven by data accuracy
AI learns from data, which means the intelligence of AI is really based on the quality of data. This means that future jobs will be focused on data management. While AI may replace some roles, it will also create new positions in the data sector. Schuck’s piece is an interesting look into the future of B2B sales, and how AI will change the way we all do business.
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Topics: Sales trends
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