Sales Strategies

This post originally appeared on the Force Management Blog. To read more content like this, visit the blog here. B2B buyers are increasingly using resources other than a salesperson to get their information about your products.

You can lead a customer to your brand with social media, but you can't make them buy from you using social media. This is my B2B marketing advice. In other words, social media does not fit neatly into a B2B marketing strategy and last-touch attribution.

When it comes successful social selling and meeting your sales quota, being more like a car mechanic, instead of a car salesman, might be the key to your success. Huh? How are you going to meet your quota if you don't act like the tenacious and famous car salesman, Cal Worthington?

You might think that surrounding yourself with people who are just like you is a recipe for success, but it's not. Or you might think that staying away from people who challenge you or make you angry sometimes is healthy, but it's not.

Most entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed by what they have to do and squeezed by the amount of time available to do it. Yet most of the entrepreneurs I know will find the time do something if they believe it can help their business grow and succeed.

The era of "Big Data" is clearly upon us as sales and marketing professionals. For those of you who've been checked out of Hotel Reality for a while, big data is a bit of a catchall phrase and definitely one of the more hyped terms of the past couple of years.

When it comes to increasing profits, there are three predominant schools of thought: raise prices, reduce costs, or some variation of the two. As we enter a new year, how about a fourth option? Why not focus with laser-like intensity on providing what your customers value?

In the fall of 2007, newly appointed Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang went to Apple CEO Steve Jobs for help turning the foundering internet giant around. Jobs gave him and Yahoo's top executives a simple but profound piece of advice.