“Old sales was about gut feelings — who managers felt by instinct was the right player for each position. New sales is about science — about using all the available data to make a well-informed decision.” Nick Hedges for Inc

Leicester City FC were at 5000/1 odds to win the English Premier League before the last season started. Suffice to say, no-one, probably not even their fans thought they had any chance of doing anything this season.

A few months later, they won the whole thing. 5000/1 odds. This is truly an inspiring story.

As Frank Meehan explained over on…

Originally published at blog.spartasales.com.

Gamification went through a flash-in-the-pan period in 2011 where it was played up as the next big thing. The promise of this concept, however, subsequently fell flat for several crucial reasons. In the rapid timeline of digital evolution, a fresh generation of enterprise gamification companies have now emerged.

Here’s how innovation and insight have transformed the basic concepts behind gamification, and why today’s enterprise software companies can finally deliver on the “gamification” promise, of driving better culture and results by tapping into “the game”.

Today’s sales process demands self-motivation and a focus on quantifiable results

Because…

Happy new year!

If you’re like me, you’re refreshed after a few days off, and more importantly, excited about a big 2015, one in which sales targets are crushed and the business is taken to another level. That’s the goal, but is it easier said than done?

As a sales leader, how can you guarantee sales success in 2015?

Well, one of the key’s is absolutely to build some early momentum, and bank a big Q1, to set up the rest of the year for success.

In other words, you want to avoid the “Post Holiday Sales Hangover”.

Of course…

As a sales leader, your #1 priority is to increase the results and output of your sales team. Now, the most cost-effective and sustainable way to achieve that, is to drive organic sales growth, i.e. get more out of the sales people you already have.

What drives organic sales growth?

I’ll give you a clue, it’s not smarter CRM software, prospecting tools, lead scoring, pipeline management or marketing automation. Now, I’m not against these technologies, in fact I use most of them myself. Smarter sales-efficiency-tech is good, but turning good salespeople into great salespeople requires something different altogether.

In order…

Infographics, White Papers, Twitter Cards, E-Books, Squeeze Landing Pages. All the things that B2B marketers need to be thinking about, creating, analysing and optimising.

The problem? When it comes to creating this content, it’s a nightmare. OK, creating a blog post is easy, but if there are any visual aspects whatsoever (logos, branding, color palettes), the process becomes super cumbersome and generally leads to marketers creating visually unappealing content.

Let’s say I want to create an infographic, but keep it in line with my company’s branding and style — well, then I need to ask my design team for a…

This post was originally published at blog.spartasales.com.

Cold calling isn’t dead, you’re just too scared to do it

Yes, customers are more enlightened than ever. Yes, they don’t need you anymore. Yes, it’s much nicer to generate a steady flow of leads from content marketing. Yes, you want your product to “sell itself”.

That my friends, is what I call “The Dream”. We’re all striving towards “The Dream”.

I’m not telling you that cold calling is the only way. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Do content marketing, work with paid acquisition, work with LinkedIn InMails. …

Selling in 2014 is all about helping prospects come to a decision that is mutually beneficial. Simply put, you should gain a customer and your prospect should gain a truly valuable product or service.

“Wait, hasn’t sales always been about that?”

Yes, but sales has changed dramatically. Customers are more well-informed than ever before, so the role of the sales person has really shifted from “information-deliverer” to “finding-a-match-consultant”.

The power of recommendations

Given that the most effective salespeople in 2014 are these “match-consultants”, it’s critical that salespeople are perceived as (and hopefully are) experts or authorities in that particular field…