As iPads® and tablets become more prevalent in the sales world, there is a lot of buzz around the many ways in which they could be useful. With more and more sales organizations adopting these technology, one thing is clear – the potential impact these devices can have on a sales rep is immense.

Whether as a state of the art presentation platform, or a tool for accessing the latest sales collateral in the field, iPads and tablets allow for easy access to information as well as increased efficiency.

Given the volume of app options though, it is important to find out which of the thousands are actually worth downloading. Whether it’s cutting long lines at the airport, or pulling together a presentation on the fly, there are a number of great apps that every sales rep should know about.

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It’s that time again! In honor of the big game this weekend, we’re reposting our top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time. Enjoy!

The Super Bowl is back—meaning it’s time to stock up on Buffalo Chicken dip, kick back in front of the TV and watch some of the best commercials you’ll see all year. Or, catch some football. Whether you’re a sports fanatic or not, the creative ads airing between tackles are always highly anticipated. As well they should be—advertisers shell out close to $3million for a 30-second spot.

While some ads miss the mark, many make such an impact that we still talk about them years later. We’ve compiled a list of our top Super Bowl ads ever for your very own trip down memory lane: Read More »

At last month’s annual Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas, the SEC handed out our 2011 B2B Sales Awards. We were thrilled to celebrate the achievements of some of the most progressive organizations in the SEC membership. Awards were given in three categories: Adoption of Insight, Excellence in Sales Operations, and Commercial Achievement.

Without further ado, the recipients of this year’s sales awards were…

Adoption of Insight Award Winner: Treasury Wine Estates

The Adoption of Insight award is given to a company that is particularly good at taking action. This award recognizes an organization’s ability to take good ideas and turn them into actual tools, processes, and approaches that change behaviors. And we were very pleased to present this award to Darren Campbell, General Manager of Field Services at Treasury Wine Estates.

Treasury Wine Estates has a long track record of consistently turning ideas into action – the company is very far down the path of Commercial Teaching, and they’ve also done extensive work executing on our past Coaching research. The Treasury team took one of our most popular coaching best practices—Symetra Financial’s sales process-aligned coaching roadmap—and created their own version of it.

When accepting the award, Darren shared the six things that he believes help an organization accelerate insight to action: Read More »

(This is a guest post by Rick DeLisi of the Communications Executive Council, our sister program for communications professionals.)

When I was a kid, we had a piano in our house. It was an attractive piece of furniture in our family room. I say that, cause no one in our family knew how to play it (beyond say, “Chopsticks”).

But (for reasons which still elude me), we once had it professionally tuned. Now, I’d seen pianos being tuned before. It’s done electronically with a device that analyzes each note and indicates whether it’s flat or sharp. But the guy who tuned our piano had no device — cause he was totally blind.

Think about it. A blind piano tuner. Born without sight, this guy’s hearing was so super-sensitive, he could immediately detect the slightest imperfection in each note, and adjust it back to pitch-perfect just by listening.

To him, an out-of-tune note is like a physical discomfort, and he’s the doctor who relieves patients of their pain.

In some ways, that’s what we communicators and sales professionals do. Only not with musical notes, but rather, with words. Read More »

In the classic film “The Wizard of Oz” Dorothy leaves the grey world of depression-era Kansas and lands in the gleaming Technicolor world of Oz, where she begins a journey down the yellow brick road. Along the way she meets a mix of characters, and takes time to learn about and reflect on each one’s needs and goals.

Watching this old favorite reminded me of a key challenge sales reps now face—as reps seek to broaden customers’ perception of value, it brings them into contact with a greater number and variety of stakeholders across the organization.

But, reps can no longer have identical conversations with each customer stakeholder they come into contact with, because the outcomes each contact is trying to accomplish are different.  The technical specifications that resonate so well with engineering contacts fall flat when talking to folks in finance or marketing.

That’s why reps must identify the context and goals each individual is trying to achieve and tailor their conversations to them.

The question is: how do we make it easier for reps to tailor?

Well, the Wizard of Oz actually provides three tips on tailoring that can help reps get past the black and white “So What?” and bring customers into tailored Technicolor:   Read More »

There seems to be an almost unlimited array of smartphone apps out there, and many are geared to the business traveler.  Here is a sampling of my favorites—the apps I most often use while out on the road, all of which can be downloaded for free.

The apps are organized by common (at least in my case) travel challenges.

Challenge #1: “Wait, so for how long is my flight delayed?”

App that can help: FlightAware

If you’re traveling after the first flights of the day, the time of your departing flight is likely to be determined by when the plane you will fly on arrives from another airport.  Many times, the departure boards don’t accurately reflect this.  So ask the gate agent for the flight number of the arriving flight for your plane, and FlightAware lets you track that flight live while it’s in the air.  You can search easily by flight number as well as flight route (departing and arriving airports).

***Note – don’t stray too far from the gate area even if your arriving plane is delayed.  The airline might switch planes to get your flight off earlier.

Challenge #2: “I hope there’s more than a snack machine near my gate!” Read More »

This is the time of year when thoughts turn to lobster rolls, straw hats, and sun burns. But, during summer, my mind also turns to reading, which can facilitate said sun worship; it’s too hard to just sit there.

As usual, the business press produced a bumper crop this year and I’m hoping that the following five books will prompt some reflection and encourage everyone to share their favorite reads as well. Last year, we got some great suggestions from readers and we are hoping for the same this year.

This is a fairly idiosyncratic mix of books covering a variety of themes (and a couple of them might not be the easiest thing to read on the beach), but here are my top five suggestions for summer reading:   Read More »

(This is a guest post by Matt Lind of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for heads of Customer Service and Contact Centers.)

If we’ve learned (or rather, confirmed) anything from our work with customer service organizations, it’s that customer service professionals have a healthy sense of humor about themselves and their jobs—even though they seem to get more than their fair share of ridicule.

Let’s face it, though. Despite the fact that we all strive to eliminate poor experiences that are frustrating for customers, from an outsider’s perspective these situations can be…well…absolutely hilarious. And it’s not just standup comedians and sitcoms that are leveraging the comedic fodder to be had; on the contrary, more and more companies are pushing customer service to differentiate themselves—and using some spectacularly bad examples to illustrate their competitors’ allegedly inferior service.

With that in mind, we’ve dug up a few customer service-related spoofs, pranks, and advertisements that are sure to keep you laughing…unless, of course, you’re that frustrated customer on the other end of the line:

1.   Diapers.com – Customer Service Experts
In a possible nod to the talking E*TRADE baby, Diapers.com gives new meaning to the phrase “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes” by staffing their call center with an army of helpful baby-agents. Sympathetic to the familiar plights of ordering formula and assembling tricycles, these junior customer service reps field calls in between naps—all while pulling off the impossible task of wearing nothing but a diaper at work.   Read More »

The elevator door opens, and there stands your dream prospect…it’s the chance you’ve been waiting for to close that huge deal. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride itself, so you must be ready to quickly and succinctly get your point across.

The ‘elevator pitch’ has long been a staple in Sales’ lore. We’ve all heard the stories of the elevator pitch that got a rep a meeting with the senior decision-maker or helped close that big deal.

But new technology in elevator systems could make the elevator pitch a thing of the past…

New elevator systems now have the capabilities to route riders, sometimes according to rank and seniority. Read More »

By Andrew Kent

Nobody can sell an idea better than television’s Don Draper, the creative advertising genius in the show Mad Men. And after watching nearly the entire series in an embarrassingly short amount of time, I think I know what makes him so good: Don Draper is a Challenger™. He understands his customers’ businesses better than they do, and isn’t afraid to tell them. And if a customer ignores his advice in favor of bad ideas, he’ll likely fire them.

Here are three things Don Draper knows that most sellers and corporate executives haven’t figured out:

1. The customer is not always right.

   Watch Don Draper tell the customer they’re wrong

   The “customer is always right” mantra has long driven salespeople to bend over backwards to satisfy insane customer demands, only to then wonder why customers are disappointed when they get exactly what they’d asked for.

   Not Don Draper—he leaves that attitude for customer service. Don Draper knows that if he were to create the advertisement the customer asked for, he’d end up producing the same ad as every other agency. Not a recipe for loyalty.   Read More »