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Before your buyer makes a decision to buy anything from you, that buyer has to “buy you” first.Nothing good will happen if you aren’t able to make a strong connection with your buyer.Underscoring this challenge, here are some stats that might surprise you…

This post is all about ideas that will help you create good blog posts. Most of us know the value of blogging and most of us experience "writer's block" at one time or another. So, when I read an article recently that offered some ideas about creating blog content, I was so inspired that I had to share some of the ideas. To be fair, the original content came from someone who writes for Search Engine Watch. Following are 5 easy ways and ideas about where to go for inspiration to write blog posts.

Failing to get some level of commitment from a buyer before providing a proposal is one of the biggest mistakes professional salespeople make. Many salespeople will ask a buyer, “Would you like me to put a proposal together for you?” Think about it, what buyer would respond “no” to that question. After all, the salesperson ends up doing all the work and providing free consulting to the buyer. Buyers expect and to some degree deserve free consulting, but the imbalance of time in this scenario is inappropriate.

Sales training without customized skill practice and ongoing follow up is like getting your knee replaced and ignoring post-surgery physical therapy. It is never quite the same. We’ve all experienced it before – well not the knee surgery part. You attend a one or two-day sales training seminar and at the end you feel like you can conquer the world. You feel like a selling beast. In the training and development industry, we call this feeling the “post training high”.

The internet has changed the lives of professional salespeople in a big way. Recent reports suggest more than 70% of the buying journey is done anonymously online. Combine that with more competition and information that is so easily accessible for the buyer, buyers are far more empowered and educated than they were only a few years ago.

Nearly every time you read about the top traits of successful salespeople you’ll find a section about qualifying buyers.In sales, the buyer is not the only one who should be making a decision.The salesperson has to decide how much time and energy to pursue the buyer.Too much time invested in an unqualified buyer prevents the salesperson from working with the right buyers to achieve his goals.

Following are 10 fun and interesting facts about sales and selling performance. If you feel a little twinge when you read some of them because they might be a development opportunity for you, I’ve included some recommendations about how to improve. Going one step further, I've included links to previous articles/posts related to some of the topics.

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest nor the most intelligent of the species that survives, but the ones most responsive to change”. How this applies to you is determined by many factors. But with the marketplace becoming ever more competitive and buyers’ attitudes influenced by so many new and changing factors, successful salespeople and businesses need to focus on three important factors to ensure they adapt and survive.

This is an update to a post written previously about marketing budgets, and includes an update about what companies are spending on marketing activities; including digital marketing, search marketing and social media. The two sources of data are Forester Research and the CMO Survey, an organization dedicated to marketing insights and supported by Duke University and McKinsey.

Various studies report that only about 4-7% of B2B buyers are in the buying mode for a particular product or service at any given time.Other studies report that anywhere from 55-70% of a B2B buyer’s purchasing journey is done anonymously – activities of which sellers aren’t aware.While these stats vary based on a variety of issues and conditions, they are indicative of the typical B2B purchase journey.If B2B buyers aren’t always in the buying mode and so much of the buyer’s journey is done without us sellers even knowing what’s going on, how can B2B sales professionals operate in order to seize sales opportunities?