Selling Made Simple, Salesman Podcast, This Week In Sales, And More...

Selling Made Simple, Salesman Podcast, This Week In Sales, And More...

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Selling Made Simple, Salesman Podcast, This Week In Sales, And More... episodes

  • ZoomInfo Buys Chorus.ai? Faceless Avatars Take Over B2B Sales? | This Week In Sales







    On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 



    * Zoominfo buying Chorus.ai* Faceless avatars being set to take over the sales profession* How much should you spend on Sales Enablement* If a college degree is worth the investment



    And much more! 



    News:



    ZoomInfo drops $575M on Chorus.ai as AI shakes up the sales market



    ZoomInfo announced this morning it intends to acquire conversational sales intelligence tool Chorus.ai for $575 million.



    Sales intelligence, Chorus’s market, is a hot space that uses AI to “listen” to sales conversations to help improve interactions between salespeople and customers. ZoomInfo is mostly known for providing information about customers, so the acquisition expands the acquiring company’s platform in a significant way.



    The company sees an opportunity to bring together different parts of the sales process in a single platform by “combining ZoomInfo’s historic top-of-the-funnel strength with insights driven from the middle of the funnel in the customer conversations that Chorus captures,” it said in a release.



    Chorus.ai will likely not be the final exit in the conversational intelligence space. Its rival Gong (often known by its URL, Gong.io) is one of the hotter startups in this space, having raised over $500 million. Its most recent raise was $250 million on a $7.25 billion valuation last month.



    The implication of the Chrous.ai exit and Gong’s enormous private valuation is that the application of AI to audio data in a sales environment is incredibly useful, given the number of customers the two companies’ aggregate valuation implies.



    https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/zoominfo-drops-575m-on-chorus-ai-as-ai-shakes-up-the-sales-market/



    The Pay Is High and Jobs Are Plentiful, but Few Want to Go Into Sales



    Demand for sales roles has shot up as companies emerging from the pandemic switch to growth mode, but recruiters say they struggle to convince people to make sales a career.



    ZipRecruiter, an online job platform, shows the number of sales roles advertised has risen steadily this year, up 65% to more than 700,000 open positions around the U.S., after big layoffs decimated the field at the outset of the pandemic a year ago.



    Keith Wolf, managing director of Houston-based recruiting firm Murray Resources, said the number of sales jobs advertised by his clients between January and May is double what it was for the prior five months.



    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pay-is-high-and-jobs-are-plentiful-but-few-want-to-go-into-sales-11626255001



    Business use of avatars: Avatars save costs, boost sales



    An associate professor of marketing at The University of Texas at Arlington says digital avatars can replace a sales force and customer service employees at a fraction of the cost.



    In this context, avatars are typically computer-generated representations of people. UTA Associate Professor Fred Miao says they can fill the void in interactive assistance that a majority of shoppers says they want.



    1 hr 2 min
  • Will And Victor Buy Cars? Inflation? Selling Frameworks? | This Week In Sales







    On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 



    * Our car buying experiences * Seismic surpassing $200m in revenue * Increasing product pricing due to inflation 



    And much more!



    News:



    Seismic surpasses $200m in annual revenue run rate



    Seismic, the global leader in sales enablement, today announced it has surpassed $200 million in annual revenue run rate.



    * Sales Enablement* Marketing Enablement* Social Selling enablement* Analytics



    https://londonlovesbusiness.com/seismic-surpasses-200m-in-annual-revenue-run-rate/



    How B2B Firms Can Price with Confidence as Inflation Rises



    Inflation is rising globally, cutting into companies’ profits. To deal with that, companies will need to raise prices.



    Many business-to-business (B2B) companies granted their customers pricing relief due to the pandemic, meaning they’d already sunk into a pricing hole even without inflation.



    These five strategies can help B2B firms manage price increases intelligently:



    * treat customers differently, according to how valuable they are to your business* exchange price for other valuable features – B2B companies can pass on surcharges for fuel, expedited shipping, inventory holding, and longer payment terms* enforce what’s in your contracts* consider indirect increases* adjust your product mix.



    https://hbr.org/2021/07/how-b2b-firms-can-price-with-confidence-as-inflation-rises



    Lilt Launches Next-Generation Multilingual Asset Management



    New Solution Enables Higher Quality Localization Through Automated Linguistic Asset Management



    Lilt, the modern language service and technology provider, announced the launch of Multilingual Asset Management, a new solution that enables companies to achieve higher quality localization and deliver a more unified brand and voice globally through better, more automated linguistic data quality control.



    “Linguistic data curation is an essential discipline for modern localization, which depends on training custom machine learning systems. Translation quality is too often compromised by poorly maintained translation memories and glossaries that no longer conform to brand requirements” said Lilt CEO Spence Green.



    https://salestechstar.com/forecasting-performance-management/lilt-launches-next-generation-multilingual-asset-management/



    Sales Enablement vs. Sales Operations: What’s the Difference?



    Sales Operations 



    Sales operations are the technical activities that reduce friction for sales reps on a daily basis. Sales operations may include the maintenance of your team’s CRM, data tracking and analysis, setting up new hardware or software for your reps, and so forth. 



    You can think of your sales operations team as a combination of management, IT, as well as “customer support” for your sales reps.



    What are the Differences Between Sales Operations and Sales Enablement?



    1 hr 16 min
  • What Kills Deals? Virtual Recruiting? Bo Burnham… | This Week In Sales







    On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 



    * Selling behaviours that kill deals* Virtual sales recruiting * Apple pushing back on working remotely



    And much more! 



    Sales news:



    The LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021 



    50% of buyers say that working remotely has made the purchasing process easier



     Buyers also identified a number of behaviors from sellers that were immediate deal killers – 



    * 48% Delivering misleading information about a product, its price, etc.* 44% Not understanding my company and its needs* 43% Not understanding their own product or service



    https://www.linkedin.com/business/sales/blog/trends/the-linkedin-state-of-sales-report-2021



    Celential.ai Appoints Vice Presidents of AI And Sales; Expands Its AI-Powered Virtual Recruiter Service To Sales Recruiting



    Celential develops an unparalleled deep understanding of candidates’ backgrounds using machine learning, natural language processing, and data science 



    Our Virtual Recruiter sends out highly individualized emails to high-potential candidates on behalf of the hiring manager and creates automated follow-ups based on accurate sentiment analysis What would take a recruiter hours is done in a fraction of the time — and rolled out at scale, too.



    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210630005482/en/Celential.ai-Appoints-Vice-Presidents-of-AI-And-Sales-Expands-Its-AI-Powered-Virtual-Recruiter-Service-To-Sales-Recruiting



    Remote working has pushed salespeople away: What is the solution?



    In a survey of more than 2,000 revenue leaders across the U.S., Canada, UK, France, and Germany, 58% of sales decision makers reported that salespeople departed their teams at higher rates than normal over the past 12 months.



    Salespeople choosing to depart teams at a higher rate (58%).



    Top three challenges to achieving sales goals are the lack of in-person meetings with clients (33%) and internally (27%), budgetary constraints (28%) and lack of certainty in pipeline and forecasting projections (26%).



    The fact that sales teams were expected to perform at the same level as normal during 2020 is further shown through the report’s findings that progress to revenue goals (29% pre-COVID, 29% today) and achieving sales quotas (28% pre-COVID, 25% today) remain the most commonly used measures of team success.



    https://bdaily.co.uk/articles/2021/06/28/remote-working-has-pushed-salespeople-away-what-is-the-solution



    Apple pushes back on remote work



    Apple remains committed to requiring most employees to work in the office at least three days a week from September, despite staff opposition.  Apple employees had written a letter asking for the policy to be reversed, giving all teams the option to work remotely. “We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” a senior vice president said in a video recording seen by The ...
    50 min
  • Salesforce Learns From Microsoft? Presentation Within A Presentation? | This Week In Sales







    On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 



    * Salesforce learning from Microsoft’s AI mistakes* How selling is way different in Japan* Victor pulling off the first ever, presentation within a presentation at Outbound 2021



    And much more! 



    News:



    How Salesforce Learned From Microsoft’s Mistakes to Dominate in AI



    one of the biggest pieces in Salesforce’s growth story is talked about the least, both in earnings reports and otherwise. Salesforce built Einstein, the company’s sales and productivity artificial intelligence (AI) bot, by studying ethical AI after Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) AI bot Tay infamously adopted offensive behavior in 2016.



    Put simply, Salesforce currently has the edge in sales intelligence AI because it beat Microsoft and other major players to the punch by several years in providing low-code sales AI solutions. Further, Salesforce’s massive market share and impressive customer retention (typically above 90%) make it harder for competitors to catch up now that they’re behind.



    This time-to-market argument is especially true for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce, because switching costs tend to be high compared to other industries.



     Salesforce’s client base is a major benefit in training Einstein to be smarter, build more use cases, and increase customer value. The more data that AI has to learn from, the faster it will improve and make more predictions. 



    https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/06/22/how-salesforce-learned-from-microsoft-mistakes-ai/



    Introhive raises $100M to automate customer relationship management



    Introhive, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) customer relationship management (CRM) automation platform, today announced that it raised $100 million in a series C funding round led by equity firm PSG. 



    Includes CRM software, marketing automation, and business intelligence technologies, syncs and enriches information from email (including email signatures) and other business systems and spotlights, scores, and maps “who knows who” across a business network in dashboards and regular digests.



    https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/16/introhive-raises-100m-to-automate-customer-relationship-management/



    Common Sales Approaches In Japan



    I am going to make incredibly broad, general statements here, but in my experience, they are true for many salespeople in Japan. How do I know this? We have been teaching sales training here since 1963



    * Asking for the order is typically avoided. Saying “no” is culturally taboo, so the best way to avoid having to say it or to hear it is to save everyone’s face and leave the outcome deliberately vague.



    * When the seller meets any resistance from the buyer, often the first reflex is to drop the price by 20%. Western sales managers would be apoplectic if this was the default objection-handling mechanism. Here, defending your price, through explaining the value, is thrown overboard and simple price point reductions are the preferred lever.



    * Objection-handling skills are underdeveloped, because the seller tends to see the buyer not as a k...
    1 hr 1 min
  • Gong.io and Outreach.io Raise All The Money! | This Week In Sales







    On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 



    * Gong and Outreach raising a crap ton of money and what that means for the sales industry* If you should swear at work



    And much more!



    News:



    AI-powered sales enablement platform Gong raises $250M



    Enterprise sales enablement platform Gong.io today raised $250 million in a series E funding round valuing the company at $7.25 billion, more than triple its previous valuation ($2.2 billion). CEO and cofounder Amit Bendov says the new capital, which brings Gong’s total raised to $584 million, will be put toward product development, hiring, and customer acquisition.



    Forty-six percent of business-to-business (B2B) sales reps list lead quantity and quality as their top challenge. That’s perhaps why Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience- and intuition-based selling to data-driven selling, merging their sales process, sales applications, sales data, and sales analytics into a single operational practice. The stakes are high, given that suboptimal and delayed leads can have catastrophic effects. Harvard Business Review found that there’s a 10 times drop in lead qualification when reps wait longer than 5 minutes to respond and a 400% decrease when they respond within 10 minutes versus 5 minutes.



    https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/03/ai-powered-sales-enablement-platform-gong-raises-250m/



    Vidyard integrates with LinkedIn Messaging 



    Vidyard is unveiling a new product offering – integration with LinkedIn Messaging – and launching a new sales trainer partner program to expand its partner ecosystem



    Today, the company is broadly releasing its new Vidyard LinkedIn integration. As an update to its popular Vidyard Google Chrome extension, the Vidyard LinkedIn integration is a free solution that extends Vidyard’s capabilities wherever users work.



    Vidyard now makes it easy for salespeople to record and send a video right within the LinkedIn message composer. With one click, record with a webcam and/or screen share, or insert an already recorded video, then send it off to a LinkedIn contact and get notified when viewed.



    Premium partners such as The RAIN Group, Sales Gravy, Corporate Visions, and Sandler Training are all a part of the launch of the new program, which includes other leading sales trainers such as #SamSales, On The Ball Ventures, In The Funnel Sales, Skaled, RevShoppe, SalesIQ, Sales Labs, Harris Consulting Group, Scott Leese Consulting, Sales For Life, CTS Solutions, and Blissful Prospecting.



    Vidyard.com



    Outreach Closes $200M Funding Round



    Outreach, a sales engagement and intelligence platform, closed a $200 million funding round.



    Specializing in optimizing the customer journey across the entire lifecycle, Outreach promotes collaboration at-scale by driving efficiency and effectiveness for marketing, sales development, closing and success teams. 



    With the added funding, Outreach plans to scale its sales and marketing organizations and invest in building, acquiring and delivering new technologies. The company also intends to expand and invest in new markets.



    This new funding round follows two years of remarkable growth for the customer optimization platform. In 2019,
    1 hr 5 min

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