Sales Development is here to stay but it's always changing. David Dulany is the founder and CEO of Tenbound, a company focused on bringing together the sales development community. David discusses trends and problems facing the sales development space and what managers and leaders need to know to stay ahead of the curve.

Dan McGinn is the author of  Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed. The book focuses on the topic of science and mental preparation. Stress can effect everybody and people in sales are certainly not immune. Unlike athletes, sales leaders often do little mental preparation before big meetings or events but there is a lot of research suggesting that people who engage in certain behaviors before stressful activities or high-stakes performances perform better. The book highlights such activities as listening to motivational songs, having a routine, or performing a certain set of actions as great ways to get psyched up.

People always find different ways to communicate to get what they want. Using the phone might be preferred for some while others prefer email and others texting messaging. Chat has become a mainstream method used between companies and their prospects and clients. Although chat has not found it's way into the mainstream sales process, it has become an often used and often preferred method for prospects to communicate with companies. Chat allows prospects to not have to pick up the phone and have a long drawn out conversation but it allows the instant gratification of potentially getting answers quick. As Chat continues to become more and more utilized as part of the sales process, we sat down with Johnny Everett, founder of The Chat Shop to talk about how companies are using chat and how chat will continue to disrupt the sales process in the coming years.

The solar eclipse happened and it was a good thing. A lot of people across the globe gathered and enjoyed the celestial event. I for one was dragged to Idaho to watch the actual event close to the area of totality, where apparently you could get the best view possible. It was fun and the family and I enjoyed the whole experience. Now, leading up to the event there were a handful of publications who tried to estimate how much productivity would be lost due to the event. Being data-driven junkies like we are, we decided to look at our Neuralytics data set and see how what happened to sales teams during the solar eclipse. ***WARNING We report this data in fun, we enjoyed the eclipse as much as anybody else.

Many sales people find themselves on an island. They run their business with little support and little interference from the corporate office. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that sales reps are empowered to do what they need for their territories but the bad thing is, they often overlook critical elements that would make their lives a lot easier. One of those things is the power of story telling, especially from the eyes of customers. Stories help prospects see how transformational products and services can help change their lives and when these stories are told from real people who experience real results, the impact can be lasting. Sadly, most organizations don't see this and most sales reps can't do it on their own. Great customer stories therefore never get shared and never are fully utilized. In this episode, James O'Gara, CEO and Founder of On Message and StoryDimensions, talks about the importance of stories and how organizations should start thinking about building and sharing important customer stories.

Texting is here to stay. Busy decision makers are using texting to respond to people in and out of the work place and sales reps are starting to see the benefits of getting mobile numbers. How will this continue to play out? In this episode, Mike Vandenbos, Entrepreneur in Residence at Zipwhip, talks about the state of sales and discusses where texting is being best utilized. In addition, Mike points out some of the rules and regulations regarding texting and advises on how people should start thinking about brining texting into their day-to-day sales activities.

Every sales representative executes a ‘cadence’ when they reach out via email, phone, or using social media to initiate a conversation with a potential prospect. The art of a cadence is determined based on a myriad of factors, fueled primarily by sales reps’ intuition regarding the company and contact being pursued. Because of the subjective nature of this exercise many cadences go south and lead disastrous results. Because of this InsideSales Labs decided to study the art of sales cadences and determine what companies are actually doing. Labs studied more than 14K cadences across nearly 9K companies.

In baseball you can't have a good batting average unless you have at bats. At bats are opportunities to succeed in baseball but without them you're not even in the game. Sales is similar to baseball in this regard. Many sales people are talented but they never get the chance or the 'at bats' to prove it. If sales people can get enough at bats they find themselves improving their overall game to where they can become Allstars. The question is, how can sales people get more at bats in sales? Tibor Shanto, is an expert in sales and is a proclaimed CDO or chief door opener. He specializes in helping sales reps get more opportunities. In this episode, Tibor teaches us some of the tried and true principles of getting more at bats.

Steven Broudy, a senior sales leader posted on LinkedIn telling sales reps to step up and use the phone instead of spamming him with what we all know are automated emails. I didn't say it, he did. Mr. Broudy caused quite a stir with his post, but is it true? Should sales reps really use that ugly thing we call the phone?

Are you getting tired of social selling? We've decided to speak our mind about the truth of social selling and ask industry experts to explain the who, the what, and the why of social selling. In this episode, we debate the fundamentals of social selling with Larry Levine, founder of Social Sales Academy and put Larry on the spot with tough questions such as, "Why is there so much data lacking about social selling results?", "What should reps do to be successful when social selling?" and "What does social selling even mean?"