Raintoday's Sales Tips & Techniques Podcast

Hiring a new salesperson is more than just adding headcount. It's an investment in revenue, and companies must treat it that way, says Lee Salz, author of the new book Hire Right, Higher Profits. If you want salespeople who succeed, you need a hiring process that matches the candidate to the role and an onboarding process that both protects the investment and ensures a high rate of return on it.

The world is full of great products and services. That means quality alone will not set you apart from the competition. In addition to having a great service, you have to consider how buyers feel about your brand and give them emotional satisfaction. Buyers must perceive you to be a firm that provides value, says David Pearson, author of The 20 Ps of Marketing.

If you're involved in sales, you have to be on social media today. That's because it's where your customers are, as well as your competitors, says Shannon Belew, author of The Art of Social Selling. Your buyers are using social media well before they're ready to buy to find information about your services and your company, and you need to have a presence there. Listen as Belew explains her 10 rules for online social interactions and offers advice for how to best use LinkedIn and Twitter to generate sales.

When you think about some of the older sales approaches where they talk about overcoming a buyer's objections and wrestling them until they say yes, they sound rather combative. Instead Simon Hazeldine, author of Neuro-Sell, says sellers need a brain-friendly sales process, one that makes the customer's brain feel comfortable with you.

Email is easy, and it's tempting to rely on it when you're afraid to address a person directly or are afraid of rejection. But it's the worst possible way to ask for a referral or a testimonial. Listen as marketing expert Alex Goldfayn explains why email is the worst way to ask for a referral and what you should use instead.

If there were one word to describe the future of marketing departments, you might say it's "accountable." Increasingly company executives want to know how marketing will contribute to the firm's top-line revenue growth, and marketers need to start providing answers, says Debbie Qaqish, author of Rise of the Revenue Marketer.

Sales and marketing teams might think they're helping their company grow. What they don't realize, however, is that in many cases, they unknowingly do the opposite. Listen as Guido Quelle, author of Profitable Growth, explains what they do that prevents a company from growing.

Selling B2B professional services can be a long and complex process. It's a dance buyers and sellers do over a period of time that is full of opportunities for sellers to differentiate themselves. Developing trust, however, doesn't have to take a long time. Sometimes you do or say something, and in an instant the buyer lets down his guard. The key is to recognize and act on trust-building opportunities.

No one likes to be told what to do. And that applies to your buyers as well. If you just tell them what you think they should do, you will be met with reluctance and resistance, says John E. Doerr, President of RAIN Group. You will have much greater success if you collaborate with them. In this podcast, Doerr explains why collaboration is important and outlines how to create a collaborative relationship with your buyers.

Providing great products and services is expected in today's competitive environment. You need them just to play in the marketplace. To win, you have to think about your interactions with customers. It isn't about how much you can sell, says Niraj Dawar, author of TILT. It's about what else your customers need.

Content marketing is not new. John Deere has been doing it since 1895 when it started publishing its Furrow magazine. And several B2B firms, such as OpenView Labs, are having huge success using it to attract prospects and grow business. Still there are holdouts. If you, or the executives at your firm, don't think content marketing works, Joe Pulizzi, author of Epic Content Marketing, suggests trying these two methods.

Money might make the world go round, but it isn't enough for salespeople—or the companies they work for—to achieve long-term sales success. In this podcast interview, sales coach and author Lisa McLeod explains how having a noble purpose drives individual sales success and turns average-performing companies into top-tier organizations.

Buyers and sellers don't always see eye to eye. Things buyers consider important sometimes aren't even have sellers' radar. And those gaps can create friction or worse cause a sale to be lost. Listen as Lee Frederiksen, author of Inside the Buyer's Brain, explains the three biggest gaps between buyers and sellers and how to close them.

You might run or work for a B2B service provider, but at the heart of it you are a human dealing with other humans. That means your marketing should reflect that, says Simon Pont, author of Digital State. Don't talk at or to people. Have conversations with them, as well as encourage customers to talk with one another.

Before you can sell anything, you have to know what your buyers want. That means you have to talk with your clients and prospects. It seems logical, but many entrepreneurs and business owners are reluctant to do that, says Drew Williams, co-author of Feed the Startup Beast. Listen as Williams explains his seven-step guide to achieving outrageous sales growth and the success companies are seeing by using it.

If you want prospects to respond to you, you have to speak their language. And those languages include the devices and mediums in which they like to communicate. That means if your prospects prefer to communicate via Twitter, you have to know how to use Twitter. If your prospects prefer to communicate via text messages, you have to communicate with them via text, says Marc Ostrofsky, author of Word of Mouse. And if you don't know how to use those things, hire someone who does.

The professional services world is changing, and it isn't all for the better. Increasingly, clients focus on price, especially when using RFPs, and that can drive down the fees providers receive. To make sure you get project at the fee you deserve, you must start working with the prospect well before the project goes out to bid. Listen as Ori Wiener, author of High Impact Fee Negotiation and Management for Professionals, explain what you should do and how to prevent profitability leaks.

United Airlines is a storyteller; JetBlue is a storydoer.  Reebok is a storyteller; Nike is a storydoer.  Dr. Pepper is a storyteller; Red Bull is a storydoer. What's the difference? Storydoers tell their story through action rather than exposition. They enact it by creating experiences or products that are so compelling that people want to tell everyone about them, says Ty Montague, author of True Story. In this podcast he explains the benefits of storydoing and how to turn your firm into a storydoer.

Buyers have changed. They don't like taking sales calls, they don't want to be told what to do, and they really don't want to sit through long PowerPoint presentations, says Josiane Feigon, author of Smart Sales Manager. What they want are intelligent salespeople who will pay attention to their needs and educate them.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often confusing, especially when search engines continually change their algorithms. Strategies that may have worked in the past might no longer work or worse could hurt your website. Listen as Jeff Quipp, Founder and CEO of Search Engine People, explains practices that no longer work and what businesses should do instead.