The Emissary Blog

Your buyers have needs. You have solutions. What could be simpler? Sure, procurement, data security, budgets, entrenched skepticism, and a host of other factors prevent sellers from closing deals, but one factor derails perhaps more deals than any other—the sellers themselves. Or rather, how today's buyers perceive sellers. 

Are you aware of what data you should be measuring in the brave new world of ABM? Do you know what qualities companies value when hiring new salespeople? And how is a great restaurant experience like a perfectly executed sales pitch? This week's Top Sales News from Emissary has all that and more.

With so many account-based marketing vendors out there, it can be hard to keep track of each platform's features, benefits, and shortcomings. Platforms evolve and change rapidly, meaning analyst reports from groups like Forrester are outdated before they even come out.

When speaking with enterprise buyers about cloud solutions, chances are you hear the same questions coming up over and over again. What about compliance? What about security and risk? Does it come with any kind of guarantee? 

Do you know how many questions to ask in your next sales meeting with the C-suite? We do. Find out here, plus what not to say in your next email, the big SalesForce update you need to be aware of, and more. 

The science is now definitive on this—Americans are overworked, and it’s taking a toll on our health and well-being. In a Gallup poll of over 10,000 full-time employees, nearly 50 percent of respondents reported that they usually work more than 40 hours a week, with 60 percent saying they work at least 50. It may not sound like much, but those extra hours can add up to big-time health issues down the line, with some studies even finding that working just a few extra hours a day can increase the chances of heart-related problems by a whopping 60 percent.

Between calls, emails, meetings, and more calls, it's hard to make time for the latest news and thought leadership in enterprise sales. Fortunately, we've done the legwork for you and distilled the best from last week into this easy-to-read digest. Take a moment and catch up. Then get back to closing.  

When it comes to that quarterly sales report, there’s an awful lot sales manager can to do to move the needle. But what if we told you one of your best options has nothing to do with getting improved leads from marketing or bringing more maple bars to your kickoff meetings on Monday mornings?

We hate to be the one to break it to you, but your company’s turnover rate may be what's really killing your bottom line.

The digital age has radically altered the employment landscape. The once standard 9 to 5 routine is going the way of the dinosaur. If you're a dog lover, or social media aficionado, or just really good at putting together Ikea furniture, there's a side hustle for you.

But what if you, a current CTO, spent the last 30 years building your career? What if you've recently left a lofty leadership position and aren't hungry for a new full-time gig, or are considering retirement but know you have more to offer? Is there a side hustle for proven leaders?

What would the "gig economy" look like for executives? We have a hunch. Read on. 

It’s conference time, and you’re ready to go. Time to cruise around booths and pack your pipeline with hot new leads. But what do you bring? A box of branded tchotchkes and a single rehearsed-to-death pitch? Sure, everyone likes a hoodie or a nice notebook, but they won't turn prospects into genuine leads. You need an actual strategy.

If you plan in advance and have genuine insight into what your prospects want and need, your efforts on the ground will be much more fruitful. Here’s how to do it.

If you missed the debut of Top Sales News, we shared some of last week's best and most useful sales stories. We've got even more this week, with some how-tos, updates, and best practices from sources we trust. It's a quick way to get caught up on what you missed while you were making it rain. 

How much do enterprise salespeople make? How much should you be making? What's the typical base sans commission in your industry? If you don't know, where can you go to find out?

We're voracious consumers of content around enterprise sales, and we'll pass the best of what we read along to you.

Welcome to the new Emissary Sales Digest, a weekly round-up of the most useful, insightful, and informative content out there—aside from what's already on our blog, that is.

Dig in.  

This month, we caught up with Thomas Martin, former CIO of GE Oil & Gas and VP of application transformation at GE Digital, to learn a little more about a career that began in the trenches as an engineer servicing nuclear reactors and ended as an IT leader at one of the world's largest organizations.

Here he shares some of the wisdom he's accrued over the years and how sales teams can more effectively sell into enterprise organizations.

It's not an exaggeration to say that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation pose existential threats to many professions—the number may be as high as 10 million, more jobs than were impacted by the Great Recession of 2008—and sales is no exception. In fact, Forrester predicts a million sales reps will be displaced by 2020.

If the headlines are to be believed, millennials have killed a lot of things: fabric softener, beer, Applebee's, lunch, and just about anything you can think of. Most of that is clickbait, of course. But as more and more millennials achieve leadership positions in enterprise companies—remember, millennials can be as old as 38 at this point—they're legitimately changing how purchasing decisions get made. Research is showing that they're sales averse, hate the phone, and do much of their research via social.

 Eighty-four percent of C-Suite executives and 70 percent of B2B decision-makers now look to social media when making a purchasing decision. Cold-calling and blowing up inboxes will no longer cut it, so if you want to keep selling successfully, you need to adapt. Building a social selling strategy and incorporating it into your playbook can help you reach a new generation of buyers on their own terms and build the trust you need to win a sale—if you know the right decision-makers to target.

When your team struggles to hit its quota quarter after quarter, what gets the blame? Are they not following up often enough? Are they following up too often? Is the competition too fierce? Maybe your product isn't keeping pace with what your market wants? Maybe it's marketing's fault for delivering crummy leads. Or maybe—hear us out on this—just maybe your salespeople's outreach straight up sucks.

We've already told you about the value of asking smart questions during the discovery phase of an enterprise sale (more than once, in fact). And with good reason—you need to listen more than you talk, and you've got to dig into a prospect's pain points, priorities, and long-term plans if you're going to navigate your way to closed-won. But can you ask too many questions?

There's no shortage of movies about sales. Some make the profession seem like a glitzy, high-roller gig with boozy client lunches and evenings filled with bottle service and beautiful people. Others paint salespeople as sleazy grifters, one step removed from carnival hucksters out to relieve honest folk of their hard-earned money. And while we all know that reality is (usually) different, there's still a lot of wisdom to glean from some of the best sales flicks out there.