Spring has sprung, and so has a lot of thoughtful content from the brightest minds in sales. Here’s some of the best from last week.

Top Stories This Week

Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think (HBR)

Anyone who’s been in sales for a while has seen the landscape change dramatically with expanding roles that require learning new skills and technology. And if you’re a sales manager, you may be concerned about your team’s ability to adjust to an uncertain future. But according to recent survey of 11,000 workers by HBR, those concerns just may be entirely unfounded. This excellent piece breaks down how you can take advantage of that.

 

How the HubSpot Sales Team Used Video to Engage More Prospects (HubSpot)

And speaking of the changing sales landscape, video has been huge part of this brave new world. We’ve talked about video before, but HubSpot supplies some actionable tips you can use when incorporating it in your sales pitches. Not only can you personalize your approach for each individual prospect using video, but there are other ways to incorporate video, including using screen shares of other websites to help make your presentations.

 

7 Reasons No One Is Returning Your Sales Calls (Salesforce)

Video may be in vogue, but sometimes there’s no substitute for a good old-fashioned voicemail. There’s still plenty of advantages to leaving messages, but it’s important to make sure that each one you leave has purpose and offers value—not just “checking in.” Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this piece is that you can show off your enthusiasm much better over the phone than you can via email. A relatable human voice that has a real reason to call and can confidently leave a short message without a lot of ums and uhs will have a lot more success than not leaving a voicemail at all.

 

Make Sure Your Compensation Plan Drives Account Growth (Gartner)

Is your sales comp plan motivating your team to close? It may be, but what about after the deal closes? According to Gartner, many sales compensation plans lack incentive and don’t appropriately factor in account growth. In fact, one recent report from them found that almost half of account managers have a goal that doesn’t make a distinction between growth and retention. You can close all the deals in the world, but they’re only worth so much if your team isn’t motivated to upsell, grow, and retain them.

 

16 Negotiation Tactics Buyers Use (and How to Respond) (RAIN Group)

Objections are a simple fact of life in sales, but when it seems like the prospect is trying to manipulate the situation, they become especially frustrating. A good salesperson with a skilled ear can be prepared for these objections by having a response ready for each conceivable one, and this thorough list of 16 such objections can help you identify red herrings from buyers and deal with their selective memories, feigned sticker shock, and so-called closing windows.

 

Hot Job Listings This Week

We’ve got the skinny on great sales jobs from coast to coast, from VP positions in Gotham to account executives gigs in the Golden Gate City.

VP/Director-level roles

  • Vera: Regional Vice President, Sales – East (NYC)
  • nmodes: VP Sales (Chicago)
  • SurgeryLink: Shareholder and Regional Sales VP (Houston)
  • MapR Technologies: Regional Vice President – Central Region (Chicago)

Manager-level roles

  • Pure Storage: Manager, Sales Development (Mountain View, CA)
  • Radial: Enterprise Sales (Remote)
  • Cylance: Enterprise Sales Manager (Cleveland)
  • Radware: Enterprise Regional Sales Manager (Seattle)

Account executives

  • Vera: Enterprise Account Executive (Seattle)
  • Celonis: Account Executive (San Francisco)
  • SAP Concur: Regional Sales Executive, State & Local Gov. Job (St. Louis)
  • Duo Security: Account Executive, Enterprise (Chicago)