While you were taking a well-earned break to catch up on Game of Thrones this weekend, we’ve been combing the internet for the best sales content around.

Top Stories This Week

How Younger Salespeople Can Win Over Older Customers (HBR)

From baby boomers to Generation X to millennials, the generation gap is very real when it comes to business and sales. That presents a very particular kind of challenge for younger salespeople pitching against older prospects, and it’s easy to let their youth and inexperience get in the way of a deal. Fortunately, there are things you can do about this “experience asymmetry,” and HBR provides a pretty fine breakdown you can share with the younger folks on your team.

Five B2C Brands We Love—And Why They Matter in B2B Interactions (SiriusDecisions)

Take a break from enterprise-focused content, and check out this piece about five consumer-facing brands that salespeople can take lessons from. These five popular brands—including some that we use pretty much every day, like Netflix and Amazon—all have stellar reputations for how they deliver a great experience for their customers. They all do so in five distinctly different ways, too.

Science Proves (Again) that People’s Attention Spans Are Declining. Here’s How to Get Your Message Across (Inc.)

To no one’s surprise, the onslaught of technology and social media has done a number on our attention spans. It’s also done a number on the way salespeople can deliver effective pitches—especially since the amount of available attention pretty much remains the same. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make sure you’re communicating your message effectively, and it’s all about focus.

Sales Managers—What’s Your Approval Got to Do With It? (Unbound Growth)

You could say salespeople are always looking for approval in one way or another, if only the kind that results in a close. But that can present difficulties for sales managers who may be a bit more sensitive to the human being’s natural need for approval, and make difficult conversations even more uncomfortable. In fact, 38 percent of sales managers struggle with that need for approval, but even if you don’t count yourself among them, the tips provided here can help strengthen your assertiveness so your team can be more assertive, too.

 

Hot Job Listings This Week

Looking for a new challenge in NYC? Want to take your sales skills to Brew City? From coast to coast and towns in between, here are the hottest sales tech jobs currently open in the country.

VP/Director-level roles

  • Azul Arc: Director of Sales (Atlanta)
  • Seismic: Senior Director, Enterprise Sales (Boston/Chicago/NYC)
  • Luna Data Solutions: Director of Sales (Austin)
  • Canpango: Director of Sales (Milwaukee)
  • FUEL CYCLE: Sales Director (Atlanta)

Manager-level roles

  • MongoDB: Sales Development Team Manager (Austin)
  • Proofpoint: Named Account Manager (Indianapolis)
  • Informatica: Major Account Manager – Civilian (Reston, VA)
  • Rackspace: Account Manager (Jersey City, NJ)
  • Amazon: Senior Sales Manager (NYC)

Account executives

  • Luna Data Solutions: Account Executive (Austin)
  • Proofpoint: Corporate Sales Account Executive (Sunnyvale, CA)
  • MongoDB: Account Executive (Austin)
  • Canpango: Account Executive (Chicago)
  • Rackspace: Enterprise Sales Executive (Oakland)