You wouldn’t implement an unproven strategy based on gut feeling alone, would you?

I hope not.

All good strategies are based on research, and your sales management should be no different.

Thankfully, organizations like Salesforce, Brainshark, and SPI regularly publish vital reports packed with trends, predictions, and statistics that will help you hit your targets by offering information on the changing state of B2B sales.

These reports are a must-read for sales executives that don’t want to be left in the dust, or confused by the fact that their proven strategy formed in 1998 isn’t working any more.

But, there’s always a problem with stats…

Facts and figures aren’t much use unless you act on them, and in this post we’ve tried to make that easy. Alongside the statistics, you’ll find pre-made sales processes you can use in your own organization.

Bookmark this list, and take a look next time you’re making improvements to your B2B sales management strategy.

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Salesforce is the most popular CRM in the world, and the most fully-featured. It has been developed constantly for almost two decades, and the company has tried its hardest to build every single feature that sales teams need to be more efficient.

However, it doesn’t do everything out of the box…

That’s why the Salesforce AppExchange features thousands of apps which have collectively been installed more than 5,000,000 times. These apps stand in for other software to save you switching between programs, breaking focus, and pasting data over and over.

But, like I said, there’s thousands of apps. How do you know what to choose, and what to avoid? When might you need to turn to Salesforce app development, and when can you get something straight from the shelf?

In this post, we’ll cover 36 of the best Salesforce apps on the AppExchange so you can improve your sales operations and productivity.

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What does your sales process look like right now? According to research by Vantage Point Performance, 66% of B2B sales teams don’t even have a sales process.

The vast majority of companies surveyed in that Vantage study had a revenue over $250m, and 39% made over $1b each year. These companies aren’t failing. In fact, they’re doing well.

So many companies get by without documented processes, it’s enough make you question why it’s worth implementing them at all.

…That’s until you check the rest of the stats.

Why you should bother with a formal sales process:

• A formal sales process improves revenue by 18%
• 3 hours per month on pipeline management improves revenue by 11%
• Trained salespeople bring in 9% more revenue
• Organizations that followed all three of these best practices above saw a 28% increase in revenue vs. those that do not
• A formalized sales process leads to a 65% increase in individual reps hitting their targets and an 88% increase in companies hitting their goals
• A sales playbook makes you 33% more likely to close sales at a higher rate

Simply playing it by ear — especially when you’re in the realm of $1b+ revenue — seems ridiculous. The benefits of documented processes are obvious to many organizations. As you can see, the numbers relate to real money.

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Every SaaS company pours mountains of resources into building a sales team, creating efficient sales processes, and optimizing sales emails.

That’s because the most direct way to impact your revenues is by making sure your sales processes are as tight as possible.

But, how can you be sure you use the most effective methods to follow up with leads and close more deals?

Maybe we can help.

In partnership with PersistIQ, we analyzed the complete sales cadences of 281 SaaS companies, from intro to break-up. That included signing up for a whole heap of free trials, and then collecting over 1,000 emails and voicemail transcriptions.

If you want to get proven insights from some of the world’s best SaaS sales teams, build your ideal sales sequence and learn to write emails that close deals, then check out Inside SaaS Sales.

Inside SaaS Sales is a microsite we launched that collects and organizes every single piece of sales communication we received. It’s all there for you to browse through, swipe, and analyze.

With such a lot of data, it’d be silly not to study it to find out the key trends and share that knowledge with you. So, keep reading for our full analysis of the data!

Here are our key findings:

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Ogilvy on Advertising was one of the first books I had on my reading list back when I created my system for reading more. My only regret after finally reading it is having delayed for a year and a half.

Drawing from 40 years of experience, David Ogilvy shows everything he learned from creating some of the most successful advertising campaigns to date (some of which are still running today).

From using research instead of rules to reminding yourself exactly what you’re paid to do, Ogilvy provides a blunt outlook of how to improve as a marketer and copywriter.

“When I got a margarine account, I was under the impression that margarine was made from coal. Ten days reading the literature taught me otherwise.” – David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, p.11

At times his writing is standoffish and hostile, and he never claims to be infallible, but many of the marketing tips he championed 24 years ago still hold true today. Unfortunately, finding those nine golden tips in 220+ pages of case studies and niche information on how advertising agencies work is a bit of a nightmare.

That’s why I’ve done it for you. Time is money, after all, and the quicker you learn these marketing tips, the sooner you can succeed in selling.

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At Process Street, a lot of startup blogs are required reading for our team.

It makes sense, because your startup will be informed and improved by what it reads, and every team needs to stay on top of what’s being spoken about.

In this post, I’ve compiled the 55 best blogs for startups (plus one recommended article from each) in these categories:

• Venture capitalist blogs
• Marketing blogs
• Sales blogs
• UX & design blogs
• Customer success & support blogs

… All focused specifically on advice for startups.

Here they are:

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As part of a sales team, you don’t get paid to fiddle around with the CRM. You get paid to close deals. But that can make work stressful for everyone, especially when just keeping the CRM up to date can feel like a full-time job.

It’s time to put an end to data entry, concentrate on running your sales operations more efficiently, and win bigger deals.

So, how do you start doing that?

At Process Street, we’re fanatics when it comes to automation, workflows, and systems.

That’s because we know that the foundation of an efficient business — one with lower running costs and higher output — is a solid set of processes. That’s not just for things like finance and HR. It comes down to the nuts and bolts of how you and the rest of the sales team uses your CRMs.

CRM expert David Young explains:

“Customer interactions that rely heavily on manual processes can be hit or miss. A key benefit of automation is providing a consistent customer experience. Workflow automation allows you to develop standardized response protocols and ensure that they’re followed. A good process, that is consistently followed, will almost always translate to more positive customer experiences.” — CRMSwitch

In this article, I’m going to show you how to spend less time searching, updating, and making sense of the disorganized data inside your CRM.

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The day I adopted my dog I learned a brutal and immediate lesson about myself and my daily habits.

Nothing makes you analyze your life like a 60 pound furbeast jumping on your face at 6 in the morning immediately after she decided to redecorate your living room with your most recent bulk toilet paper purchase from Costco. (The good stuff, might I add).

The first week of having this dog was hell.

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We need to find email addresses for the launch in 2 weeks – about 400 should do.

Damn…

Nobody likes to hear that the next week of their time will be spent researching, selecting, and verifying hundreds of email addresses. It’s boring enough to make you complacent, but any mistakes are costly.

In other words, it’s one of the tedious marketing processes which we all love to hate.

After all, 400 emails are no good if they’re all blocked by spam filters.

I knew there had to be a better way than Googling the target audience, so I tested 9 email lookup tools and managed to find one with 92% accuracy.

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Sales will make or break your business

Outbound sales feed your team. Your cold-callers are foragers. Your senior sales staff are hunters.

They find the new clients and bring them back to the tribe of engineers and human resources staff who depend on them.

But we live in a more complex world than the hunter-gatherers of old, and with that comes the need for more complex processes.

The key to a successful sales process is understanding the overview.

There are lots of individual processes you can employ to improve different aspects of your sales and they need to fit together into a coherent sales narrative. Some call this narrative a sales funnel, and others a sales pipeline.

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