(UPDATED: We have another post with new research on exempt versus non-exempt.)

On one of our internal chatter groups, a member of The Bridge Group team posed this question:

45 days in, what's everyone seeing that is changing & improving in 2013?

I thought it would be interesting to share the responses from our team members (folks not often featured on this blog). Just a fun and hopefully thought provoking piece.

Note: we broke the responses into two parts, this is the first in the series.
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Voicemails are being… returned!

We all know our buyers receive dozens of sales voicemails on a daily basis. But something old has become new again: buyers returning some of those voicemails.

I’ve noticed that the voicemails that are inspiring action have the following in common: they avoid coming across as ‘white noise,’ they leave out the product puffery, and they are short and to the point. Think: sound bites that inspire.

When building messaging, most Reps will ask themselves, “What’s the big challenge my buyer is facing?” But the best Reps take it one step further. They ask, “Why aren’t they addressing it already? Where/how is their current thinking wrong or off point?”

Photo credit: zooboing

 
It is a sales truism that we've been given two ears and one mouth and they should be used in roughly that proportion. This is the classical sales ratio - 2:1.

In recent years, there has been tremendous discussion and discovery around Sales as science, not art. I believe this to be true - at least in part. Sales is no longer a black box; a magical alchemy known only to the Sales illuminati.

(Take a look at HubSpot VP of Sales, Mark Roberge’s Scalable Predictable Sales & Marketing presentation for great perspective on metrics-based management)

The new sales ratio

Selling certainly isn't unknowable wizardry, but neither is it a chemical reaction.

That's why I'd like to suggest a new sales ratio. 1:1. 

A brief example

I'm lucky enough to have seen Jill Konrath present. Jill argues the case that buyers’ realities have changed (doing more with less, risk and change averse, using the web to self-educate) and this means our sales approaches must adapt.