Today’s high-velocity selling environment is constantly evolving. To make the most of the opportunity and drive revenue, sales reams must be nimble, and arm themselves with smart practices and strategies. To help sales professionals start 2014 strong and get ahead of the competition, we asked 20 sales thought-leaders and practitioners for their predictions and insights on how to sell smarter in the year ahead. We hope you find some key strategies that will transform your 2014 sales efforts!

1. 20
PREDICTIONS
SALES
INDUSTRY
TO SELL SMARTER IN 2014

2. Introduction
Today’s high-velocity selling environment is constantly evolving. To make the
most of the opportunity and drive revenue, sales teams must be nimble, and
arm themselves with smart practices and strategies.
To help sales professionals start 2014 strong and get ahead of the
competition, we have tapped the minds of some of the industry’s top thoughtleaders and practitioners to ask them one question:
What is the number one opportunity for sales teams to get smarter or more
intelligent in 2014?
In this ebook you will find the top sales predictions and insights for 2014 from
leading industry experts. We hope you find some key strategies that will help
transform your 2014 sales efforts!
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3. SELL SMARTER
Tip #1
Focus on Maximum Impact
Buyer’s expectations have changed dramatically in the past few years, yet most sellers are on cruise
control. The key to 2014 success will be a ruthless focus on getting better.
Teams should challenge each other to find more effective ways to get more prospects, to move them
off the status quo, to differentiate from competitors and to win the business.
Question everything, experiment and report back to each other about what’s working and what’s not.
Engage your brain in finding fresh strategies that will deliver maximum impact in every client prospect
interaction.
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Jill Konrath
@jillkonrath
Sales Strategist, Author, Speaker, JILL KONRATH, Inc.
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Tip #2
Really Learn How Your Buyer Buys
Because the selling landscape has changed significantly, the biggest improvement a sales team
could make is to be very clear on who your buyer is and what their buying process is, rather than
pushing your selling process on them. From there, you can find ways to help educate, inform,
and delight them at the various stages of their process. Think of yourselves as content creators,
finding out where your buyer is online and being there to offer context that helps them make
smart buying decisions.
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Lori Richardson
@ScoreMoreSales
CEO, Score More Sales
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Tip #3
Top Performers Hold the Key to Rising Revenues
The sales activities and behaviors of your top sales performers hold the key to what the rest of
your sales organization should be doing. Learning from your best sales reps is a great way to train
your “average” employees to attain better revenue results. Sales leaders in 2014 will get better at
observing, documenting and implementing winning sales practices, shifting the performance curve
and greatly increasing revenue.
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Nick Hedges
@Nick_Hedges
CEO & President, Velocify
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Tip #4
Build Rapport and Connect with People
Whether you’re an organization of one or 1,000, calling leads can become monotonous and robotic.
For the consumer, this can lead to a feeling of mistrust and doubt. Your sales team’s number one
objective is to build rapport with each lead it calls upon, which requires a genuine conversation, not
necessarily a script. Sales professionals should understand the goal of each call and be allowed
to flow freely with a genuine and meaningful conversation that truly connects with the consumers
and their needs. If you’re robotic and too “salesy,” the person on the other end of the phone will
likely respond negatively and closed off to your sales pitch. One of the easiest and least expensive
strategies that will increase your conversions in 2014 is to teach your team to engage in genuine,
warm, and friendly conversations with each lead it calls.
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Michael Ferree
@Ferree
Director, LeadsCouncil
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Tip #5
Use Buyer Maps to Create Relevant and Remarkable
Experiences for Your Buyers
The number one opportunity for sales organizations to get smarter is to start by understanding who
their target buyers are and how they buy. From that in-depth understanding, they can then create
the process, messaging, training and content that maps to how these individual buyers want to
buy. For example, a system admin has an extremely different buying cycle than a VP of Application
Infrastructure. This type of buyer-responsive approach has been extremely effective for forward
thinking sales team in 2013 and I look for fast followers to embrace this philosophy in 2014.
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Craig Rosenberg
@funnelholic
Co-founder and Chief Analyst, TOPO
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Tip #6
Be Curious
I am often asked “what is the number one attribute to look for when hiring a sales rep?” My answer is
always the same “curiosity.” The most successful salespeople are those who are curious. They want
to know everything about their buyers - What challenges do they face? How are they measured?
What trends are impacting their business? Never before has it been easier to collect that information.
My advice to sales reps in 2014 is “be curious and go get engaged with your buyers world.” Take
what you learn and go help them build a better business!
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Trish Bertuzzi
@bridgegroupinc
President & Chief Strategist, The Bridge Group, Inc.
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Tip #7
Using Data to Guide Process
In 2014, sales leaders will become smarter about combining rich buyer data with sales processes
for optimal results. There are a lot of great tools out there to mine the web, social media and other
sources for information about your prospective buyer; however, taking all that insight and making
it useful to the sales process is often where there’s a breakdown. Tools and processes that bridge
the gap by not only identifying buying signals and relative quality scores, but also leveraging
process guidance to more effectively move a lead through the sales funnel can help sales teams
move the needle.
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Michael McGuire
@Velocify
Senior Vice President of Sales, Velocify
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Tip #8
Master the Corporate Sales Presentation
Most corporate PowerPoint sales presentations not only look the same, but they use the same
terminology to describe their company’s unique advantages. To ensure that you captivate your
prospect’s attention, here are the top five tips that will help you create a strong sales presentation to
win more business:
1. Most presentations are boring to look at and aesthetically unappealing. Create a custom branded
template to capture their attention.
2. Tailor your presentation to the specific sales situation with a clear value proposition.
3. Provide real-world customer examples. Buyers want to see how your product or service is
providing value for other companies.
4. Don’t include overly complex slides that you can’t successfully talk to. Make it easy for prospects
to follow.
5. Motivate action with a presentation that has a logical storyline that builds.
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Steve W. Martin
@stevewmartin1
Author, Heavy Hitter Sales Linguistics
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Tip #9
To Win More, Simplify Your Selling
The easiest way for sales teams to drive up their performance in 2014 is to focus on simplifying their
selling. Streamline unwieldy sales processes that don’t directly help your prospects make decisions
with these three tips:
1. Make Every Touch Count: Every interaction with a prospect has to provide maximum value that
will move them one step closer to making their decision. If it doesn’t, don’t do it.
2. Be Absolutely Responsive: Every customer inquiry or request requires a complete response in
the shortest time possible.
3. Clarify Your Offer: The customer must be able to quickly understand what they can buy from you
that will satisfy their requirements. If the customer has to work too hard to understand what you
are selling, you won’t.
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Andy Paul
@zerotimeselling
Founder, Zero-Time Selling
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Tip #10
Create and Study Buying Process Maps
The single most important thing for B2B sales organizations to focus on in 2014 is to create Buying
Process Maps. A Buying Process Map outlines how customers and prospects make complex
purchasing decisions.
Most B2B sales organizations either don’t have these built, or, have maps that have not been
updated in a long time. The problem with this is buyers have changed how they buy significantly, and
continue to do so. Sales organizations that are selling based on how buyers used to buy are going to
miss their numbers. Here is a generic version of a Buying Process Map to use as a starting point.
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Greg Alexander
@GregAlexander
CEO, Sales Benchmark Index
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Tip #11
Learn the Power of Fact-Based Research
Sadly, in today’s culture most sellers wrongly apply value proposition and product benefit language
at the introductory sales cycle. This ineffective approach hinders sellers from achieving optimal
conversion rates. Buyers no longer think in terms of product benefit language, they think in
terms of topics, trends, metrics, and outcomes. The number one opportunity for sales teams to
get smarter is to learn the power of leading with fact-based research, versus leading with valueproposition language.
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Kraig Kleeman
@Kraig_Kleeman
Author, Speaker, Global Sales Strategist,
2013 Forbes Top Sales Expert, KraigKleeman.com
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Tip #12
Sell Smarter AND Harder in 2014
We have all heard the phrase “Sell Smarter, Not Harder.” This phrase is often used to show that putting
forth lots of effort without doing it in a smart way often leads to lackluster results. While working smarter
is a great goal to have, especially with the advent of lots of tools at our fingertips, I feel we may be
overlooking the fact that effort, hard work, and discipline in the right areas is required for outstanding
results. Here are three tips towards an INTELLIGENT approach to “working harder” in 2014.
1. Place a recurring meeting on your calendar for RESEARCH. Often times we pick up the phone
having failed to do the proper pre-call research required for a more effective call outcome.
2. Build a top prospect list. Research to build your top prospect list in order to focus your efforts on
the most likely contacts.
3. Create a recurring CALL DAY, and place a block of hours on your calendar. Treat this time as
sacred and do not cancel it. Rather, have the discipline and work ethic to stay focused on
prospecting every week. Keeping fresh opportunities in your funnel takes a well-thought-out and
intelligent plan. But it also takes good old fashioned hard work, dedication, and calls.
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Larry Reeves
@AA_ISP
COO, AA-ISP
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Tip #13
Savvy Buyers Require Savvy Sellers
Today’s buyers are savvy and self-qualified, with a larger percentage inquiring later in the buying
cycle. They often enter the sales cycle knowing a lot about your company, which means you need
to be ready to respond. Leveraging an intelligent sales automation solution can help your team
identify ready buyers from tire kickers and prioritize and distribute those prospects to the right
sales rep. By ensuring ready buyers are quickly matched with the right sales rep that can answer
their hard questions, you can drive a positive first impression, earn early loyalty points and increase
close rates.
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Dan Salazar
@Caineazar
Director of Sales, Velocify
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Tip #14
Sales Enablement
It’s all about sales enablement in 2014; giving our teams a mixture of art and science to help them be
more effective. Tools and resources to automate, streamline and help our team members prioritize
are the science. The art is all about delivering unique insight to our customers and prospects. Any
sales organization that can master both of these elements will have leg up on their competition.
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Amyra Rand
@AmyraKareo
Vice President of Sales, Kareo
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Tip #15
Preparing Your Mobile App Wish List
Most CRM systems were designed for people who work at their desks all day. Mobility is often an
afterthought, but new products in the cloud will make it possible to give field reps what they have
always wanted – straightforward apps that run on popular devices such as iPhones that can help
them do their jobs. These new apps will need to be streamlined, so teams should start to think about
what information they would need (pricing, order status, web site visit, leads, etc.) that would help
them close business when they are in front of a client.
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Bruce Daley
@BruceDaley
VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
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Tip #16
Old School Selling: Getting Back to the Basics to Drive Results
Throughout the 90’s the Utah Jazz were a powerhouse in the NBA. Stockton and Malone basically
ran the team with one play—the pick and roll. Amazing results are not driven by complexity. Sales
teams can learn from this example by going back to the basics. My simple formula for driving sales
success and predictability is:
1. Make sure your sales process is written and taught
2. Certify sales folks on your product and teach them how to effectively demo it, message it, etc.
3. Certify folks on your preferred selling methodology (i.e. Challenger). With this as the foundation,
optimize with tools like CRM, Automation, Collateral, and manage metrics that drive results.
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Marc Maloy
@maloymarc
SVP Worldwide Sales, Instructure
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Tip #17
HOT Lists = HOT Results in 2014
If you ask any top producing sales rep (whether they are in field or inside sales) how they are able
to keep their funnel full of fresh and highly probable opportunities, you are likely to hear similar
answers. They will tell you it has much to do with who NOT to call on as it does who TO call on. Top
producers realize that time is money, and the time they set aside for prospecting is very precious.
They have developed a knack on how to prioritize their prospecting time and quickly filter out those
prospects that have a low chance of advancing through the sales cycle. Today’s research tools such
as LinkedIn, allow top producers to develop and focus on those prospects who fit their ideal profile.
They develop their HOT list and hunt like crazy on a few select prospects versus wasting time on the
hundreds of less qualified leads that come through. One way to get smarter in 2014 is to use today’s
research tools to develop and build your HOT list.
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Bob Perkins
@MerrillCorp
VP of Sales, Merrill Corp
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Tip #18
Social Selling and Knowing Your Channel is Key to
Sales Growth in 2014
Social selling via LinkedIn and other social media has changed the game in prospect and opportunity
development for sales teams. In addition to conducting research and working within your own
network to establish connections with key influencers at accounts you are targeting, be sure to also
work with your channel partners and resellers. With buyers now doing most of their research before
they engage with vendors, it is critical that you get in front of them before they start their research,
so that you and your partners can learn more about their challenges and get ahead of their discovery
process. Partners often have great connections and visibility into the challenges their customers face,
and by working collaboratively with them and helping their customers, everyone wins.
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Josh Moreau
@X1Discovery
Sr. Director, Channel Sales, X1
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Tip #19
Double Results by Specializing
Salespeople shouldn’t prospect! When a company relies on salespeople to do much prospecting,
they can’t get off the revenue roller coaster and create predictable revenue. By breaking
responsibilities into four separate roles, as Salesforce.com did very early, every single person in the
sales team becomes an expert in their practice, executives see exactly how each function works or
doesn’t, and you create a limitless sales organization.
Here are four key roles to drive more revenue:
• Dedicated Prospectors
• Market Response Reps
• Closers/Account Executives
• Account Managers
With more defined roles in place like the ones above, sales organizations should be able to double
its sales results in 2014.
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Aaron Ross
@motoceo
Author of Predictable Revenue,
PredictableRevenue.com
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Tip #20
Improve Execution through Increased Productivity
One of the most important advances for sales organizations in 2014 is going to be execution, and
more specifically, improving productivity. This literally comes down to improving active selling time,
which is achieved through efficient and effective time management strategies and taking advantage
of technology. The following are just a few ways to increase productivity:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Divide selling time from administrative work and complete tasks in time blocks
Automate tasks through software features and social channel platforms
Establish a researching and prospecting protocol
Invest in smarter tools
Encourage more disciplined selling time through incentives and rewards
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Matt Heinz
@heinzmarketing
President, Heinz Marketing, Inc.
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23. Sell smarter and faster with Velocify in 2014!
Give your sales team a competitive advantage this year with Velocify’s intelligent sales solutions. Velocify can
help you increase the velocity of your sales environment and systematically improve sales performance through
rapid lead response, increased selling discipline, improved sales team productivity, and actionable sales insights.
With Velocify, your sales teams can respond to leads faster and smarter than ever.
Lead Capture
Lead Scoring
Funnel Insights
Integrated
Sales Dialer
Velocify Intelligent
Sales Automation
Sales Activity
Prioritization
Lead De-Dupe
Lead Distribution
Automated
Guided Selling
Get your sales team on the right track this year with all of the intelligent sales automation features
20 Sales Industry Predictions for 2014
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24. Do you have all the right sales strategies
in place to get ahead of the competition
in 2014? Learn how smart sales
technology can enable your sales reps
to get more intelligent and drive more
revenue in today’s high-velocity selling
environment.
Get a Demo Today
Call: 888-843-1777
LIKE THIS EBOOK? WHY NOT SHARE:
Email: sales@velocify.com
Web: velocify.com
Blog: velocify.com/blog
20 Sales Industry Predictions for 2014
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25. Velocify is a market-leading provider of cloud-based intelligent sales software, designed for high-velocity sales environments. Velocify
helps sales teams keep pace with the speed of opportunity and increase revenue by driving rapid lead response, increased selling
discipline, improved productivity, and actionable selling insights. The company has helped more than 1,500 companies across a variety of
industries improve customer acquisition practices and sales performance. Velocify was recently recognized as one of the fastest growing
velocify.com
companies in North America by Deloitte and a Best Place to Work by the Los Angeles Business Journal. For more information, please visit
Velocify.com or follow the company on Twitter @Velocify.
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