Sales | PrairieSkyGroup

Five Objectives for Search Engine Strategy

When it comes to organic search, there are a number of objectives on which you should focus. These are all part of my overcoming resistance theme.

What’s Your Value PrXpXsitiXn?

In my experience, too many sales people simply take the value proposition given by marketing and restate it to the prospect. This is the worst use of a value proposition. If you are in Marketing and you enable your sales team this way, then you are not helping.

Blog Mills. Really?

Yesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you. The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog! He asked for my reaction.

Trigger Events and Five Steps to a Better First Impression

How long do you think you have to make a good first impression? Yes, the number may depress a few of the less confident out there. Various studies say the number ranges from three seconds to thirty seconds. Further, these impressions then often guide other’s opinions of us regardless of how hard we work to change them. Even in the digital world, many inbound and outbound marketers forget the axiom about first impressions.

Is Your Marketing and Sales Approach a Product of Weakest Links?

Marketing Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaWould you show up on a first date by bringing an engagement ring and your parents along? While this may be a custom in some countries, it could be interpreted as intrusive or presumptuous in our culture. Courtship takes some finesse, and often requires a number of steps. Often the best approach is the product of each of these steps. So why should it be any different with inbound and outbound marketing, or sales?

My 100th Blog Post! Should You Blog?

A lot of marketers and companies ask themselves if they should start blogging in order to generate leads. It’s the new conventional wisdom. So there are millions of business blogs. And there are thousands of marketing blogs, some great, but most very dusty.

I started the Prairie Sky blog as an experiment. I had some grandiose ideas, a few ulterior and selfish motives. I wanted to see if I could create 25 posts with a small investment of time. I wanted to test the conventional wisdom that you need a blog to generate traffic and leads. None of these turned out to be so important as I anticpated, and I keep asking myself, why I blog?

Ten Topics for New Year’s Reflections

So, if you don’t make New Year’s resolutions, here is a list of items from my posts during the year that might make good subjects for reflection.

Prairie Sky Book Review – The Trust Edge

The Trust Edge by David Horsager is a compelling look at how trust and lack of trust can impact an organization. Horsager turns what might be a soft skill into a hard skill by giving the reader conrete steps to build an organization basewd on trust.

Think Like a Client

In Norman Maclean’s, A River Runs Through It, he tells a story of two brothers growing up in rural Montana and fishing the Big Blackfoot River in Montana. (The book is a lyrical and beautiful story, and I highly recommend the book over the movie.) In one passage, the older brother, Norman, after watching his younger brother Paul catch an enormous fish and being swept into the rapids, remembers….

Genetically Test for Great Sales People!

For years, VPs of Sales and CEOs have been looking for the magic bullet to help select the best sales people, the top 20 percent that bring in 80% of their sales. There are minor industries built on evaluating and testing sales candidates. Including recruiters, testing, and the risk of making the wrong decision, hiring a great sales person can be an expensive proposition.

So with advances in genetic testing, why can’t we test for the genes that make great sales people? Now you can.