As selected by the Ambition Business Team

TOP 10 SALES BLOG POSTS OF 2014

ABOUT THE LIST

• The Ambition Business Team had a banner year in 2014.

• Throughout the year, our Marketing and Sales Leaders compiled our favorite Sales-

related blog content and shared it with one another.

• At the end of the year, we consulted all the content we’d curated, and selected the

following blog posts as our 10 favorites.

• All of the following blog articles share one thing in common: IMPACT. Each post helped us

close more deals and grow as Sales Professionals.

• They can help your Sales Team, too. Here they are!

1. DON DRAPER'S FOUR RULES OF SELLING | CHRIS

YOUNG

DON DRAPER'S FOUR RULES OF SELLING | CHRIS YOUNG

• What makes an elite Sales Professional? How about the mentality of the greatest fictional

Closer of all-time.

• Seeing is believing, and Chris helpfully includes links to Youtube clips of Mad Men's Don

Draper performing his most epic pitches, negotiations and strategic discussion.

• Hustle, persistence and persuasiveness may be the fundamental necessities of a

successful Sales professional. But that extra bit of self-understanding, of knowing where

you truly belong in the grand paradigm, is how you acquire the Don Draper-edge.

• Source: The Sales Wolf Blog

2. IF SAAS PRODUCTS SELL THEMSELVES, WHY DO WE NEED SALES? | MARK CRANNEY

IF SAAS PRODUCTS SELL THEMSELVES, WHY DO WE NEED SALES? | MARK CRANNEY

• Cranney puts on a clinic here, dispassionately disspelling the myth of the easy SaaS sale.

• If you're in the SaaS industry, read this article. In B2B sales? Read this article. Still selling

a product on its features? Definitely read this article.

• Bookmark it, make it your homepage, whatever it takes to ensure that you're following the

guidance of Mark Cranney.

• Source: Andreessen Horowitz

3. ALL I WANT IS A COLD EMAIL THAT DOESN'T SUCK! | HEATHER MORGAN

ALL I WANT IS A COLD EMAIL THAT DOESN'T SUCK! | HEATHER MORGAN

• If you're like us, you're the recipient of dozens of cold emails each day. And of those we

actually read, maybe 5 percent are hitting all the key points Heather outlines in this piece.

• Even better, she places her insights in the context of a real-life example of an outstanding

cold email. The Principal of SalesFolk delivered inisghts that are as actionable as sales

content gets.

• There's a reason Heather spent 2014 becoming a consensus rising star in the Sales

community. If you're cold emailing regularly, get this article in front of your eyeballs. I'm

glad that we did.

• Source: SalesFolk

4. THE 5 BIGGEST MISTAKES ALL SALES REPS MAKE | ZORIAN ROTENBERG

THE 5 BIGGEST MISTAKES ALL SALES REPS MAKE | ZORIAN ROTENBERG

• Our entire Business Team has been personally guilty of all five of these mistakes (two especially), so we can vouch that Zorian is not bluffing with that title.

• What Zorian's really doing here is reverse-engineering the preaching of good fundamentals. Members of any profession -- sales or otherwise -- hate to feel like their core competencies are being challenged, but Zorian smartly couches this post with an "All" qualifier in the title.

• And it's an accurate qualifier. We've all grappled with at least one of these mistakes in the time between writing this post and having Thanksgiving dinner. This is content with universal appeal.

• Source: InsightSquared Sales & Marketing Analytics Blog

5. THE INABILITY TO COMMUNICATE VALUE MESSAGES | TAMARA SCHENK

THE INABILITY TO COMMUNICATE VALUE MESSAGES | TAMARA SCHENK

• This is a post we've taken to heart here at Ambition, and we recommend you do likewise.

• Schenk tackles a premise -- the biggest inhibitor to sales success in 2014 -- that we've

seen overwhelm her lesser peers. Yet Schenk makes a compelling case that value

messaging, at present, is the Achilles Heel of the Sales Profession.

• We're buying it, and you know why? Because great value messaging requires empathy,

and we've spent the last decade depersonalizing just about every level of the sales

process -- transitioning from cold calls to cold emails, manually-typed emails to

automated blaster campaigns, and in-person prospect meetings to faceless web demos.

• Source: Sales Enablement Perspectives

6. STARTUP NEGOTIATIONS 101. HOW TO RESPOND TO DISCOUNT INQUIRIES | STELI EFTI

STARTUP NEGOTIATIONS 101. HOW TO RESPOND TO DISCOUNT INQUIRIES | STELI EFTI

• The self-proclaimed Chief Hustler (best job title ever) of Close.io saw the growing legion of Sales Professionals getting manhandled by their own prospects, and he wasn't about to take it lying down.

• Here in the SaaS industry, the practice is particularly rampant, if only because discounting has effectively become standard industry practice and, for those of us in the Enterprise sphere, necessary to our survival.

• What Efti's really calling for here is a line in the sand. The emergence of startup companies run by sales novices, coupled with a customer base whose savvy about pricing is ever-increasing, necessitates this article. Discounting is fine. Kowtowing to a prospect who's more interested in leveraging you into a bidding war is not.

• Source: Close.io

7. SALES ISN'T A LAUGHING MATTER, BUT MAYBE IT SHOULD BE? | LOU CARLOZO

SALES ISN'T A LAUGHING MATTER, BUT MAYBE IT SHOULD BE? | LOU CARLOZO

• We see this problem all the time, especially within our own industry: Sales Professionals who seem to think that selling a technology product gives them license to sell using pitches as charisma-free and pre-programmed as a Windows update.

• When you're tackling enterprise sales in this manner, you're ensuring failure. Product-market fit, robust engineering, and competitive pricing -- it all goes right out the window. Prospects just aren't interested in buying from Sales Professionals who are unconvincing, unprofessional, or lack personality.

• Don't believe us? Lou does a pretty great job of spelling it out. Sales content that convincingly advocates fun and creativity as an actionable best practice? This is a rare breed of Sales content.

• Source: Yesware | The Exchange

8. WHY THE GREATEST SALES TEAMS JUST KILL IT ON DEC. 31 | JASON LEMKIN

WHY THE GREATEST SALES TEAMS JUST KILL IT ON DEC. 31 | JASON LEMKIN

• Wherein the curator of the industry-leading SaaStr Blog gives New Year's Eve closers

their full due. A topic that, in the hands of lesser men, would have been a light -as-feather

piece of fluff.

• Not so with Lemkin. He cogently advocates that the New Year's Ever close is a bigger

deal than most Sales Managers realize, the ultimate sign of sales executed to perfection.

• Is year-end closing acumen sales the ultimate signal of Sales leadership potential? The

co-author of Predictable Revenue is convinced, and by the end of this piece, you'll be as

well.

• Source: SaaStr

9. 6 GREATEST SALES MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM MARK ROBERGE | LAUREN LICATA

6 GREATEST SALES MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM MARK ROBERGE | LAUREN LICATA

• The Hubspot Blog is home to the creme-de-la-creme of Sales Blogging, and any list of Top

Sales Content that gives no mention to the venerable Mark Roberge has dubious credibility, in

our book. (The man grew HubSpot's Sales Team from 0 to a 450 employees in under 7 years).

• Unfamiliar with the New School of Sales strategy that's overtaken SaaS and other industries'

sales teams? This is the perfect introduction. Lauren Licata, an up-and-coming Sales writer in

her own right and author of SaaSy.com, asks all the right questions.

• While Roberge's pontifications might go beyond the bounds of actionability for many Sales

Orgs, that doesn't diminish from the piece's other unique virtue: Illuminating the most emergent

trends in B2B Sales Operations.

• Source: Baseline | The Base CRM Blog

10. CUSTOMER SUCCESS: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE | LINCOLN MURPHY

CUSTOMER SUCCESS: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE | LINCOLN MURPHY

• You may be thinking: What's a Customer Success post doing on this list? Let us explain.

• Lincoln Murphy took the confines of traditional Sales blogging and threw them out the window. This is a tabulated, curated guidebook to the entire customer acquisition and retainment process.

• In the big scheme, Sales is invariably intertwined with Marketing and Customer Success, with each process informing, directing and driving the other. Trust us, there's plenty of actionable Sales advice to be found amongst all the content Murphy devotes to discussing customer acquisition in the opening chapters.

• If you have time, we also recommend setting aside a weekend afternoon and giving the Customer Success section a look-through. This text is truly an homage to Business Team interdepence, as Murphy weaves numerous Sales insights throughout its entirety.

• Source: Sixteen Ventures SaaS Growth Strategies Blog

HONORABLE MENTION: AARON ROSS ON BUILDING A SALES MACHINE | SCOTT BRITTON

AARON ROSS ON BUILDING A SALES MACHINE | SCOTT BRITTON

• What happens when you bring two of the brightest minds in Sales together? An hour of

intensive, actionable and inspiring Sales discussion.

• Okay, so this one's really a podcast. What can we say? One participant was the subject of

four Ambition blog posts and an eBook. The other was the original forerunner of our Sales

Influencer Series. And both had juggernaut years in 2014. Just listen and enjoy.

• Source: Life-Long Learner

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Check out our original post on the Ambition Blog.

• View our own Top 10 Blog Posts of 2014.

• Have any questions or feedback? Reach out to us at salesops@ambition.com!

• Best of luck from Ambition to your Sales Team in 2015 – go forth and dominate.