Tip Your Hat to the Tried-and-True

"Too often, we are looking for silver-bullet systems or recipes for success, while ignoring the basics," says Bill Rice in a post at the Better Closer blog. "In my experience, 90 percent of big sales improvement comes from getting back to the basics."

What are the tried-and-true basics of B2B marketing—those tactics that pay off, time and again? Rice offers several tips for B2B marketers based on his "favorite fundamentals of sales." Among them:

Break through the fear of failure. "This is a critical concept for a [B2B] sales person to grasp early in their career," Rice insists. "[As] any professional athlete or best-selling author will testify, you will swing and miss, shoot and miss, write and miss far more often than not." Kill the fear of rejection, he advises. "You will hear 'no' far more than 'yes.' Embrace it. Know that it only means that you are that much closer to a sale."

Stop "cherry-picking" leads, and just grab one. Constantly trying to find the best lead doesn't work, he says, and it wastes time. "[S]ales leads are often little more than a name, telephone number, and email," he notes, so how can you hope to differentiate the hot ones? "[J]ust grabbing a lead is about forward motion," he argues. "Creating momentum has a far greater impact than getting the 'right' lead."

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