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Angie Noll is the Owner of Reconciled Solutions. She is a Certified Profit First Advisor and has an MBA from Loyola (Chicago). Fall is in the air, and I’m breathing in the scents of fourth-quarter planning. As an entrepreneur, I revel in wiping the slate clean. This is when creativity and dreaming flow. And as the owner of a company that specializes in bookkeeping and profit acceleration, I think this is a particularly good time to create your sales forecast for the upcoming year. Before getting started, I suggest taking stock of the past 12 months, noting market changes and measuring how you were able, or unable, to adapt. Entrepreneurship is a fluid journey, and the outcome of even the best-laid plan will never fully match up with the goals you developed in the prior year. It’s crucial to be able to look back at last year’s plan and identify where changing circumstances made some fluidity necessary. How did shifting your plans impact your volume, margins, energy levels and ...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. The world's most successful companies often have a similar business approach, even if their products or services are vastly different. One essential commonality: They each have a powerful brand that connects with audiences and the market. Strong brands aren't coincidences — they are born from intentional brand strategies. If you are trying to connect with venture capital (VC) funding to take your startup to the next level, the most consistent path to success includes an effective brand strategy. Bottom line: Any edge can return value in the hyper-competitive VC environment. Here's how branding can positively impact your journey to attract venture capital. First: What is branding? Branding for entrepreneurs and startups is an integrated network of messages and channels that can empower your business to better connect with venture capital investors. This network generates the characteristics, qualities...

Jim Berryhill, DecisionLink Chairman of the Board & Co-Founder, is on a mission to transform customer value into a strategic asset. Doing business today is more complicated than ever. The days of closing a deal with a phone call or a handshake are long gone—and things are certainly not going to get any simpler from here on out. A whole range of factors, including the increase in digitization, globalization and ubiquitous use of technology, is only serving to heighten market competition—not to mention complexity. In the current business landscape, sales teams are under huge pressure to make their interactions with prospects and customers more meaningful, impactful and effective. In today’s always-on world, technology plays a vital role. Automating tasks and collecting valuable data across your entire sales cycle is no longer simply nice to have: It’s now a must. But many organizations that have already invested in sales technology are not seeing their desired returns. That’...

You book a flight to Los Angeles. You board the plane. The plane lands. You disembark, walk into the terminal and ask, 'How do I get here?' Frustrated, you fly home. A day later, you board another flight for LA. Once again, you are shocked to find yourself in the city of Angels. You fly home even more frustrated. Why does this keep happening? You don’t want to be in LA. You want to be in Boston. Airplanes are pretty good about reaching their destination. The airlines, for all their faults, tiny seats and surcharges, have an almost flawless record of arriving at the intended airport. You are virtually guaranteed to arrive at the city named right there on your ticket. The only way to end up in a different place is to book a different flight. Makes sense, right? Why, then, are you surprised when the destination of your “I can save you money” sales call is as consistent as landing in Los Angeles over and over again? Every time you connect with someone and your offer is ac...

Digital selling works. In fact, B2B companies now expect a seamless digital sales experience, with studies revealing 70 - 80% of B2B decision-makers prefer remote human interactions and digital self-service over traditional sales reps.  The Covid-19 pandemic certainly helped fuel this digital-first mentality, as buyers and sellers had no choice but to go online.  Here’s what I really find interesting, though: Only 20% of B2B buyers want to go back to in-person sales.  As businesses increasingly turn to digital platforms to engage with suppliers, so too must your sales team.  Many B2B businesses have yet to develop a clear digital sales strategy — and, as a result, are missing out on opportunities to sell to customers where they already engage and transact.  If you want to succeed in today’s increasingly digital landscape, you need a digital selling strategy that works. So, let’s explore how to do exactly that. In this article, I’ll explain the ...

In every tech company, there is, at some point, the challenge that not every department is getting what they want. Product guys want to innovate, marketing guys want visibility and competitive edge, and the sales guys want to follow the money. Looking at stats collected from various sources like Salesforce, McKinsey, and others: 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures, and 97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project. Moreover, while about 75%  of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important”, only 18% of employees get communication evaluations at their performance reviews. And, to rest the case, according to McKinsey, knowledge workers spend an average of 14% of their workweek in communicating and collaborating internally. Towards the last quarter of each year, companies start planning for next year's goals, budgets, roa...

If you’ve ever reminded your sales and marketing employees that you’re “all on the same team here,” you’re not alone. This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s easy for team members to zero in on a specific task and lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s why they need you to create collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. Left unaddressed, the tunnel vision that all too often accompanies the completion of skill-specific tasks can lead to open conflict between team members. And that’s the best-case scenario! At least the various grievances are being aired. A far more damaging scenario unfolds when team members grumble silently to themselves and resentments invisibly pile up. As a manager, you know your business needs marketing and sales to work hand-in-hand. Part of your job is to figure out which side of that equation you tend to unconsciously favor — most of us have a bias one way or the other — and take steps to counter it in your approach to build...

Many people think that the hardest part of bringing a new product to market is the original idea or the development stage. The truth, however, is that getting your product into stores and selling it to customers is often far more difficult than you might expect. Most inventors or product developers are incredibly creative people but don’t have the knowledge or experience which is required for effective branding, marketing, and customer outreach. Convincing big retailers about the merits and potential saleability of your product can be particularly difficult as they are pitched literally thousands of products every year.  So what can you do to give yourself the best chance of success?  In this article, we will explain everything you need to know, from how to identify your target customers to how to get your product in stores that are best suited to guarantee sales.  1. Make sure your product is ready  Before you approach retailers to see if they want to stock your ...

As a small business owner, making sales is critical. However, finding the balance between “successful” and “annoying” can be challenging, especially if you don’t have much experience working in sales. HubSpot research shows that 50% of prospects found sales people pushy, while only 17% of salespeople thought they were pushy. If you feel your sales skills are hindering your small business’s development, don’t be afraid. We’re going to provide you with sales tips that you and your sales team can use. Implementing these tips will help improve your sales technique, increasing the likelihood of converting leads to sales.  We’ve broken sales tips down into various stages of the sales process so you can hone in on the areas where you most need to improve. Sales tips for cold calling Contrary to popular belief, cold calling is not dead. The best sales professionals still use cold calling as a sales strategy to help move leads and prospects through the b...

To say that Covid-19 has thrown businesses for a loop would be an understatement. Yelp recently reported that, of the more than 160,000 U.S. companies that have closed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 60% are now shut down for good. With businesses across the country struggling to keep their doors open, scaling your company in this economy might seem like a pipe dream. Not necessarily, says Charles Gaudet, CEO of growth consultancy Predictable Profits: “While we are in a challenging environment, you will find companies in every industry having their best year yet. Those succeeding are adapting, looking for the opportunity and using data to make fact-based decisions.”  If you’d like to join the ranks of companies that aren’t letting Covid-19—or future crises—stand in their way, take these three steps to scale your business now:  1. Identify where your growth will come from.  In a strong economy and with a strong product, sales practically make themselves. These...

The Internet has changed the way we do business. Looking to increase sales and get great deals with technology and creative experiences Think of your own solution. When did you close the deal? Find a solution to the problem of how weak sales can be done offline or online with better visibility. Growth requires an authentication strategy but when sales fall significantly there are several factors to consider: - ✔️There are new competitors entering the market ✔️Technology is changing rapidly ✔️The market will be a new shape ✔️Price is not competitive ✔️Customers are not satisfied with the service ✔️Lack of training activities to educate end users ✔️Marketing campaigns are not detectable ✔️Income decreases Less exposed to the latest productivity tools, knowledge and technology experience. It's time to successfully integrate UI Development into your organization. Continue to improve your knowledge by learning from your mentors, reading the right books and getting cer...