Anthony Cole Training

MARCH 28, 2025

There are several components to being a good sales coach. Often, sales coaches do not understand the difference between holding people accountable to the sales activities (e.g. the numbers like prospecting dials) versus technique mastery (or how the activities are being executed). Here, you will focus on the technique of consistent sales coaching, not on holding people accountable to their numbers.

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Sales 282

Anthony Cole Training

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Like so many of you, I enjoy the work of the worlds best comedians. At Anthony Cole Training Group, we have often used athletes, singers, and actors as a source of learning and inspiration for salespeople. And today, I want to add to that list by talking about sales tips and tactics that can be learned from comedians.

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Sales Management 211

Anthony Cole Training

DECEMBER 27, 2024

We know that salespeople who accomplish their goals do these things consistently: Their goals are written down and they have a plan to achieve them. They have a timeframe that they stick to and their goals are defined and measurable. Lastly, they have an accountability partner or a coach to keep them on track. A sustainable sales goal plan is more than just thinking about and writing down goals.

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Sales Management 313

Anthony Cole Training

DECEMBER 13, 2024

'Tis the season for prospecting, right? Actually, 'tis the season for every sales leader and company to wonder: Are my people reaching out to enough prospects and customers so that we can begin the year strong? The runway is shortening, and this can be a challenging time to reach decision-makers because they, too, may be out of the office or otherwise busy.

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Sales Business 287

Anthony Cole Training

NOVEMBER 22, 2024

Many companies monitor their pipeline opportunities with the use of a CRM in order to have information about the opportunities being created by the sales team.

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Sales Process Sales Pipeline 307

Anthony Cole Training

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

There are few responsibilities in life more important than being a coach, whether for a sports team, teaching mastery of a musical instrument, or serving as a sales coach. Consider the impact a coach has on their students: helping them uncover problems, discover opportunities, enhance their approach, improve their skills, and achieve success. This also makes coaching one of the toughest roles, as those responsible for it often juggle numerous other tasks daily, including operational, administrat

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Sales Operations 324

Anthony Cole Training

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Sales leaders must be both effective managers and great coaches by arming their salespeople with the skills to be successful and managing their strengths. This week, we identify the final 5 keys to success in leading a sales team.

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Sales Management 329

Anthony Cole Training

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

This article is the 1st place winner of the 2022 Sales Pro Central MVP Awards on Sales Leadership! In our sales management training, we have developed 10 keys and a framework of activities that provide a new or tenured sales leader with a roadmap they need to put in place to help lead their team to greater sales success.

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Sales Sales Leadership Management 328

Anthony Cole Training

OCTOBER 4, 2024

In order for salespeople to truly engage, build value, and develop long-lasting relationships, they must compliment their selling approach with sales enablement tools and technology. Listening with the intent to learn, asking questions that are not product-based, and understanding the nuances, trends, and challenges of a company and industry are required in today’s environment.

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Sales Enablement Sales Intent 328

Anthony Cole Training

SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

Most of the companies and salespeople we work with must do outbound lead generation and relationship building, and many do not have the luxury of filling their sales pipeline with inbound leads. Like most things, if you have a plan and stick to it, outbound selling will be more effective.

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Sales Pipeline 313

Anthony Cole Training

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

Creating a winning sales pitch is a presentation that ends with a decision being made. That is our definition. When presenting to get a decision, it is important to understand this: Theoretically speaking, if a salesperson has done everything correctly up to the point of presentation, then their prospect should be in a position to make a decision at the end of the presentation 100% of the time.

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Sales 323

Anthony Cole Training

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

If your goal is to retain and expand relationships, it is important to create a consistent and remarkable experience for your customers, clients, and potential clients. If you are not providing a superior experience, your clients might start asking, “ Then, who will?

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Sales 326

Anthony Cole Training

SEPTEMBER 6, 2024

An effective sales proposal is less about what the proposal includes and more about what the end result is supposed to achieve. In fact, many sales proposals are delivered much too soon and inappropriately, often generated because the prospect asked to "see what you can do." If a salesperson follows a stage-based sales process, they know that a proposal only follows when the prospect has hit certain milestones in the discovery process, and they will be ready to give an answer, whether yes or no,

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Sales Sales Process 310

Anthony Cole Training

AUGUST 30, 2024

In 2005, I read Dave Kurlan’s book Baseline Selling. Dave took the fundamentals of effective selling and used the baseball diamond and baseball terminology to explain his sales process. Baseball today is essentially the same game that was formalized in New York around 1840, but we know that selling has changed considerably. The baseball analogy is a strong one for developing a milestone-centric sales process with your team.

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Sales Process Sales Pipeline 285

Anthony Cole Training

AUGUST 23, 2024

All salespeople and their managers want to understand the psychology of selling and in fact, is it a highly searched phrase on google. Giving credit where credit is due, The Psychology of Selling is a well-regarded book by legendary sales professional Brian Tracy that should certainly be on every salesperson’s list of must-reads.

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Sales Management 328

Anthony Cole Training

AUGUST 16, 2024

Every business that has ever been started has done so by wanting to position its products or services on a continuum between the two extremes of value and price. Some businesses (think Apple, Ritz Carlton) are focused on delivering a high value experience. Some businesses (think Walmart) are focused on being the low-cost provider in their industry. Most businesses land somewhere in the middle.

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Business Services Sales 341

Anthony Cole Training

AUGUST 9, 2024

In selling, you should have various rules of engagement when it comes to cultivating a prospect. Across the country, most salespeople just chase prospects. They do not follow any rules of engagement. They fundamentally lack a process, a decision tree, if you will, for deciding yes or no in terms of determining if a prospect is truly a prospect for them.

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Sales 334

Anthony Cole Training

AUGUST 1, 2024

To compete in any marketplace, especially the competitive arena of financial services, advisors, producers, lenders, and relationship managers must have a strategy for success. The top 7% of salespeople, the elite producers, certainly follow a sales strategy and can articulate what they do consistently to find and develop client relationships. There are many ways to differentiate and compete but there are 3 key areas to developing a competitive sales strategy.

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Sales Services Management 329

Anthony Cole Training

JULY 25, 2024

As sales manager, business line leader, or CEO, is your team finding, qualifying and closing as much business as you think they should? Most say "No" when we ask that question, which means that something in your client outreach and sales process has to change. And that change, we believe, starts at the very beginning. The call or outreach to set up an appointment is key.

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Sales Process Sales Closing Business 327

Anthony Cole Training

JULY 19, 2024

The concept of cross-selling tends to evoke skepticism and wariness. Over time, this skepticism has arisen due to some individuals with good intentions although accompanied by undesirable practices. Pushing product is often another term used for cross-selling & up-selling strategies. Let’s explore why this skepticism about cross-selling exists.

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Intent Sales 313

Anthony Cole Training

JULY 12, 2024

Every salesperson has attended sales meetings and left thinking “Why do I have to go to these meetings? They are a waste of time and not helping me get better at selling.” Sales leaders and managers must own and address this problem.

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Sales Management 323

Anthony Cole Training

JULY 5, 2024

Remember the tagline and series of commercials by American Express, “Don't leave home without it?” In this case, we don't want salespeople to leave the office without pre-call planning and pre-call preparation. This is a specific discipline, a hallmark and habit of all great salespeople.

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Sales 321

Anthony Cole Training

JUNE 28, 2024

Some of your salespeople are selling as expected… and some of them are not. If we buy into the theories of Italian economist, Pareto, then we buy into the concept that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This application of Pareto Principle can help to answer the question: Why Are Your Sales People Not Selling as Expected?

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Sales 302

Anthony Cole Training

JUNE 21, 2024

In our business, one of the greatest sales challenges that most companies face is how to properly gain insight from the data. Some companies chase a bunch of data without any regard for the story that the data tells. Others struggle when they launch sales coaching without any data at all. One “must-have” sales data insight that all companies should understand is the “pull-through rate.

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Sales Business 302

Anthony Cole Training

JUNE 14, 2024

Most sales managers say that one of their greatest challenges is their ability to motivate and set goals for their salespeople. If a sales manager can figure out what makes their people “tick,” they can better help them hit their goal numbers. Sales motivation seems like hard work because salespeople often value different things. There are, however, several steps a sales manager can take to establish a motivating environment.

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Sales Management 351

Anthony Cole Training

JUNE 7, 2024

Working with community banks across the country, we understand that now is an important time to have the right people in the right place, asking the right questions, to address the flow of deposits. In this high interest rate environment, consumers are moving excess amounts from checking accounts to higher yielding CDs and alternative products. This presents problems and opportunities for every bank.

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Forecasting Consumer Services Business 312

Anthony Cole Training

MAY 31, 2024

“Did I hire my salespeople this way or did I make them this way?” This is the question every sales manager must ask. Fixing performance problems always starts with Standards and Accountability.Accountability means taking responsibility for outcomes – good or bad. A sales leader’s primary responsibility is to put the BEST team into the marketplace.Much like a general manager in sports, a director of a theatre company or an orchestra leader of a symphony, you have a job and a responsibility to hir

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Hiring General Manager Sales Management 307

Anthony Cole Training

MAY 23, 2024

Business or sales acumen is the ability to connect with prospects and clients on a deeper level by understanding their unique problems, anticipating their needs, and leveraging knowledge of their business and industry to recommend the best possible solution — regardless of whether or not it results in a closed deal.

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Sales Business Closing 312

Anthony Cole Training

MAY 17, 2024

According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, “Only 59% percent of the 32,000 global respondents to the firm’s 23rd annual trust and credibility survey trust financial services to do what is right, compared to 75% who trust technology and 71% who trust education and food & beverage companies — the top 3 most trusted industries. In the United States, 57% of consumers trust financial services, an increase of 9 percentage points over 2022 findings.

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Consumer Services Sales 313

Anthony Cole Training

MAY 10, 2024

In today’s world of banking and insurance, it is increasingly more difficult to get the attention of a prospective buyer after only a few outreach attempts. We are all busier than ever before with multi-media coming from every direction. So, how do you stay consistent (and persistent) in your outreach with a prospect while remaining sensitive to their daily lives and the distractions they face?

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Sales 328

Anthony Cole Training

APRIL 26, 2024

DNA is a molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid, which contains the biological instructions that make each species unique. So, what makes up the very unique and coveted Sales DNA? Is there a genetic code for successful sales managers and if so, wouldn’t every company like to crack that code?

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Sales Management 311

Anthony Cole Training

APRIL 19, 2024

Technology is transforming businesses and disrupting entire industries, including the world of selling, which has traditionally been categorized as primarily a “people business”. From prospecting to closing, today’s mobile, social, big data, and cloud technologies are revamping the sales process in ways that would have been inconceivable a few decades ago.

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Sales Sales Process Closing Business 328

Anthony Cole Training

APRIL 12, 2024

There have always been two certainties in life – death and taxes. But I have now become convinced that there is a third certainty if you are a salesperson and that is the slow and painful death of decision making.

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Sales 313

Anthony Cole Training

APRIL 5, 2024

You don’t want to look, act, or sound like every other salesperson when asking your prospect questions. There is an art and a science to being masterful at asking your prospect better questions and building a strong, credible relationship with them. Read on to learn 5 tips for asking meaningful, exploratory, and courageous questions.

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Sales 313

Anthony Cole Training

MARCH 29, 2024

Putting the best people in the right seats is the biggest problem identified by most business execs, especially as it applies to critical sales roles. In today’s high tech, fast-moving economy, finding the right people who can and will sell for your company is a keystone for success. What can your firm do differently to attain better results and attract top talent?

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Hiring Sales Business 313

Anthony Cole Training

MARCH 21, 2024

It's difficult to choose what the toughest part of any sales manager’s job is and it can vary by company, industry or geography. Undoubtedly, it will be about people – finding the right salespeople, hiring and onboarding, coaching them on important deals and for skill development. And don’t forget about holding them accountable to the goals established and their activity to achieve those.

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Sales Hiring Management 338

Anthony Cole Training

MARCH 15, 2024

Sales objections typically arise in several key areas during the sales process. The first is when you’re trying to secure someone’s time during prospecting, attempting to schedule a meeting on their calendar and obtain a few minutes of their attention. The second occurs when you are delivering a presentation and seeking a commitment or decision.

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Sales Sales Process 310