At Salespod we strive to build leading product, provide superior service and have a lot of fun in the process. We share a common vision and aim to build a company culture that embodies our values.

Salespod team brings over 30 years of collective business software experience. We aim to revolutionize the way sales force automation software is built today. More specifically, to bridge the gap between software & real life business actions and tasks. With Salespod, we are converting managers from bureaucrats to informed coaches. If you share this vision, come and join us!

Benefits:

• Casual working environment
• Flexible hours
• More then competitive salaries
• Great learning and networking opportunities

So, if you are crazy enough to work with us, here's who we are looking for:

• VP of Sales - San Francisco, California
• Inbound marketing manager - San Francisco, California
• iPhone developer - Zagreb, Croatia

Please send a short CV and explain persuasively why we should hire you. In case you're applying for the development position, we're especially interested in your hobby, student or open source side projects.

E-mail address is jobs@salespod.net.

These are just a few high-level trends that have shaped adoption of SFA software.  You can read about them in more depth on the Software Advice blog, SFA 15 Years Later Now Every Rep's Best Friend.

Lauren Carlson is the CRM analyst and writer at Software Advice, an online resource for software buyers. She is focused on CRM, SFA, Marketing Automation, and is interested in how new media is changing relationships, both in the personal and business world. Lauren has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and is an avid lover of music, running and breakfast tacos.

This guest-post is by Lauren Carlson of www.softwareadvice.com

Recently we incorporated Zendesk support platform in Salespod's web site and back office app so every customer who needs any help or have a question could approach to us with an ease. All that one needs to do is to press "Support" button on the right  side of Salespod screen and choose between three options: knowledge base, live chat and ticket support.

Knowledge Base

Knowledge Base is a depository of knowledge, a forum-like support center with dozens of Tips & Tricks, Video tutorials and Community help. After you press "Support" button a pop-up screen will open with searchbox in top of the screen. Write down keywords you wish to look for and find the article that best matches your inquiry. You can also start your own discussion and get an answer from other users as well.

Live chat support

If you have a short and simple question which requires fast response from us, you are welcome to start a chat with us. If our agents are available they will join you in a private chat.

Ticket support

If non of the agents are available, you will be asked to pose a question in a ticket form. All tickets will be answered as soon as possible and answers will be forwarded to your mailbox.

No matter what your company does, and how many locations your client has, no matter if you are a retail company, personal service provider, janitorial service or even a wine company producing wine... your representatives always have to approach clients individually and work with them day by day. While for sales representatives clients will be different kinds of sales places and for vintners vine clusters in the field, basically, it will be the same. Client will always be the client. What your workforce manager is most interesed to and what matters the most are your client's 'blood test' results!

Besides dealing with workforce employees and constant monitoring of their field work operations, every ones in a while workforce managers need to get their clients 'complete blood count' (CBC). This is a necessary procedure if they want to plan individual approach to customers and have a fresh and clear picture of their client's 'health condition'. But, how to keep the level of clients interest in control and know if your client responds to your workforce endeavour properly when you don't know what is actually happening on client's locations?

Every field worker produces hundreds of documents in a single month and to keep record of every single event there has to be the way to keep things more organized. When using Salespod, all events that mobile workers take on client's locations (documents, forms, surveys, photos…) are recorded and sent to Salespod server automatically. Events are sorted according to their type and GPS location and ready for further processing. Salespod's reporting tools (customers' and location's cards, ranking lists, pivot tables and deep analytics) enable your managers to pull out reports in just a few taps and have a perfect control over situation happening on the field night and day.

Salespod is a complex workforce automation tool that easily adapts to companies with simple customer relationships - one client with one location - as well as to those companies whose customers have hundreds of different physical addresses in several countries. L'Oreal Adria Ltd. is an excellent example of how Salespod enhances control over sales activities happening in four countries simultaneously.

L'Oreal Adria distributes L'Oreal products through a network of independent distributors in four European countries. Each of these distributors has the freedom to sell their own products but also a contractual obligation to L'Oreal. Therefore, L'Oreal sought for a solution that would enable them to track distribution of L'Oreal's products in four countries simultaneously and to gain superior control over their end-users. Thanks to Salespod, L'Oreal's top managers from Paris now have the ability to access sales reports of each of the distributors from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania directly and to supervise the activity of every single client individually.

It's a new term - I couldn't find any documented use of the word prior to 2008 and most references are from the past couple of months. It's in the urban dictionary but not the traditional dictionary. Hopium is defined as a combination of Hope and Optimism. Okay, that makes sense.

But the salesperson who used it didn't mean he had given up his addiction to hope and optimism. He meant to say that he had given up his addiction to Happy Ears.

I've written four prior articles about Happy Ears.

Happy Ears - 2nd of the 10 Competencie that are Key to Building a Sales Culture 

5 Steps to Coaching Your Salespeople Beyond Happy Ears 

When Agreement is Really Disagreement - Happy Ears for Salespeople 

Happy Ears or an Empty Pipeline?

Your salespeople must have a formal, structured sales process that they follow religiously so that they know exactly where they are and what they must accomplish next.

They must master the more challenging competency of advanced listening and questioning skills -required for selling consultatively and achieving trusted advisor status.

They must be able to identify a prospect/customer's compelling reason(s) to buy from them.

Prospects have little incentive to answer qualifying questions and continue a discussion with a salesperson if they lack a compelling reason to buy from them. Salespeople intuitively know this and when unable to identify a compelling reason to buy, quickly skip ahead to the presentation. When prospects react positively to the presentation or demo, happy ears kick in. They like it. They're interested. It's cool. They could use it. Salespeople hear what they were hoping to hear and then make the mistake of drawing conclusions like, "Good opportunity for this quarter." "Qualified". "Closable". And then they chase.

The antidote to happy ears is to develop the ability to ask the questions that most salespeople are afraid of. One example is, "You already have a relationship with XYZ, so why would you leave them to work with us?" That's a scary question if you haven't identified their compelling reason to buy from you but if you know the answer, the question is powerful.

Hopium. The salesperson was able to give up his hopium addiction - addiction to hoping he would get the business - because he can now ask all of the tough questions that didn't occur to him or scared him before. Why was he scared? Lack of sales process didn't make it apparent that he was in a bad neighborhood. Lack of methodology meant that he was not taking a consultative approach. Lack of consultative selling skills meant that he didn't have the listening and questioning skills needed to ask the tough questions. Now he knows exactly where he stands, how it's really going, and whether he will close an opportunity - or not!

Do your salespeople have a hopium addiction?

This guest-post is by Dave Kurlan of http://www.omghub.com/

This guest-post is by Mark Hunter of http://thesaleshunter.com

Who can blame salespeople when they do not want to prospect?  Who really wants to hear sixty or more "no", indecisive voicemails, "not now", or every other excuse in the book, for every one yes who agrees to chat.  And then it only gets worse: for some, it can take 2-3 months of working with those prospects to get a "oh sorry we went with someone else".  It's no wonder that you have to be certifiably insane in order to become a salesperson.  But it does not have to be that way.  By taking a bit of time, and investing some thought and resources into making your lead generation program actually work, you can take those insane sales people and turn them into raving fans of your company.  To start, apply the following three steps to your lead generation and get off the insane rat race:

Step 1. Identify who your ideal prospects are

Rather than chase any piece of moldy old cheese (no offence to blue cheese) you need to identify who your ideal prospects are.  What industries do the work in, what roles in the company make the decisions around your product or solution? When you take the time to profile your ideal prospects, you avoid wasting time and resources trying to contact customers that are never going to buy from you.

Step 2. Understanding what makes your prospects tick

In developing a greater understanding of your prospects, you need to recognize that prospect's personal and professional standings and priorities.  These factors will have a major influence over what catches their attention when it comes to solving a business issue. 

Things to consider include:

• Status Quo
  You should not just assume that every prospect is out there looking for your solution.  You need to understand their current state and look beyond just the issues your prospects are trying to solve and get a feel for their current, overall professional situation.  There are many reasons for a problem or issue - and even more that keep it from being solved.  There may be a lack of consensus about how fixing the problem will help to achieve strategic objectives.  Look for the obstacles that exist which keep prospects from taking action.  Addressing their current situation will help you demonstrate your understanding and increase your relevance.
• Strategic business or career goals
  For prospects to take action to resolve an issue, there must be a viable business outcome that helps them resolve an issue, and that helps achieve the goals of their company.  But your prospects are also interested in advancing their careers. They need to make the best possible decision for both their companies and their career advancement. By learning more about what your prospects need to achieve - both personally and professionally - you'll gain insight into what matters most.
• Influencers
  During the sales process, there can be many influencers providing input and ideas about how to deal with a priority issue. Companies that focus on learning about who their prospects interact with during the buying process can expand their dialogues to engage these other (key) players.

Step 3. Build your sales process around how your customers buy

For years, sales books and training "experts" have been teaching - actually preaching - various forms of the following sales process: "Prepare, Qualify, Present, Objections, and Close." But, when you ask most sales people what are the steps of your customer's buying process they look baffled. Even today, with an increasing emphasis on being customer-focused, that question continues to stump people. Some have never thought about the process from the customer's viewpoint.  Even those who are trying to be more customer-driven haven't formalized their thinking to the point where they can appreciate the process that customers go through when making major purchases. The result is that salespeople tend to think about what they're doing during the sales process to try to sell, rather than what the customer needs to do to make an educated buying decision.

It's very typical for most salespeople to start out with good intentions and start building a relationship with a prospect or customer, but as soon as they hear a need or a problem they can solve,   they jump on it like a rat on cheese "trying to help" with their "good advice".  While their intentions are good, they fail to look at it from the buyer's perspective.  This is where you need to take advice from Dr. Steven Covey's classic book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Dr. Covey states: "We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first."

So let me ask you:  when you are selling or developing your company's business development process, do you think about the customer's buying process with the same effort and intensity? Are you with your customers "through every step of their buying process"? Doing so will help you make more sales because you will stay attuned to them and react accordingly with the sales behavior(s) that will accelerate them through their buying process.

By taking the time to put some thought into your lead generation strategy -  more than just calling of list of names -   you will be able to greatly increase the efficiency of your sales team and jump start your company towards achieving your goals.  Nobody likes being stuck in a rat race. So remember that doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.

This is a guest-post provided by www.inboundsales.net/blog

The stress of relentless problem-solving and financial instability create a plight that just seems unfair.

After all, you are the one with the vision and the guts to try something new.

You're the one who is taking on the odds in pursuit of something new.

It's you who should be respected and rewarded.  Not butchered, maligned, and abused.

And there's nothing wrong with getting angry about it.

In fact, you getting angry enough might be the secret to you being successful after all.

You getting angry enough to go to battle another day.

It's what fuels you.

There is something mystically empowering about a  wrathful zealotry for achievement - the righteous indignation of social unexpectancy.

How dare you be questioned.  How dare your vision for you be demoted, doubted, and demoralized.

Maybe you should have gotten angry earlier.

But anger alone isn't the answer.

It's only the awakening.

It's what let's you know that you're still human  It's a sign that what you're doing matters.

• It matters that you are successful as you believe can be.
• It matters that you have a dream that you won't have disrespected.
• It matters that you stand against the odds fighting to achieve greatness.

Your anger drives purpose.  Drives resolve.

But your anger also burns valuable energy.

If you let the fire run too hot, you are left only with ashes.

The ashes of a dream.

A mission burned out by the misguided energy of unfocused drive.

• Get angry that you're not where you want to be.
• Get angry that others doubt you.
• Get angry that you're flawed.

You use that anger to drive your relentless pursuit for achieving your expectations for you.

You use that anger to recapture the dignity of your mission.

Get angry.

Getting even won't help.  Achieving your goals will.

While others doubt you, determine that at all costs you won't give up.

This guest-post is by Dan Waldschmidt of http://danwaldschmidt.com

And yet others struggle to remove themselves from firefighting, admin and dealing with challenges and spend their mornings, noons and evenings glued to their email?

It's an important question. It might be one of the most important. Ultimately, you will be defined by what you do and by what you achieve not by how busy you are!

Being busy is not the same as being successful. Working hard is not the same as working smart. Putting the hours in is pointless if you're working on the wrong activities.

When I work with businesses I see busy people, energetic sales teams and frantic business leaders. I see many, many people working hard to "get things done"…

But "getting things done" is sometimes not the same as achieving your objectives!

My lifelong passion is all about understanding what differentiates top performers and then helping others to achieve it too. What makes one person a sales superstar and another a sales wannabe? What empowers one person to be a rock star presenter and another a washout? What is it that enables one leader to lead their team to "victory" whilst another couldn't lead theirs to the pub?

And one of the key differences is that top performers spend more time working on activities that lead to results.

Simple truth…

If two people of equal ability, passion and knowledge work the same market in the same way but one spends 50% of their time on activities that lead to results and the other only spends 25% then the first one will outperform the second one. Every time.

This is simple and obvious and yet it is not something which drives many peoples' behaviours. Over time, most people fall into habits…

We do things because "we should", we do things because "we always have", we do things because "that's the way others do it", we do things because "we were told to"…

But we ought to be doing things because they get us the results that we want.

Here are 3 simple steps to get you more of the results that you want in your sales, in your business and in your life…

Step 1: Take stock.

Ask yourself what results you want and then work out what activities directly lead to those results. Map how you spend your time… How much time do you spend on these results based activities versus how much time do you spend doing other things?

Step 2: Take charge.

Commit time to results based activities. Protect this time. Make it sacrosanct. Do not be distracted. Drop "time-wasting" activities, stop acts of procrastination and learn to say "No" (to yourself and others).

Know that everybody has the same amount of time in a day and how you spend yours is down to you.

Step 3: Take action.

Make it happen. Change happens in an instant. How you spend your time will determine your results so take action now to get on the road to the results that you want.

And finally, be your own coach, assessing how you do, refining your approach and holding yourself accountable.

And here's the magical thing. This is a never-ending process because the more successful you are, the more you have to work on this process and the greater the opportunities are to improve.

Let me know how you get on…

This guest-post is by Gavin Ingham of www.gaviningham.com

Copyright Gavin Ingham (November 7, 2011)