5.7 million. That’s how many sales professionals are currently in the U.S., according to a market-sizing survey done by InsideSales.com. Just over 47% of these salespeople are inside sales reps, while just under 53% are outside. So, what’s the average sales call look like? Well, Inside salespeople have the word “inside” in their title, so of course all of their meetings with prospects and customers are remote. But even the “outside” sales reps of today are no strangers to “virtual” calls, as they spend more than 45% of their time selling remotely, an 89% increase from 2013, the last time InsideSales.com ran the survey. For the non-math majors, that means that 75% of all sales meetings are now handled remotely. This shows you just how widespread virtual meetings, conducted by phone or web conference, have become. Ok, virtual sales meetings are a big deal. The reality is this is a tough selling forum in which you must outperform your competition if you hope to gain traction today. Which begs the question: how effectively are salespeople actually handling these meetings today?

When you’re working a high-quality B2B deal, the biggest enemy to success is time. We interviewed Tim Sanders, CEO of Deeper Media and author of several sales and business books, including Dealstorming: The Secret Weapon That Will Solve Your Toughest Sales Challenges to ask him more about closing big, complex deals.

Everybody knows that it's easier to upsell current customers than acquiring new ones. And that increasing rev / customer not only directly grows your revenue, but increases the amount you can spend on acquisition. But so many upsell tactics in today's world forget the most important part of any business: making your customers happy. Popups, pressure sales, direct emails all work to get more revenue out of customers, but also serve to chip away at your brand equity. This post dives into ways to not only effectively upsell your customers, but to do it in a polished way that doesn't diminish your brand equity.