B2B Reads: B2B Communities, Long-Term Vision, & Sales Mindset

In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

3 Things Hiring Managers Must Do During Interviews (and 9 specific questions to ask)
As an impact from this global crisis, we are experiencing the “Great Re-evaluation” where people take the time to reset their expectations and ambitions. The focal reason employees leave their jobs is not often associated with unsatisfied pay, but company culture, growth, and organizational issues. For effective recruitment and onboarding for both the company and interviewees, hiring managers must throw out conventional job requirements, prioritize people over process, and rethink how they demonstrate their value proposition. Thank you, Jalie Cohen, for thinking about the value employees seek out during this period of reflection. 

Keeping Sight of Your Company’s Long-Term Vision
An essential part of building a successful company is ensuring its longevity for the future. However, following this ideation also means translating these visions into reality for long-term success. Approaches for this transition include structuring the strategic planning processes around the vision, focusing experimentation on questions relevant to the long-term vision, and investing in training programs. Thank you, Ron Ashkenas and Peter Moore, for bringing up this important aspect of a company’s long-term success. 

Effective Content Writing in 15 Steps
Ensuring that your company is producing effective content helps build brand awareness and consumer loyalty which ultimately leads to more sales. Content writing isn’t black and white, however there are tangible metrics to measure the performance of how well they are doing. Thank you, Liudmila Klimusheuskaja, for identifying ways that we can measure how effective our content writing is. 

Businesses that Tighten Up Get Hurt
Although there can be many challenges and problems that occur within a business, it’s important to push through and remain steady. It’s crucial for a company’s survival to remain flexible and overall, shorten the aging process to keep it new and fresh for longevity. Suggestions to avoid tightening up in business include watching your weight, constantly moving, hydrating, stretching, and trying some heat. Thank you, Steve McKee, for sharing these insights and highlighting consistency as a key area to business. 

Council Post: Sales Is A Team Sport: 6 Tips To Help All Your Employees Adopt A Sales Mindset
Effective teamwork is imperative for sales teams to success and to a company’s overall success. Selling is the last step of receiving business and working with the entirety of your company reflects how many sales a company delivers. Making each employee a sales ambassador, taking advantage of remote work to enable an influencer mindset, having your executive teams set the tone, having sales be the top priority, promoting word of mouth marketing, and aligning your marketing and sales strategy are all tips to help your employees adopt a sales mindset for success. Thank you, Anthony Smith, for breaking down how to adapt a sales mindset in these easy and effective tips. 

How to get Unstuck and get the Clarity you Need to get Results | Barbara Nixon
It can be difficult to recover from feeling as if you’re stuck and are constantly going in circles within your personal and professional life. Follow these steps to get clarity and your momentum back: stop trying to see the full picture, stop consuming so much stuff and drowning out your own voice, give yourself permission to want what you want, and follow your joy. Thank you, Barbara Nixon, for helping us get out of our own ways and find the clarity that we need. 

Leading with Empathy
The importance of being an empathetic leader starts the trust that leadership is about people. Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another. As we are starting to return to an in-person world after the pandemic, people are going to be reevaluating their relationships with work and need strong empathetic leaders to help them work towards achieving their goals. Thank you, Randy Conley, for this really interesting read on empathetic leaders. 

Council Post: Startup Guide: The Top 8 Sales Team Must-Haves In 2022
Having a high-performing sales team is one of the most important aspects to a business’s success. Top sales teams have a script, texting, daily huddles, daily training, competition, follow-up system, review process, and fun! Thank you, Don Markland, for discussing these important sales team must-haves. 

The Importance of B2B Communities: What’s in It for Marketers?
Community is what draws us together as people and in turn connects us as marketers as well. When a company establishes a community, it creates a link between customers and the organization. Read more to understand the operational aspects, personal advantages, the importance of building a B2B community, and the benefits for brands! Thank you, Justin Levy, for shining light on how the community can change B2B marketing for the better.