[Guest Blog]

Conducting sales training is challenging no matter how experienced you are or how long you’ve been doing it. Why? Because according to studies, the attention span of an average person only lasts for about 20 minutes. After that, you will notice that some people in your audience will begin to check their mobile phones, look at their watches, look outside the window, or become restless in their seats. You need more than just professionally-prepared slide decks and engaging icebreakers to prevent any of any of that from happening.

Customizing your sales training essentials is the key to attention-grabbing training. Generic materials will bore your participants. The best way is to incorporate plenty of opportunities for your audience to share their thoughts, experiences, and best practices. Spice up your presentation with engaging activities that will help you hold the attention and interest of the participants.

Before Sales Training Begins...

Before...

We've put together a series of articles that will walk you through how to evaluate and setup your CRM. This is the second article in the series. If you missed the first article, then you can get started with your CRM evaluation. This second article includes valuable tips on CRM user best practices. The third article will cover recurring maintenance for the growth and scalability of your CRM.

     Small businesses usually deal with less bureaucracy than conglomerates, and this is often a good thing for process and productivity. However, it also means that the team can end up overwhelmed by trying to keep track of things that would normally be spread across several employees. The overwhelm can lead to lost sales and missed opportunities as the important clients get lost in the shuffle.

Here are 5 CRM User Best Practices for success

1. User Adoption and Processes 

    If you are the leader in your organization, then...

Since so many of us have been bummed about Zoholics being canceled, I decided to host a virtual Zoho CRM user group.  As luck would have it, a fellow partner (Josh Wagner, Stratosphere Sales) enthusiastically agreed to join me and offer his Zoho insights too. My only expectation was for a few people who already know me to show up. The response was great, and the user group itself was even better. 

About 13 of us showed up in a virtual meeting last week. We got to know each other, shared experiences about CRM best practices, and I think we all learned a few useful things.  

Some of our big takeaways:

• While Zoho offers a fantastic suite of products, it is a challenge to know enough about all of the apps.
• We are all looking for resources to learn more and get our questions answered.
• There are several online communities that are helpful to know about: 
  • Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1634640983443827/
  • LinkedIn group: ...

We are excited to participate in several marketing events in the coming weeks of 2020 in Austin, Texas. If you will be attending one of these events, please let us know by filling out our Contact Form. 

Social Media Week, Austin #SMWATX

• February 26 - 28, 2020
• SMW brings together marketing, media, and technology professionals from more than 50 countries with a curiosity and passion for new ideas, innovations and emerging trends in social media.
• Candice DeRiso of Beckmann Collaborative will be presenting at SMWATX: How to Build a Winning Content Strategy
• Learn More at SMWATX.com

South By Southwest #SXSW

• March 13 -22, 2020
• Experience 10 days of unparalleled discovery, learning, and networking with creatives across tech, film, and music industries at the 2020 SXSW Conference & Festivals
• Candice DeRiso, Rachel Denton, and Meredith Gonsalves will be presenting a workshop: Develop Your Brand Strategy & Voice
• Learn More at SXSW.com

...

Guest Post by Louisa Garcia Moreno

Employees today spend most of their lives in the workplace and when it’s not designed with their well-being in mind it can be a stressful and draining experience and could potentially harm their performance.

Safeguarding the mental, physical, emotional and financial health of employees in the workplace is the goal of corporate wellness. The effects that stress and poor health can have over performance levels and business success should not be underestimated. When lack of wellness inadvertently becomes part of a company’s culture it can have serious consequences for a business — what begins as employees’ poor performance may eventually translate into poor performance at a corporate level.

According to findcourses.co.uk’s 2019 L&D Report, the linking factor between well-being and business success is employee engagement, which in turn influences performance and productivity. Highly engaged employees typically...

UPDATED July 2021

Kajabi for your LMS (Online Courses)

As a company with education and professional development rooted in our mission, we spent a good amount of time searching for the right LMS (Learning Management System).  While we loved using Wordpress for our website, finding an LMS plugin with a smooth integration was a challenge. 

We Compared Kajabi to Several Others

Several clients and partners talked about Teachable, Udemy, and Thinkific. All of those platforms are great for certain people and companies. For us, we found them limiting.

Those other LMS platforms have a big database of customers who are often categorized as "casual learners" or inactive. Those are not the people who get value from deep-dive training that requires focus and some elbow grease to get the work done right.  

For Beckmann Collaborative, Kajabi had the key elements we needed to cohesively work together. That includes a functioning website,...

Guest Post by Don Matejko

Strong presentation skills are important for any sales professional, especially when the products or services being sold are complicated, expensive and/or unfamiliar to the prospect. Some salespeople are naturally gifted presenters, but most acquire their skills through experience and training. If you are responsible for training in this area, here are important tips to bring your salespeople along quickly in the art of sales presentation.

1. Establish a training knowledge base

Effective presentations require the presenter to be credible and authentic. No amount of pre-packaged text and dazzling imagery can cover up a presenter who doesn’t really know what he or she is talking about. In contrast, a presenter who exudes confidence and understanding can effectively turn prospects into customers even if the presentation itself is flawed. With this in mind, salespeople should have a very strong understanding of products, services, their company,...

Earlier this year, I was invited to become an instructor with General Assembly. A few times each month, I would go to their offices in downtown Austin to lead classes such as Intro to Digital Marketing and Intro to Content Strategy. The experience has been more enriching than I originally anticipated. Yes, I’m getting the opportunity to share what I’ve learned by trying and failing or succeeding to others. Hooray for knowledge transfer! Along the way, I learned some valuable lessons and so I perked up when they asked if I wanted to teach even more.

This month I’m leading a 10-week part-time course two nights per week. In preparation for teaching this course, General Assembly (GA) has a thorough onboarding procedure. I call it Training the Trainer. Stepping outside of the usual approach and getting new ideas from GA was incredibly helpful. 

Important Aside for Context:

I’ve been training my clients and their teams over the past 4...

Beckmann Collaborative is now an Authorized Zoho Partner!

What is Zoho?  It's is business management software that is cloud-based and can be fully integrated into every nook and cranny of a business. If you're interested, you can read their story and more about Zoho here. 

What does being a Zoho authorized partner mean? It means that we have worked with the many different Zoho applications long enough to officially help other small businesses to use it. 

At Beckmann Collaborative, we love marketing operations and improving processes. It's how we found Zoho. After using it within our own business for several months, we started to see how it could make our client's workflows much smoother and improve their productivity. So we've been helping several clients to implement it... so far it's going great.

The best "bang" for your buck, in our opinion, is Zoho One. This is your master-key to access all of the Zoho products. The reason you would want...

Why Would You Invest in Professional Development Training?

To attract and retain the best team of employees, professional development training must be more than a fringe benefit. Both salaried and hourly employees are seeking to work for the businesses who invest in their team. It is a prerequisite for attracting those top-performers.

Make employee training an ongoing process built into your business growth strategy. As new employees become acclimated to working in your company, they continue developing their skills and grow into larger roles. There are many reasons to provide professional development opportunities to employees that directly benefit your medium or small business.

If You Want the Best Employees, Provide Professional Development 

Expectations of entry-level employees have increased significantly over the past 10-15 years. Employers large and small have published job postings for entry-level positions, but requiring candidates to have 2-3 years...