Know What's Happening in Sales
Know What's Happening in Sales
Skill Beats Product: Sellers Win 88% of B2B Deals
MIT research analyzing 103 million online poker hands found only 12% of victories came from the statistically strongest cards, meaning 88% were secured by weaker hands through skillful play. The article parallels this to B2B sales, arguing that sellers—not superior products—drive the majority of deal outcomes, with 75% of buyers now preferring to speak with a sales professional.
Klaviyo, a B2C CRM provider, announced a partnership with Google to deliver AI‑driven, autonomous customer experiences across the entire commerce lifecycle. The collaboration merges Google’s search, advertising, AI and messaging capabilities with Klaviyo’s real‑time data platform, which processes 3.4 billion daily interactions from over 8 billion profiles. Integrated intent signals from Google surfaces will feed into personalized actions within Klaviyo, creating a single, trusted customer profile. Executives say the joint effort aims to enable “agentic commerce,” giving brands full ownership of relationships while simplifying buying and loyalty.
Partner portals marketed as "seamlessly integrated" with Salesforce often rely on shallow field‑mapping, leading to data drift, sync failures, and constant admin overhead. A mirroring integration replicates the Salesforce schema and IDs, keeping Salesforce as the single source of truth...
The article aggregates over 50 up‑to‑date lead‑generation statistics for 2026, highlighting that 91% of marketers list lead generation as their top priority and 93% credit personalization with improved leads and purchases. It details benchmark metrics such as an average of...
In this episode, Dan Lee, co‑founder and CEO of Nooks, unveils the new Agent Workspace and AI Sequences, explaining how AI‑native tools are reshaping the top‑of‑funnel sales process. He contrasts Nooks with legacy sequencing platforms, highlighting its ability to automate...
BYD announced a New Year promotion that slashes EV prices and adds 0% financing for three years, with daily payments as low as 29 yuan (about $4.20). The move comes after five consecutive months of declining sales, with global NEV...
In this episode of Founder Firesides, @sdianahu talks with Ali Akhtar and Armen Forget of @LetterAICo, who just announced their $40M Series B. After pivoting during YC, they landed enterprise customers like Lenovo in the batch and expanded rapidly. They discuss...
I've spent 4.5** years selling to CRO's and VPs of Sales If you can't hold your own negotiating, you'll get eaten alive. Here's my always / never rules for negotiating: 𝐀𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬: -Confirm you are vendor of choice -Be consultative + work together -Require a live phone...
George Brontén argues that complex B2B sales succeed when salespeople stay fully present in each interaction. By focusing on the current conversation, they better understand buyer needs, uncover hidden stakeholders, and co‑create a shared mental model. This present‑moment approach leads...
Sales Management Interviewing Mistakes: You do the majority of talking. You are the only one interviewing potential sales candidates. You don’t check resumes and backgrounds before making a job offer. You don’t ask challenging enough questions during your interviews. #frippvt
RT @VisionEdgeMktg 🔗 Marketing and sales misaligned? That's leaving money on the table. Three proven steps to fix it now. https://t.co/pWTXFdm97t #MarketingAlignment #SalesStrategy #RevenueFocus
Ingram Content Group is expanding its partnership with RELEX Solutions to add AI‑driven forecasting, capacity optimization, vendor‑managed inventory and assortment planning across six global distribution centers. The new capabilities will automate planning for more than 1 million SKUs, boost forecast accuracy...
. @boostmobile has begun to test sales of @Starlink in ~120 stores. The pilot ties into EchoStar's pending sale of spectrum to SpaceX and builds on Starlink's growing retail strategy. h/t @wave7jeff - @Light_Reading https://t.co/Uc3v44JgC9
Agentive announced that former Google Cloud executive David Keene will serve as co‑founder and chief revenue officer. Keene brings more than three decades of leadership at Google Cloud, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and recent CMO roles at Wipro Europe and Speechmatics....
TxtCart, an AI‑powered SMS marketing platform built exclusively for Shopify merchants, announced it has helped its users generate over $100 million in SMS‑attributed revenue while remaining fully bootstrapped. Founded in 2019, the company has expanded from abandoned‑cart recovery to a two‑way...
SoftwareOne announced it is now one of the first global authorized Google Cloud distributors, extending its cloud portfolio across ten initial markets. The rollout includes Australia, Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, India, Norway, Sweden and the United States, with more...
SoundHound AI unveiled Sales Assist, a voice‑powered AI agent for retail, at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona. The agent uses the company’s Polaris speech‑recognition and a multi‑agent orchestration platform to deliver real‑time product recommendations, upgrade eligibility checks, and compliance...
Retail media measurement is often portrayed as broken, yet the same sampling‑based, attention‑agnostic methods underpin TV, radio and outdoor metrics. Industry bodies such as IAB Europe and the MRC have already issued standardized frameworks that enable closed‑loop attribution and incrementality...
Negotiators have long debated whether to make the first offer, balancing the risk of revealing information against the power of anchoring. Recent research shows that making the first offer typically yields better economic outcomes but also raises anxiety and lowers...
ADT announced the acquisition of Origin Wireless, operating as Origin AI, to integrate its real‑time AI sensing platform into ADT’s security and smart‑home ecosystem. Origin’s technology classifies motion and human presence without cameras, audio, or wearables, adding a privacy‑focused intelligence...
SoundHound AI unveiled Sales Assist, a voice‑powered, real‑time AI agent for retail floors, debuting at Mobile World Congress 2026. The solution leverages the company’s Polaris speech‑recognition and multi‑agent orchestration to deliver instant upgrade, bundle and compliance recommendations to in‑store staff...
enQase, a US‑based quantum‑safe security platform, announced Stephen Grein as Senior Vice President of Sales. Grein will oversee global sales strategy, targeting enterprise and partner‑driven adoption in regulated sectors such as finance, defense and critical infrastructure. He brings more than...
Reducing churn remains a top priority for SaaS firms, and AI is moving from experimental dashboards to operational tools. G2’s 2026 expert survey of Custify, ChurnZero, Chargebee and Velaris shows AI platforms now blend usage, sentiment, billing and relationship data...
Home Depot reported a 13% drop in Q4 net earnings to $2.6 billion as a stalled housing market curtails home‑improvement spending. CEO Ted Decker said consumers lack confidence, delaying large projects despite low mortgage rates and ongoing price cuts in new...
RocketReach announced a strategic partnership with Autobound to embed the latter’s Signal Engine into its platform. The integration adds more than 400 real‑time company and contact signals—including job changes, SEC filings, and product launches—to RocketReach’s existing contact database. This signal‑driven...
Cross‑cultural negotiations often stumble over differing communication norms, but understanding the dignity‑face‑honor framework can turn cultural variance into a strategic advantage. Researchers identify three prototypes—dignity (e.g., US, Canada), face (East Asia), and honor (Middle East, Latin America)—shaped by historical population...
Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks explains that humor, when used strategically, can shift emotional tone, build trust, and improve negotiation outcomes. Research shows jokes that elicit genuine laughter signal confidence, competence, and higher status, while also fostering creativity...
IKEA U.S. announced four new stores in Chicago, Tulsa, Fort Collins and Los Angeles, bringing its 2026 rollout to ten locations, including its first city‑center store in LA and first Oklahoma outlet. The retailer posted $5.3 billion in total sales for fiscal 2025, with...
The article ranks the top click‑to‑call applications that integrate natively with Salesforce, highlighting Revenue.io as the most feature‑rich solution. It outlines how these tools eliminate manual dialing, streamline workflows, and automatically log activity within the CRM. Each platform is evaluated...
Today, @ZoomInfo's partnership with @claudeai has reached a new level. 45 seconds is all it took me to fully enrich a list of companies... without leaving Claude. I dropped in a CSV with company names and websites. Asked it to pull headcount,...
Letter AI announced a $40 million Series B round led by Battery Ventures, closing just four months after its last raise. The Chicago‑based startup introduced Letter Compass, a real‑time deal‑enablement tool that pulls content, learning, CRM data, and interaction history...
Plug&Play Currency Sync for Zoho CRM now automates daily exchange‑rate updates, ensuring new deals, quotes and invoices use current rates while preserving historical values. The tool pulls rates overnight and allows up to two manual syncs per day, eliminating the...
The GTM Summit will be held virtually in February 2026, targeting senior marketers and product leaders. While the full agenda is behind a members‑only login, the event promises live panels, on‑demand workshops, and insights into AI‑driven go‑to‑market strategies. Organizers position...
Salesforce categorizes fields as either indexed or non-indexed, with indexed fields offering faster query execution. System‑generated fields such as lookups, master‑detail relationships, audit dates, and RecordTypeId are indexed automatically. Administrators can manually index custom fields by marking them as External...
TitanX CEO Joey Gilkey argues that outbound sales must abandon volume‑driven dialing for an intent‑driven model powered by Phone Intent™ and AI. By aggregating behavioral signals, Phone Intent predicts which prospects will answer, raising connect rates from industry‑low 3% to...
Founders often blame outbound for low reply rates, but the real issue is a flawed mental model that treats outreach as a volume problem. The article argues that outbound should be a learning system where hypotheses about the ideal customer...
Dillard’s reported flat Q4 performance, with retail sales slipping 1% to $1.9 billion and net income falling 5% to $203.7 million. Gross margin held steady at 36.1% while online traffic surged 19% year‑over‑year, offsetting flat in‑store visits. The retailer highlighted a modest...
Revenue optimization is a data‑driven framework that fixes friction in the B2B sales journey, allowing firms to grow profit without increasing lead volume. The guide outlines a four‑stage cycle—track, identify, test, measure—and shows how disciplined RevOps can boost win rates...
Home Depot reported fourth‑quarter sales of $38.2 billion, a 3.8% year‑over‑year decline, yet the results beat analyst expectations. Net income slipped 14.2% to $2.6 billion and operating income fell 14.4%, reflecting pressure from a sluggish housing market. Full‑year sales rose 3.2% to...
GReminders announced an expanded integration that embeds its AI‑driven meeting assistant directly into Orion’s Redtail CRM. The new functionality lets financial advisors generate AI‑powered notes, receive pre‑meeting briefs, and schedule client appointments without leaving the Redtail interface. By consolidating the...
For years, I've been the guy in the room saying CRM alone is a horrible way to run a revenue org — and people looked at me like I had two heads. Pretending that CRM is to "better understand our...
Complex deals aren’t closed at the end — they’re built at the beginning. On Sales Logic, Meredith and I talk trust, decision-makers, procurement realities, and when to walk away. Sales is still a relationship business. https://t.co/2Fyvebn4bC
Corbel, a next‑generation CPQ platform, is using generative AI to overhaul industrial equipment sales. The system mines unstructured data—PDFs, videos, sales transcripts—to deliver instant technical answers and embeds financing options directly into the buying flow. By keeping human sales reps...
Gartner’s Customer Service & Support Conference will convene in Denver from November 4‑6, 2026, gathering service leaders, technology providers, and analysts. The two‑day event emphasizes extracting ROI from AI investments, positioning service as a growth engine, and redefining success metrics...
Zoho Marketplace highlights Clearout Email Verifier, a native extension that validates and cleans email addresses directly within Zoho CRM. The tool performs over 20 validation checks—including syntax, catch‑all, and spam‑trap detection—with 99% accuracy, allowing users to sync verified results back...
Outreach’s February 2026 release adds a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that streams real‑time insights to Anthropic’s Claude and other AI agents. New integrations with LeadIQ, ZoomInfo, and Kaia™ APIs bring enriched and conversational data directly into the platform. The...
Dunelm launched a new iOS and Android app to deepen its omnichannel strategy, linking physical stores, digital experiences, and customer data. The app extends the AI‑powered search and recommendation engine first introduced on Dunelm.com, creating a unified intelligence layer across...
Amazon Ads unveiled Creative Agent, an AI‑driven creative partner inside Creative Studio that lets advertisers generate video and display ads through a chat‑based workflow. Leveraging Amazon’s retail insights, the tool pulls product pages, shopper signals and brand guidelines to produce...
The article presents a five‑step formula for handling price objections: expect pushback, know the competition, protect margins, own differentiators, and be prepared to walk away. It stresses that anticipating objections prevents reactive discounting, while deep competitive intel lets sellers defend...
Samsung Ads introduced an Immersive Carousel ad unit on its European Smart TV home screens, supporting up to five rotating tiles per placement. The format appears on more than 70 million Samsung TVs, auto‑rotating every five seconds and also navigable via...
Spotify has shifted from confrontational royalty disputes to collaborative negotiations, exemplified by its 2023 royalty framework overhaul. The new model introduces a 1,000‑stream annual threshold, fraud penalties, and length requirements for non‑musical tracks, aiming to curb AI‑generated and low‑value content....
