Rounding up the latest in sales research and innovation.
April 20, 2022
By Rachel Smith
This month we’ve been busting some common sales and marketing myths. For our sales news roundup, we’re sharing other sales-related myth-busting stories and research from around the web.
More and more companies have made diversity and inclusion a part of the structure of their organization. DEI teams can be integral to identifying and eliminating implicit bias in company practices. Having one, however, doesn’t mean these companies always get things right. That’s clear from Harvard Business Review’s (HBR) recent article on corporate non-apologies for DEI-related harm.
Apologies alone don’t mean much if there is no action behind them. In fact, giving lip service to diversity and inclusion without backing it up can make things even worse. Even the best-meaning actions can have unintended negative consequences. Another HBR article does a great job of explaining why your company’s Autism Awareness Day might actually be excluding your autistic team members.
Many of the ways parents of autistic children phrased things and brought awareness to neurodiversity are not how their now-adult children think is appropriate. Some of the symbolism around autism can even be offensive to autistic individuals. Now that autistic adults are advocating for themselves, we all have a lot to learn.
We’re always surprised to hear when someone tells us that phone calls are not part of their outreach cadences. It might not be the most enjoyable activity ever, but it’s worth doing. Don’t believe us? (How dare you?!) Take a look at HubSpot’s 2022 cold calling statistics.
Now that you realize cold calling should indeed be part of your cadence, here’s another HubSpot piece on how to make your cold calling as effective as possible. One more reason phone calls are great? They prove that you’re a real person. The Stanford Internet Observatory recently found more than 1,000 auto-generated profiles on LinkedIn. Want to know if you’re being pitched to by a bot? Read more here.
We all know that COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of technology. People who had never ordered anything online were suddenly using grocery delivery services (like my mother, who I still can’t believe allowed someone else to pick her produce). Kids crashing online interviews used to make the news—now nobody bats an eye.
It’s all enough to make you think that location doesn’t matter. According to a recent Forbes article, however, the location of your startup could be just as important as the timing of your startup. Location-based factors from what universities are nearby to cost of living can all have major impacts on whether you’re successful.
So, location matters for startups, but what about retail? Is in-person shopping a thing of the past? Morning Consult has been tracking the return to normal regarding shopping habits, and the numbers of people feeling comfortable with in-person shopping continues to rise. Denz Ibrahim recently wrote a blog for Chain Store Age in which he shares seeing an increased need for physical, in-store commerce. Shopping experiences might not be in malls, but the need for physical stores is alive and well.
TikTok has about 100 million monthly active users, and according to Neil Patel, you should be using it for marketing. Okay, maybe for B2C marketing it works, but surely not for B2B, right? More and more B2B companies are using TikTok and seeing results. It’s not going to be the right fit for everyone, but it’s at least worth your consideration.
And sorry for the confusion. Easter egg hunts are still for kids only, but Easter “kegg” hunts aren’t. The lucky folks in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Tampa, and Portland got to search their city for Pabst Blue Ribbon Easter kegs this past Saturday. The winners got to keep the pastel-painted kegs and hopefully weren’t too disappointed that they were empty.
Contact Maestro’s myth-busters at mastery@maestrogroup.co to learn more about our training and sales strategy services.
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