Winning Sales Tips and Sales Strategies From a Hungry Team Who Dared to Dream

Ken Krogue

Once in a while you have to start at the end to really understand a story. Especially if the story is true.

That’s why it resonated with so many folks when Ken Krogue, XANT president and founder, stood on stage in front of a few hundred sales leaders at IS Accelerate and said:

“We can’t forget what’s really important. It’s all about the people.”

During his keynote address, Krogue shared some of the winning sales tips and strategies that have propelled XANT into the limelight as the leader in sales acceleration technology. But his closing remarks lingered the longest, as a teary-eyed Krogue paid a heartfelt homage to his wife, his business partner Dave Elkington, and his colleagues at the company.

Krogue can cry comfortably in public, as the beloved Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller used to do, because people can tell that he’s genuine. What you might not know is that Krogue’s concern for others is at the heart of XANT’s runaway success.

Arming salespeople with the right technology

Krogue loves to use the Iron Man analogy to show how technology can enhance salespeople’s natural abilities to help them achieve extraordinary things. At IS Accelerate, he recounted the story of the time he took two average inside sales reps at a home security company and turned them into top performers simply by arming them with the XANT PowerDialer.

“We’re bringing together a bunch of power tools for professional salespeople,” Krogue said. “What we do isn’t telemarketing. It’s professional sales done remotely.”

Unconventional sales wisdom

One of Krogue’s most powerful sales strategies has always been to challenge conventional wisdom. He shared how XANT technology helps salespeople avoid 15 major time wasters, including the repetitive task of leaving voicemails. With PowerDialer your sales reps can leave recorded voicemails at the click of a button and immediately jump to the next call, which can save them about an hour a day.

“Sales trainers always said leaving a voicemail wasn’t worth the time,” Krogue said. “Well, we proved them wrong.”

The start of something beautiful

Krogue shared the story of how XANT grew organically without the benefit of outside investment in the company’s early days. One of his top sales tips, which is also a smart marketing strategy, is to find the blue ocean in the market.

That’s exactly what he and CEO Elkington did when they named the company XANT. Krogue searched for “inside sales” on Google and found that tons of companies were hiring, but nobody was capitalizing on the search volume for that valuable term.

XANT dominated Google for the phrase “inside sales” in organic and paid listings – and its salespeople reaped the rewards with a steady flow of highly qualified leads.

“We had invented the ultimate cold calling technology, and our salespeople never had to cold call,” Krogue said.

Wherefore art thou, web lead?

As the web leads flowed in at a remarkable pace, Krogue made a startling discovery.

“When our salespeople responded really fast to these leads, they made the sale,” he said.

Dr. James Oldroyd conducted some groundbreaking research that established best practices for web lead response based on data from a wide range of companies and industries. For example, you are 100 times more likely to contact a lead if you call within 5 minutes than if you wait 30 minutes, and you are 21 times more likely to qualify that lead.

But here’s the crazy part: The research revealed that only 27 percent of leads ever get contacted, and only 52.5 percent ever get called.

Which begs the question: What would your CEO think about that?

XANT has built its success on a data-driven sales approach, and it has helped many of the world’s most recognizable brands do the same.

To see how XANT dramatically improves sales productivity, watch the brief video below.