SalesNewz.com

Sales professionals who want to learn from the best should perhaps start taking notes on the habits of a score of individuals identified by the Sales Lead Management Association.  Yesterday, the SLMA named 2011′s “20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management.”

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Yesterday morning, what we’re about to discuss would have looked like bad news, and even now, it’s not exactly great.  But following the Dow’s 1,000-point plunge yesterday afternoon, people in the sales business may still find it a relief to know that April retail sales numbers showed small declines in spending.

Here’s a dataset put together by Sy Harding: “Teenager favorite Aeropostale (ARO) reported its April sales fell 5%; Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) sales fell 7%; American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) saw its sales decline 6%; The Gap (GPS) reported its April sales fell 3%; Target (TGT) reported a 5.9% decline; Dillard’s (DDS) sales fell 5%; Kohl’s (KSS) sales dropped 7.7%’; J.C. Penney’s (JCP) April sales fell 3.3%.”

Then other companies, including Macy’s, Nordstrom, and TJX, managed to post small gains, preventing the news from being all negative.

And again, it’s necessary to consider that the Dow took a significant beating yesterday, closing down 3.2 percent (or 347.80 points) even after having a bit of time to recover from the crash that’s rumored to have been caused by a typo.

So stay on your toes, sales pros, but don’t go into full-on financial apocalypse mode just yet.

Just about every company aims to sell things, and just about every company puts some effort into the process.  At the same time, businesses can’t go too far – spending $600 million on a marketing campaign that’ll only appeal to people over 106 is no good – so a recent study examined whether digital marketing tends to prove profitable.

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