Shifts in Consumer Behavior And Technology Four years ago, Andy Hoar writing for Forrester Research, famously postulated that a million B2B sales representatives would be displaced by 2020. Andy asserted that the combination of digitally enabled self-service models and the retirement of previous generation buyers who are replaced by digital-native buyers would form new […]

Why do we accept 60% quota attainment? It seems every day I see another news story read or an article discussing the fact that somewhere between 40% and 50% of B2B sales reps in the US fail to attain their quota numbers. Why is that? There is a plethora of tools and applications available to […]

Think back to the last board meeting you attended that addressed sales. The directors likely looked at the sales numbers, compared them to plan, and probably noticed some room for improvement.   But for board members of early-stage or high-growth companies, a higher-intensity focus on sales is necessary since these organizations may not have the […]

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a member of our Board.  As a Director who sits on several high tech start up boards, she has attended more than her share of Board reviews. Her comments could be summarized in saying that Sales Leaders who are not making their numbers all say the […]

Most sales organizations have a well defined sales cycle, from initial contact to the closing of a deal. However, if you’ve noticed your sales cycle getting longer and longer, it can be hard to understand what’s causing it. Are you not qualifying your leads well enough? Or are your buyers’ budgets are tightening? Is it […]

Few sales leaders would say they’re satisfied with their win rate. In fact, according to research, the average win rate per sales rep is just 47%. The question is, is your low win rate due to poor lead and opportunity qualification, below par closing skills, or a lack of product knowledge? Searching for the root […]

For sales leaders, podcasts are the most accessible and carefree way to get information. While continuing your daily routine, you can access some of the best discussions on sales from your home, car or headphones. Listening to the podcast is the easy part. The hard part is choosing which ones to listen to among the […]

Cien will be one of several innovative companies in the tech industry represented at Boston Consulting Groupś POPTECH Experience in Berlin on September 19th.

“Before starting his first company, Rob worked at an enterprise software company, calling it his “Office Space days,” but decided that wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore.” Cien’s CEO and co-founder Rob Käll joined Omer Khan on The SaaS Podcast to reflect on his personal journey as a serial entrepreneur in the world of […]

Cien Co-Founder and CEO Rob Käll addressed the attendees of the 2018 Artificial Intelligence International Conference in Barcelona. In a lively presentation, Rob Käll covered a touched on variety of ways in which machine learning is set to change our lives, including technology sales, dating and job searching. Building on concepts borrowed from data science and […]

At Cien we speak to sales leaders every day, and most tell us how frustrated they are with the quality of their data in Salesforce. After all, decisions are only as good as the data on which they’re made. Sure, even when they think they do, no company I know has absolutely perfect CRM data. […]

Winners from other categories include Salesforce, Adobe, MailChimp, Marketo and Hubspot. Cien, the AI-powered app that helps teams improve their sales performance, today announced it has won MarTech Breakthrough’s Innovation Award for CRM Software. MarTech Breakthrough is an independent organization that recognizes the world’s leading sales and marketing technologies. The program received more than 2,000 nominations […]