We all make mistakes (we’re human!), but when it comes to your sales team, the wrong mistakes can be costly. Here are five of the worst mistakes salespeople make and how to avoid them.

LinkedIn is an excellent place to prospect for sales -- it gives you an amazing amount of access to details about people’s professional lives and allows you to specifically target your messages to reach exactly the right people at exactly the right time.

But LinkedIn is also a challenge. Every decision maker you send a message to is probably receiving messages from many other salespeople as well, some of whom are probably your competitors. Fortunately for you, many of your competitors are writing terrible LinkedIn messages that immediately land in the trash. This provides an opportunity for you to get ahead by crafting well-written messages that will be read.

Sales development has been called “the biggest trend in sales today.” Just a few months ago, Kristy Sharrow wrote on the LevelEleven blog, “It’s pretty simple: if you’re one of the cool kids, you’re talking about sales development. If you’re a sales leader at a high-growth company, especially in tech, you’re probably hiring for it.”

What is the top challenge facing your organization today regarding your sales team? If you said “training,” you are not alone. In the AA-ISP 2014 Top Challenges Report, sales leaders said training was their top issue, while sales reps ranked training as number two (after quantity/quality of leads).

As with workers in all other fields right now, salespeople need more training, and they need it now. Here are five sales training techniques that will help you prepare your sales teams for success.

Which one of these are you most like to respond to most quickly: voicemail, email, or text message?

Let me guess: you picked text message.

People are becoming less responsive to phone calls, voicemails, and emails.  However, they still read 98% of their text messages (90% within the first three minutes) and respond about 30% to 40% of the time.

For salespeople and recruiters, wasting time on unheard voicemails results in less sales for you or your team. Our clients find that two-way text messaging improves response rates by up to 20% and can save recruiters up to 83 minutes a day!

Here are three ways you can increase your sales with two-way text messaging.

TextUs.Biz is better than ever with the latest launch of TextUs.Biz v2.0! We've always valued any and all feedback that our users have given us over the years and are happy to launch the latest updates based on the feedback we've received. With a focus on user experience, the new update has a fresh, modern look and newly added features.

In some industries, technology adoption may still be optional. But for sales and recruiting, it’s an absolute imperative. The average American now owns four digital devices and spends 60 hours per week consuming content on those devices. That’s more than a full-time job.

In this new tech-driven world, companies need equally tech-driven sales and recruiting processes. Consider these statistics:

• 35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. (source)
• Reps who use social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quota than those who don’t. (source)
• 62% of job seekers browse for jobs on a mobile device. (source)
• 78% of people would apply for jobs using a mobile device if the process were easy. (source)

TextUs.Biz is now available in the Salesforce App Exchange!

Fully integrated with Salesforce CRM and Salesforce1 application, TextUs.Biz for Salesforce uses your existing landline phone number to send, receive, and log two-way text message conversations with your leads and opportunities.

• Send, receive and log your texts directly from within Salesforce

• Text messages are sent using your existing, 10-digit landline phone number

• Click-2-Text phone number reverse look-up to identify lead cell phone numbers

The TEXTCELLERATE™ team is out in San Francisco this week for Dreamforce 2014! We're out meeting with customers and looking to learn new ways to help you add SMS 2.0 to your sales tool box.

Many sales professionals use TextUs.Biz to manage their daily conversations with potential clients. Text messaging has a 98% read rate - much higher than sending an email or leaving a voicemail - making it the ideal communication tool for sales professionals to touch base with clients quickly and efficiently! With hundreds of contacts per week, it can be challenging to keep track of each conversation.