The city of San Francisco is full of sales stars this week. I'm sitting right in the middle of it all...literally.

I'm sharing this live from a session with sales best selling authors and global trainers, Mark Hunter from The Sales Hunter, and Andy Paul from Zero Time Selling.

These guys are legit. They had the crowd in the palm of their hands. Lucky for you, we've extracted the important stuff straight from Dreamforce 2013.

1. Change who is qualifying leads

Match your buyer's increased knowledge with a smarter sales responses. The buyer is coming in with more information than ever. They're estimated to be over halfway through the sales cycle. This means they know what they're talking about. Too often our sales first lines of response are the least knowledgeable. This is a mismatch. Sales leaders must be involved in the early stages. 

2. Follow up with 100% of your sales leads

Treat sales leads like lottery tickets and scratch them all. They're not all going to be winners, but you will not know until you follow up with them. Salespeople all too often plan on getting to those leads 'later'. Andy reminded us that "later lives on the same street as never."

3. Leads must be owned by sales, not marketing 

A lead is proven to be a lead the minute they start sharing proprietary information. It's the job of sales to help customers make the right decisions through asking questions and providing outcomes. Marketing doesn't have the time or the capacity to do this.  

4. Stop chasing the shiny object 

The greatest resource to a sales professional is time. As a sales and marketing group, you have to adopt the nightclub bouncer mentality and guard your pipeline against unqualified leads. Teams often struggle when prospects ask for information and are many times, the least inclined to buy. The best buyers are often hidden and need to be dug out. Just because they waive a hand, doesn't mean they are a customer. 

5. Price is NOT part of the prospecting process

Price is not a valid reason to buy or sell. Sales needs to understand the client's desired outcome, their timing for the solution, and identify the decision maker prior to sharing price.  

6. Customers are NOT as informed as they think they are

Ask buyers what attracted them to you. Find out what has changed to make the need urgent. Ask them for their two major questions. Many times, customers have cherry picked the best features from all the industry offerings and wishfully think you can provide them all. It's your job to uncover what they know and what they need. 

#7 Stop selling benefits -- Shift to customer outcomes

In sales, we've trained ourselves to blend features with benefits. If you start to shift your thinking to customer outcomes, you'll help your customers understand the value you can provide.

You know a good session when you realize the Q&A could have gone on for another hour! The room was packed and Mark and Andy took every marketing and sales attendee to the next level. I hope these tips help you. Stay tuned to more excerpts from Dreamforce 2013.

Learn more sales tips from Mark Hunter in this free Salesforce ebook.