Role-Playing: Making Your Formal Sales Training Programs More Effective

Six Ways to Rethink Sales Training for Today's Economy

The 7 Deadly Sins of Sales Management

Are You Looking at Sales Training Strategically?

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Organizing a Sales Force by Product or Customer, and other Dilemmas

Great Executive Interview questions for Sales Performance Management

Matthew Linklater, Sales Team Training Expert, Writes About the Importance of Business Measurements in Generating Sales

Ask The Expert: Mistakes In Coaching Sales Reps

3 Top Strategies for Using Performance Driven Lead Nurturing

Articles in category: Sales Management

1. Half of Your Sales Pipeline Is Junk Explore forbes.com (May 20 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Leadership , Sales Management New research involving over 1,500 companies across multiple industries found that the accuracy of sales forecasting fell to a near all-time low of 46.5 percent. And since the forecast, defined in the study as near term (30, 60 and 90 days), is an output of the sales pipeline, one could conclude that half (or more) of the pipeline is “junk.” With the widespread adoption and utilization of CRM (84 percent of the firms surveyed confirmed their use of CRM), marketing automation and analytical forecasting tools, the question is how can this be? Why is the sales pipeline filled ... (Read Full Article)

   Mentions:   Aberdeen Group

2. Improving Marketing and Sales Alignment Explore destinationCRM.com (May 17 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Leadership , Sales Management , Europe The best way to deliver value starts with bringing the marketing and sales organizations closer together in the planning process, starting with customer insight. Marketers with a firm grasp of the issues, influencers, and decision-makers for each customer segment are positioned to help develop strategies and content that enable their counterparts in sales to communicate and deliver the unique value the company can provide to its customers. The marketing team needs to enlist and enable the sales team to gain and provide insight. This can be done through roundtables with sales (in person or virtual), participation in account team meetings ... (Read Full Article)

3. The Sales Profession's Bill of Rights Explore SalesAndMarketing.com (May 13 2013) Sales Management Today’s sales world has changed. An unstable economy has forced corporate layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to reduce overhead, and financial uncertainty has been a catalyst in the demise of salaried sales jobs that are being replaced with a burgeoning pay-for-performance sales model in an effort to make sales departments more productive, efficient and cost-effective.  (Read Full Article)

4. Sales Managers are Key to Unlocking Peak Sales Performance - Ein News (press release) Explore World News By Country (May 10 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management CSO Insights announces the release of their 5th annual Sales Management Optimization (SMO) study. Over 1,700 firms worldwide took part in the 2013 research effort. The survey participants provided input on over 100 metrics which showed areas of increased change as well as challenges that remain year-over-year. Key findings show that “forecast accuracy” is an oxymoron with only 45.7% of forecast opportunities being won as projected. This year’s report highlights sales management time allocation, the importance of process and coaching, and yet how these are disconnected from how managers are measured and compensated. The report also included ... (Read Full Article)

   Mentions:   Jim Dickie

5. Mastering Time Management Explore Red Deer Advocate (May 8 2013) Sales Management Self-discipline requires a commitment to an established routine, and the self-control to maintain the routine in order to achieve your goals. For many, self-discipline sounds restrictive, tedious and boring. However, statistics prove that the most successful people are those who establish well-thought-out, written goals, and follow a disciplined system to achieve them. (Read Full Article)

6. How to Increase Sales for a Company: Tips for Paid & Organic Lead Generation Explore Business 2 Community (May 2 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Management For business owners wondering how to increase sales for a company, the answer is fairly basic: Only by drawing leads into your sales funnel—either through your company website or through strategic landing pages—can a company hope to convert online (Read Full Article)

7. Performance Optimization: Having the Right People in the Right Roles Explore solutionsellingblog.com (May 1 2013) Sales Management Bad sales hires cost organizations through lost quota, revenue, and compensation. Not to mention the recruiting costs, onboarding costs, potential damage to client satisfaction, and the potential for increased churn as others within the organization become upset and disillusioned with their organization’s inability to hire quality people to support them. (Read Full Article)

   Mentions:   Aberdeen Group

8. 12 Rules for Great Customer Meetings Explore inc.com (Apr 29 2013) Sales Management Here's how to have a face-to-face customer meeting that moves an opportunity to the next step. (Read Full Article)

9. The B2B customer decision journey: The route to increased sales Explore forbes.com (Apr 24 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Leadership , Sales Management While B2B organizations have embraced the idea of customer-centricity, many have yet to adapt to the reality of customer behavior. That’s resulted in millions of marketing dollars being misspent and potential sales lost at a time when companies can ill afford it. In fact, our work with more than 30 marquee B2B organizations around the world shows that half or more of all marketing spend is doing little to influence the purchasing decisions of top customers and providing little help to the sales people calling on them. To right that train, B2B organizations need to develop a much deeper ... (Read Full Article)

10. What a Great VP Sales Actually Does. Where The Magic Is. And When to Hire One. | saastr Explore saastr (Apr 23 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management In SaaS, the #1 most common mishire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales.  In fact, there a VC saying that I used to really hate.  It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof.  It used to really bug me because I am a firm believer in the strategy of Zero Voluntary Attrition and trying to hire fewer, more committed resources over a higher volume of mercenaries that turn over more often ... (Read Full Article)

11. Blaming sales or has sales technology outpaced sales management? Explore Gartner Blog Network (Apr 22 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management There is much to talk about in last week’s news of the Free Fall in PC sales, IBM’s results and potential sale of its server business.  Coupled with prior misses at Oracle, Dell’s dilemma and HP, it is easy to describe these events as evidence of a fundamental and tectonic shift in technology. It is and that is another post. What is interesting about these events is blaming the sales force for these results.  I recall that sales force lack of execution was specifically mentioned in at least two of the companies mentioned above.  It is interesting ... (Read Full Article)

12. Are You Paying Enough Attention to Your Sales Force? Explore HBR Blog Network (Apr 11 2013) Sales Management There's a question all top managers should ask: How can I make my sales force, which is one of the biggest and most important investments my company makes, perform more effectively?" Improving sales force management is a huge opportunity. We believe that sales force improvement initiatives typically produce incremental short-term revenue gains of at least 10%, and long-term increases of 50% or more. Consider the following examples of companies that have implemented sales force improvement initiatives that had big positive bottom-line impact. (Read Full Article)

    Mentions:   Harvard Business Review

13. The Say-Anything Salesperson Is a CRM Killer Explore CRM Buyer (Apr 11 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Leadership , Sales Management For a salesperson, failing to become a trusted partner—and, indeed, betraying the prospect's trust by overpromising and skirting the truth—is both unethical and outdated. Dishonesty is obviously a bad thing, and when it happens with sales, it leads to unacceptably high levels of churn, followed by unacceptably negative commentary in social media that drives off prospective customers. It results in an opportunity cost far greater that the value of the short-lived sale gain. (Read Full Article)

14. 10 principles to make your sales compensation plan effective Explore Human resources management website (Apr 11 2013) Sales Management Creating an effective sales compensation plan is a key component of a company’s overal lcompensation administration. The goal is to craft a sales compensation plan that motivates team members to perform strongly. Employers must understand the costs of the plan and how they relate to the ROI of the plan. Here are 10 principles to make sure your sales compensation plan is effective. (Read Full Article)

15. The 48 Types of VP Sales (And How To Make Sure You Hire the Right One) Explore Home : CloudAve (Apr 2 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales.  If you want it to work — make sure your top candidate is the right type for your company. (Read Full Article)

16. 13 Tips to Get Business Teams to Use Your CRM System - Cio Explore CIO.com (Mar 27 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Management Having a great new customer relationship management system won't be worth much until you figure out how to get everyone to use it. CRM experts provide tips on how to get members of your sales, marketing and customer service teams to actually use that expensive new CRM system. (Read Full Article)

17. Sales Management Digest: Why Should Customers Spend Time with You? Explore Selling Power (Feb 19 2013) Sales Management , Europe Sales managers must train their salespeople to understand that a customer is giving them something of value – their time. And they must repay that by providing value for the time received (i.e., information that moves the customer closer to his or her goal of making a decision). (Read Full Article)

18. How to Create Accurate Sales Forecasts Explore Selling Power (Feb 12 2013) Sales Management Sales managers typically view forecasting as an exercise in frustration and fortune telling. Why? Mitchell Gooze, author of The Secret to Selling More, says creating accurate forecasts in the traditional way is tough work. (Read Full Article)

19. Make Better Decisions Using Customer Data Explore inc.com (Feb 11 2013) Sales 2.0 , Sales Management Never underestimate the power of your business's database or customer relationship management (CRM) system. These tools hold valuable information that will help you to understand your customers, better meet their needs, improve your service performance and expand to other underserved customer segments. (Read Full Article)

20. Research identifies the personality traits for effective leadership Explore The Commercial Appeal (Feb 10 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management The conventional view that extroverts make the finest salespeople is so accepted that we've overlooked one teensy flaw: There's almost no evidence it's true. When social scientists have examined the relationship between extroverted personalities and sales success — that is, how often the cash register rings — they've found the link to be flimsy at best. Does this mean instead that introverts, the soft-spoken souls more at home in a study carrel than on a sales call, are more effective? Not at all. (Read Full Article)

21. Front-load your sales funnel before it's too late Explore Business Record (Feb 6 2013) Sales Management One of the fallouts from the recession is that the decision maker (whether it’s a mom or a procurement officer) is saying yes much more slowly. We exist in a tentative world right now. Whatever your normal sales cycle, you’re probably experiencing at least a 25 to 40 percent delay in closing the deal. All the more reason for every business out there to be trying to front-load the sales funnel long before its sales start to slip. (Read Full Article)

22. Optimizing the People Who Lead Your Sales Teams Explore CSO Insights (Feb 5 2013) Sales Leadership , Sales Management Sales Managers can make or break your year. What are you doing to help them excel at their jobs? CSO Insights recently conducted a webinar to review the results of our 2012 Sales Management Optimization Report. These are answers to the questions from attendees. (Read Full Article)

    Mentions:   Jim Dickie

23. An Introduction to Lead Scoring Explore Small Business (Jan 31 2013) Sales Management Lead scoring is a method used to determine the quality of a specific lead.  When you can assign a “score” to a lead, you can categorise your pool of potential leads by their score, and shift the focus to those leads with the highest quality: those prospects that are closest to buying your products or services.  Also, you can tailor your approach to match the quality of the lead.  Leads with a lower score may not be ready to buy now, but by subtly nurturing those leads, they will turn to you in the future when they are in ... (Read Full Article)

24. A Vision for your Sales Excellence Team Explore blog.salesadvisorypractice.com (Jan 25 2013) Sales Management Too many sales excellence teams are juggling too many tactical activities for the limited amount of resources that they have at their disposal.  The figure below provides details about the different areas that can draw attention from a sales excellence team's time and resources.     And if this team is going to build credibility with their sales executives and drive impact in sales productivity across their organization, they must do three things well. (Read Full Article)

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