[This article was originally published as part of the Sales Education Foundation 2018 Annual Magazine, co-authored with Robert M. Peterson, Ph.D., Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Sales, Northern Illinois University Professional Sales Program] “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the […]
Continue reading
[NOTE: This post was originally published in late November of 2018. I have updated it to reflect a few changes, including the company rebranding, my title, and some cool new solutions that we offer.] The position change announcement feature on LinkedIn has become the birthday announcement on Facebook. Except for anyone with a large network, […]
Continue reading
It’s unfortunate that role play has a low level of acceptance in many sales organizations. Done well, it’s one of the very best ways to train, coach, and improve skill levels. In this post, I’m not going to attempt to convince you that role play is an outstanding learning or performance improvement tool. For that, […]
Continue reading
I’ll admit it, right upfront. There’s no doubt that sales professionals need to understand their products and services. This is a given. Product training is necessary. What troubles me, despite how much has been written on this topic, is that so many companies are still not maximizing the potential of their product training efforts to […]
Continue reading
I did some counting recently. 2022 marks my 37th year in the sales profession and the 27th since my first sales training role. For the past 25 years, I’ve focused on finding holistic performance solutions that move the needle on the metrics that matter and radically improve sales mastery and performance. I’m still enjoying a […]
Continue reading
“Always be closing… That doesn’t mean you’re always closing the deal, but it does mean that you need to be always closing on the next step in the process.” – Shane Gibson This is probably obvious, but before you panic from thinking that I’ve suddenly become an ABC fan and am sitting in a Cadillac with […]
Continue reading
The War on… Sales Productivity? Based on the sales research results I see (much of which is based on survey results from folks like you), I know it must seem that our efforts to increase sales productivity (which I define as “revenue per salesperson” over a given time period) or sales velocity, are as challenging […]
Continue reading
Sales training can be part of a well-designed solution set that radically improves sales performance. It can also be a tremendous waste of time, energy, and money. To get results, you need to implement sales training within the framework of an Sales Learning System, which I’ve written about previously. In this post, I’ll offer […]
Continue reading
In Part 1 of this series, I shared my belief that the solution to many of our current sales problems, and a viable vehicle for radically transforming your sales results, is a Systems Approach to Sales. The four systems I recommend as a starting point are: In Part 2 of the series, I highlighted the Sales Selection System. In Part 3 […]
Continue reading
In Part 1 of this series, I shared that the solution to our current sales problems and the vehicle for transforming your sales results is a Systems Approach to Sales. The four systems I cited are: Sales Selection System Sales Readiness System (formerly Sales Support) Sales Training System (formerly Sales Learning) Sales Management System In Part 2 of […]
Continue reading