Sales Transformation. It’s a term that means different things to different people. I’ve been involved in sales transformations that were entirely focused on getting the best-possible performance out of the sales force (ranging from a 30 to 600 percent increase in sales), independent of retooling the rest of the organization. In my experience, the potential […]
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It’s a cruel twist of fate for senior sales and revenue leaders that as the year barrels toward a close with urgency to maximize the remaining time, that strategic and tactical planning for the next year must happen at the same time. At a minimum, these leaders must tackle quota setting, territory optimization, account assignments, […]
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In the first post in this series, I defined Learning, Training, Development, and Education. Learning: Learning is the act of acquiring new knowledge and skills. Training: Training is job-related learning about what, why, and how (and maybe when and where) to do something (or multiple things), to be successful in a specific role. Development: Development […]
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One of the things that’s been on my mind lately is the difference between education, learning, development, and training as they relate to sales talent development organizational learning strategies for Sales. Why? In the past three months, I’ve had this conversation (“this” meaning talent development and organizational learning strategy for Sales) with four different company […]
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[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 […]
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[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, […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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“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 […]
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