Stamp Out Selling Superstition with Buying Process Exit Criteria
“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 readingTransform Your Sales Results with a Systems Approach – Part 1 (Overview)
It Ain’t Easy, Making Green With apologies to Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog for that header, and apologies to you for the poor attempt at humor, I think we can agree that the road to sales performance improvement is a noble yet challenging path. If you work in sales leadership or a sales performance […]
Continue readingSales Enablers: For Best Results, Focus on Sales Force Performance (not Sales Reps)
Have you reviewed sales enablement job descriptions lately? As members of the burgeoning Sales Enablement Society or the Sales Enablement Community of ATD (and almost anyone close to the Sales Enablement market) will tell you, “sales enablement” means different things to different people, and is being executed differently in different organizations. This certainly is apparent in […]
Continue readingCraft a Practical & Powerful Sales Value Proposition
Reality Check Stop and think for a moment about the difference between the average high school theater production and an Oscar-winning movie. Got that in your head? Now, do the same with the average high school orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (the “other” CSO). Clear? Now, do the same comparison for the average telemarketing […]
Continue readingHow Sales Training & Sales Managers Can Partner to Drive Results
There’s a lot of talk these days in the sales enablement community about the need for sales and marketing alignment. I wish I saw more of it actually happening, but I’ve written about it, too, and see the need, so you certainly won’t hear me disagreeing. When it happens, the results can be impressive: less […]
Continue readingHow to REALLY Make Insight Selling Work
Call it what you will… insight selling, changing the sales conversation, selling with insights, challenging, influencing through thought leadership… it’s all the rage, isn’t it? So much so, that some companies that shouldn’t be doing it are trying like crazy to scale the concept, and some that should be adding insight selling to their methodology mix, are rushing forward without […]
Continue readingStop Wasting Money on Sales Training
If I hear, “Sales training doesn’t work” one more time, I think I’ll scream. If done well, sales training works fine, for what it’s designed to do. This may spark a semantics debate, especially with my friends in the sales consulting space and others with a performance-orientation, but to me, training – in and of itself […]
Continue readingThe Four Pillars of Sales Value Creation
The concept of sales value creation has been getting a lot of attention again lately, in the sales blogosphere. It should. I don’t believe in metaphorical “silver bullets,” but the ability to create value when selling is as close as we may come to a silver bullet for our profession. We tend to forget that […]
Continue readingBuyers are Buying Differently – What Are You DOING About It?
I know it’s important to continue to spread the word, but I’m almost tired of hearing about how buying behavior has changed. Yes, buyers are buying differently. Things have changed. The real question is… what are you DOING about it? We’ve all heard the stats, right? The Broken Record: Buying Behavior Has Changed Buyers are […]
Continue readingThe Path to Sales Growth through Customer Focus – Part 3
This post continues the previous discussions of enabling sales growth through customer focus. In my opinion, the journey toward sales growth starts and ends with our customers, so I’m not sure why our customers aren’t always the foundation of our sales processes, methodologies, and messaging, but I can testify that many companies still need improvement […]
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