Break Through the Status Quo Barrier
Better sales conversations start with compelling stories that engage prospects and customers, break through the status quo barrier, and motivate buyers to do something different - with you! Join Corporate Vision's Tim Reisterer for this specail webcast on Helping Your Sales Force Break Through the Status Quo Barrier. Learn more.
New Research on Developing Sales Managers
Our new research study examines corporate investments in sales manager training and development, sales manager "bench" readiness, and key manager training priorities. Learn more.
Certification Programs for Sales Operations and Sales Management Professionals
The Sales Management Association now offers two new professional designations: the Certified Sales Management Professional (CSMP) and the Certified Sales Operations Professional (CSOP). Learn more.
Think Globally. Schmooze Locally.
Our local chapters are great places to network with sales effectiveness leaders. Quarterly meetings, great speakers, free to attend. Learn more.
Webcast
Research Update: Developing Sales ManagersMay 10, 2013
Sales manager effectiveness contributes mightily to overall sales force productivity, yet many firms are unsure how to develop sales manager talent. This Sales Management Association webcast summarizes results from a recently concluded Research Initiative examining how firms make sales manager training and development investments. Presented by Sales Management Association Chairman Bob Kelly and Kurt Theriault from research underwriter Business Efficacy.
Topics include:
- Return on sales manager training investments
- New hire vs. tenured manager training differences
- Key training and development priorities
- Sales manager bench strength practices
- Trends in outside hiring vs. internal candidate development for sales manager positions
Webcast
Research Update: Annual Sales Meetings – Best Practices in Preparation and PlanningMay 07, 2013
For the sales organization, the annual sales meeting can be invaluable for communicating strategic priorities and setting the tone for yearly expectations. This Sales Management Association Research Update examines findings from a recently concluded Research Initiative on examining how large organizations plan for effective annual sales meetings. It provides insight into meeting planning best practices, including meeting objectives, themes, and overall meeting effectiveness.
Presented by Sales Management Association Chairman Bob Kelly, with commentary and insight from Symmetrics Group’s Michael Perla.
Webcast
Optimizing Sales Proposals and QuotingMay 06, 2013
Technology is enabling new approaches to streamlining sales proposal and quoting processes for sales organizations. This webcast offers instructive insights for firms working to improve proposal and quoting effectiveness.
Key topics include a review of:
- Technology’s role in enabling productivity
- The impact of improved management control
- Important process considerations for organizing initiatives
- Best practices for proposal and quoting management and
- New approaches for gauging proposal effectiveness
- Of special interest are findings that suggest strong ROI on initiatives to streamline proposal and quoting – including higher lead conversion rates, reduced cycle times, margin enhancement, improvements in cross-selling and up-selling, and greatly reduced errors.
Webcast speakers offer quick-to-implement recommendations for overall proposal effectiveness.
Presented by CallidusCloud.
Webcast
Replicating Top Performers’ Sales SuccessApril 24, 2013
Sales organizations that replicate their top performers’ strengths establish effective practices throughout their sales organization. This webcast focuses on how to identify teachable traits embodied by your best salespeople, and how to promote those traits throughout your organization using tools and technology.
Presented by TinderBox and their client, Advisa, this webcast details how sales organizations can map top performers’ attributes, drive adoption of best-practices, and calibrate support investments to drive sales organization productivity.
Topics include:
- Better understanding the makeup of your top performers
- Creating processes that support top performers and scale their habits
- Mapping technology to process, while providing real-time feedback to your sales team
Presenters:
Brian McKay, Sales Management & Effectiveness Consultant at Advisa
Lauren Weatherall, Senior Marketing Manager at TinderBox
Webcast
Optimizing Sales Territories: Best Practice Planning ApproachesApril 18, 2013
Productive sales forces ensure their salespeople are both effective and efficient. That includes focusing sellers on spending the right amount of time with the right opportunities, doing the right tasks. Achieving the optimal balance of salesperson impact and efficiency requires well calibrated planning and support. This Sales Management Association webcast examines key aspects of sales territory optimization and planning, including ways organizations should support effective selling.
Topics include:
- Designing territories that allow salespeople to address more opportunity in the same amount of time
- Optimizing your sales force’s target account touches
- Optimally sizing the sales force
- Creating and implementing high-impact territory plans
- Key ingredients of a successful sales plan
- Best practices for turning strategy into action
- Empowering execution
Presented by Ken Kramer, Executive Director, Sales and Marketing, TerrAlign; and Ron Snyder, President of Breakthrough, Inc. and Plan2Win Software
Webcast
Case Study: Sales Enablement at SplunkApril 17, 2013
Splunk (SPLK) is a leader in "big data," a fast-growing and quickly-evolving market. Splunk's recent IPO and impressive growth are due in no small part to its sales organization's speed and agility. Splunk supports its sales force with a sophisticated enablement strategy using playbooks designed to replicate their best sales tactics, alleviate gaps between company strategy and sales execution, and accelerate revenue growth. Presented by Splunk's Bart Fanelli, Senior Director of Global Field Operations, and Kym Wood, Director of Global Field Enablement, this webcast details Splunk's sales enablement approach, and provides key lessons, best practices, and essential ideas for B2B sales organizations.
Webcast
The Perfect Sales Call: Creating Value Customers Will Pay ForApril 05, 2013
Are your messages resonating with your prospects and customers? What value or insight do you bring to a sales call? Would they write you a check after a sales call?
Many organizations are challenged to differentiate not only what they sell, but how they sell. In this webinar we outline an approach to leverage insights and messages to provide value to customers through the sales process. Also addressed: how to integrate insights gained through selling into the organization's sales process, account and territory planning methods, and CRM. As IBM told us to “think differently”, this webinar will provide you with ideas and examples to “sell differently”.
Presented by Symmetrics Group's Leslie Curry and Michael Taylor.
Webcast
Key Topics in Sales Operations and EnablementMarch 28, 2013
Two sales effectiveness leaders discuss how they're addressing key priorities in their organization. Intended as a "practitioner roundtable," our panel also responds to issues submitted by the webcast audience. Topics addressed include mobile enablement, ensuring report quality, soliciting feedback from Sales Operations' internal customers, integrating advanced analytics, and strategies for impacting sales call effectiveness.
Presenters include:
Glen Schulenberg, Vice President and Worldwide Sales Operations & Planning, MicroStrategy
Kelli Stephenson, Vice President, Global Sales Operations, Experian
Academic Research
The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Gender on Customer Evaluations During a Web-video Sales EncounterMarch 26, 2013
The use of virtual environments as a support platform for demonstrating products and providing after-sales advice is today relatively commonplace. The Web-video interface represents a fundamental shift away from traditional selling atmospherics where the facial appearance of sales personnel replaces many traditional dimensions of service quality. Although salesperson attractiveness has previously been studied empirically, research into facial attractiveness remains scant. As gender has been proposed as a moderating factor in dyadic selling relationships, this study employs an experiment to test the combined effects of salesperson facial attractiveness, complainant gender, and salesperson gender, on three customer evaluations—satisfaction, perceived quality, and loyalty intentions—during a Web-video encounter. The findings show that facial appearance significantly affected satisfaction at the encounter level although not perceptions of overall service quality or intentions to repurchase. In addition, the study found that dyad gender mismatching resulted in higher customer satisfaction scores for an attractive salesperson. Based on these results, managerial implications and opportunities for future research are discussed.
Webcast
Returning to Growth: Eliminating Bad Sales Management HabitsMarch 08, 2013
The recent economic downturn hurt more than sales performance – it allowed potentially destructive management practices to gain a foothold in many organizations. Hyper-vigilant forecasting, constant reporting, and increased spans of control are some of the sales management approaches borne of necessity in crisis, but which foster dysfunction during recovery. Join Jason Jordan, author of Cracking the Sales Management Code, as he reveals the most damaging sales management activities that are probably alive in your sales force, and how to eradicate them through very practical interventions.
