Sales Management Matters

Take a moment to answer this question: How healthy is your sales pipeline at this very moment? What was the first idea that popped into your head? That’s right... The size of your pipeline. And your next step was probably to compare it to your overall quota. Three times quota? Four times quota? It’s the most classic measure of all, and it is founded on an assumption that has governed most sales forces since the beginning of the profession – Bigger is better. I have c ...

Salesperson/manager ride-alongs are common practice; we’d guess almost everyone reading this has participated in one, either from the driver’s seat, or as a shotgun-riding manager. We wondered: how do sales organizations get the most out of these interactions? We asked Catalytic Advisors’ Everett Hill to present a webcast on this topic on January 27th. His presentation offered ...

We've published a new Research Brief from the smart folks at Sales Economics in SMA's Resource Library. The paper poses the question, "Why do companies invest more in engineering how they buy stuff (i.e. their supply chains) than in engineering how they sell stuff?" The article then outlines a planning approach for developing an operations plan for the sales force. It's a thoughtful piece of work from Alejandro Erasso and Matthias Linnenkamp. Not a Sale ...

Our members are thinking hard about sales productivity. Some are scrambling to react to unexpected growth; others to cratering demand. Many are re-aligning sales organizations as markets around them change unpredictably. They’re in turns exhilarated, terrified, or uncertain in the current economic environment, but their focus on making salespeople more productive is remarkably c ...

The marketing machine behind the latest mobile devices and technology solutions is pumping furiously, and sales organizations are not immune to the promises in the offing. bInstant connectivity, smartphones with thousands of applications at your fingertips—what’s not to like? The real question, though, is not simply whether to go with iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or something else. The real question is, what are your organization’s needs?  That’s a more co ...

Inside sales hiring and staffing is exploding. Sales Readiness Group's Norman Behar points out in a recent post on SRG's blog that inside sales is now "increasingly sophisticated and the preferred method of selling for many products and services that were traditionally sold by field based reps." He sites a growth rate of 17% for inside sales staffing growth. Technology underpins the trend - not only by enabling tele-selling, but by reshaping the expectations of buyers, ...

Everything, Including the Kitchen Sink In today’s computer-enabled workforce, information technology has become as integral to a world-class sales effort as are great products and superior salespeople. Customer relationship management, sales force automation, Internet sites, communication platforms, and other applications are now the mission-critical infrastructure that links buyers to sellers and sellers to their mother ship. However, we have all seen the sobering data on the l ...

Creator of Value The role of a salesperson has always been fundamentally the same – to create value for customers. The nature of that value has changed over time, from a distribution channel in the 1800’s, to a source of information in the 1900’s, to a problem-solver in the 2000’s. And no matter where the profession of selling goes from 2010, a salesperson ‘s role will always be to provide some unique value to their customer, else the buyer will go to a catal ...