Sales Management Matters

“We keep promoting our best salespeople to be sales managers, but most of the time they don’t succeed in that role.”   Ever hear this statement before? Or have you even said it yourself? It’s an extremely common refrain, to be sure, but why? The strategy of promoting your best sales talent to manage and develop other salespeople seems completely reasonable. Yet, the practice of doing so has an abysmally low rate of success … abysmally low.  ...

“What makes a salesperson successful?”  This simple but vexing question has been asked millions of times by thousands of sales leaders for more than a hundred years. Millions of salespeople also ponder this question as they search for ways to boost their own performance. So after all of our prolonged questioning, what do we collectively believe is the most probable correct answer? Motivation? Selling skills? Personality traits? Innate abilities? Experience? All of the abo ...

[With this post, Sales Management Matters introudces a new recurring series of articles called Inside the Academy. Inside the Academy posts will summarize recent academic research in the field of sales and sales management. -ed.] Differentiate with Meaning Differentiation can come in many forms, even when the product itself is largely undifferentiated from competitive offerings. So we attempt to differentiate ourselves through superior service, bigger selection, stronger personal rela ...