Resources

Dennis Chapman, Founder and President of The Chapman Group and a veteran in the field of sales management, offers a best-in-class checklist for assessing an organization’s strategic account management effectiveness. In this Research Brief, he discusses role differences between traditional account managers and today’s strategic account manager. Role clarity within...Read more

Sales operations is an emerging management discipline in firms with sales organizations of significant size. Leveraging an array of support initiatives, sales operations can boost sales force productivity through technology, process improvement, reporting, and training. The Sales Management Association believes sales management is thinking more strategically about sales operations as...Read more

For large sales organizations, account profiling is an essential sales force planning activity. Account profiles offer a summary view of customers’ (or prospects’) characteristics and key issues, often providing the single most important sales force-to-management communication tool for customer issues. Like many firms that employ account profiles, Schlumberger Oilfield Services,...Read more

Staffing the sales function with sales representatives that have broadly defined “selling” skills is no guarantee of success. It may not even be enough to deploy sellers with skills adapted to the unique markets they compete in. Sales forces with the best likelihood of success are those that know when,...Read more

If you are a sales leader responsible for salespeople, you no doubt make decisions on what gets implemented in the sales organization with their best interest in mind.  New sales processes, programs, initiatives – many are valuable; but many burden your salespeople unnecessarily.  Each new idea and request can effectively...Read more

Lean Six Sigma is a management method used by manufacturing companies and service organizations to improve business performance.  It’s the lens through which many firms look at how they define, measure, analyze, improve, and control the things they do, make, and deliver to customers.  In doing so, they apply Lean...Read more

Judging sales managers’ effectiveness is not a simple matter. The sales management role – like the sales positions it manages – grows ever more complex, demanding, and diverse. In many firms, sales managers’ responsibilities change more dynamically than any other comparable management position, often in response to urgent realignments of...Read more

As a companion piece to the Sales Process Mapping Best Practices for Sales Management article, we’ve developed this Powerpoint presentation.  It provides examples of how leading sales organizations communicate sales process issues in an effective way. Non-members can view an abbreviated version of the slide presentation through the Sideshare viewer...Read more