Five Great Blog Posts (From Blogs You’re Not Reading)

We know you’re busy. You can’t be expected to comb the internet searching for the best sales management articles. Who has that kind of time? I do. I have that kind of time. Here are five, from blogs you should be reading (but may not be).

Comparing Leaders Aboard the Titanic, Californian, and Carpathia from Forum Corporation – “Rapid execution doesn’t come simply from picking up the pace, but rather from skillfully mobilizing people. When you look at the [Titanic] story through that lens, there are a lot of practical lessons for leaders in organizations today. If we heed those lessons, we can move faster (without hitting icebergs).”

We Now Pronounce You Sales and Service from AchieveGlobal – “The reality is that organizations must realize that sales and service teams often have drastically different objectives. It takes commitment to self-reflection and hard work at a fundamental level to unify those two philosophies and focuses into a single cohesive force.”

Why the Turnaround Failed: Former Hostess Brands Executive from Catalytic Advisors –  “Stay close to your street-level employees. They have an invaluable perspective of what’s going on, and they have ideas for addressing your current challenges. To tap that expertise, have the discipline to regularly get in their workplace and listen. When was the last time you and your leadership team were “in the back aisle of a Food Lion,” seeing the market through your employee’s eyes?”

Pure Folly: Justifying Sales Investments with Marginal Cost Analysis from Evergreen Growth Advisors – “… the marginal cost argument – absent a static selling environment – is fraught with serious risk that just might snowball and lead you to invest multiples …of what you would have spent if you’d used fixed cost analysis and made the decision to invest in totally new sales capability.”

Stop Running God-Awful Sales Meetings! from Swayne Hill –  “By dropping our old fashioned weekly sales meeting habit and realigning a meeting schedule to the rhythm of our business, we minimized administration and created real opportunities to improve sales person performance.”