Step inside the sales organization (most any large sales organization). You’ll see things that overwhelm the senses, confound reason, boggle the mind. Buyers will violate long-established natural laws governing customer behavior. Salespeople will perform activities that serve no purpose, and be paid for outcomes that they do not influence. Investments...Read more
ZS Associates’ Andy Zoltners is fond of posing the following question: If you had to decide between having a team of excellent salespeople with an average manager, or having a team of average salespeople with an excellent manager, which would you choose Itâs a question he asked the general session...Read more
Sales organizations are smart to invest in “onboarding” – systematic programs that assist new salespeople up the learning curve. Yet plenty of companies miss the boat when it comes to onboarding sales leadership. In fact, most firms are caught flat-footed when a sales manager leaves the firm. Without a ready...Read more
Buy your salespeople iPads, and they’ll play more Angry Birds. But that shouldn’t stop you from pushing your sales organization to adopt tablets. That’s one finding from our recently concluded Study of Sales Force Tablet Computing Trends. Another is that salespeople are adopting iPads on their own as fast as...Read more
Coaching As you read the word âcoachingâ above, one of several thoughts might have come to mind. Perhaps you recalled the coaching model that your company wants you to use with your reps. Perhaps you were reminded that you havenât been doing enough of it recently. Or maybe you thought,...Read more
“Coaching” salespeople yields tangible productivity benefits for sales forces, as research (including our own) has shown. Yet although coaching is considered important by sales organizations, it is under-supported by executive leadership (see the exhibit from our research below). And despite acknowledging coaching’s benefits, very few sales organizations field credible coaching...Read more
Sales Management Association underwriter Domo gave us 50 copies of this very cool infographic-turned-poster, and we’re giving them away to Sales Management Association’s blog readers. The poster is a beautiful visualization of what you might be able to do with an extra two hours. Just the thing for our sales...Read more
A guest post from Miller Heiman's Sam Reese Buzzwords are in vogue. Whether the word is transformation, enablement, re-engineering, what they really mean is change. But to truly change, one cannot just focus on one silver bullet. The fact is any change initiative will have many moving parts and interdependencies....Read more