Sales Management Matters

A Perishable Good For many sales organizations, training their salespeople is one of the largest investments they make in performance improvement. From the onboarding of new hires to annual training events for the rank and file, billions of dollars are spent each year in the U.S. alone to improve the...Read more

Matrix Partners' David Skok recently presented at Boston's Lean Startup Circle on "Building a Sales and Marketing Machine." His insights, captured in this blog post and this SlideShare presentation deck, focus on customer acquisition, and utilize mostly B2C web-based business examples. But the larger insights apply to B2B sales organizations...Read more

[This is the first in a series called Voice of the Manager, featuring guest posts from member practitioners. This post is authored by Nicholas Kontopoulos, Director Global Marketing at SAP. -ed.] I am passionate about fusing innovative business processes with technology. I have to be: that’s the only way the...Read more

Which sales management decisions have the most immediate impact on productivity? For our money, it’s sales deployment, or how and where to deploy sales resources. Sales deployment decisions include what kind of sellers to use (hunters, farmers, specialists, etc.), how many to deploy, where to put them, and what specific...Read more

The world of the professional salesperson has changed dramatically over the last decade. With more demanding customers, more complex solutions, more intricate buying processes, and more intense competition, the list of challenges facing 21st century sellers is both long and growing. In response, salespeople have changed the way they interact...Read more

Sales Management Association underwriter The TAS Group advises clients on Sales Performance Automation – a “salesperson centric approach to increasing revenue, improving sales forecasts and metrics, and continually reinforcing best practices.” SPA uses technology to enable sales methodology, and deliver just-in-time training to salespeople when it matters the most – at the...Read more

Two executives are given departmental budgets: one is a CIO, the other a Chief Sales Officer. The CIO buys a lot of software and hardware; the CSO a lot of sales training. What steps will each take in order to make sure they get a solid ROI on their departments’...Read more

Sales Management Association underwriter Better Sales Comp Consultants has redesigned its site, which looks great. BSCC's Per Torgesen provides an excellent series of posts there on practical tips for sales compensation plan design. His most recent covers "making the sausage" – the sometimes messy process of creating compensation plans for...Read more