Sales Management Matters

To understand the key changes and new trends in line-of-business sales, I’ve had plenty of interesting discussions with sales managers at different levels in the past year. It’s clear from these conversations that revenue, profit, and reliable forecasts are still the top KPIs for measuring the success of sales executives....Read more

Creator of Value The role of a salesperson has always been fundamentally the same – to create value for customers. The nature of that value has changed over time, from a distribution channel in the 1800’s, to a source of information in the 1900’s, to a problem-solver in the 2000’s....Read more

[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...Read more

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