Resources

Lots of sales organizations are emphasizing coaching, but too few provide managers meaningful direction on how to coach. In the absence of tools and training, managers revert to “my way” – the approach that defined their own success. Yet these approaches are often outdated, ill-suited for others, or poorly adapted...Read more

Measuring sales force effectiveness is more than simply counting revenue or customer wins. True effectiveness metrics consider performance in the context of available opportunity, and the productivity of assigned sales resources. Using this approach as the basis for deploying salespeople and defining their territory assignments yields powerful productivity improvements -...Read more

In recent years, the front-line sales manager has come into focus as a key point of leverage in the sales force. In particular, organizations are trying to improve their sales managers’ ability to coach their reps to higher performance. But what about sales managers themselves - who is coaching them?...Read more

A sales organization’s coverage model aligns its selling resources with customers and market opportunity. Optimizing sales coverage represents an important priority for many firms as they plan for 2013. This Sales Management Association webcast features approaches for improving both sales coverage efficiency (doing more with less) and effectiveness (improving impact...Read more

Technology is re-shaping the essential work of sales managers. This Sales Management Association webcast shows how management’s coaching effectiveness is dramatically amplified through the use of mobile recording technology, speech-to-text analytics, and innovative coaching delivery methods. Presenter Marc Miller, SpearFysh CEO and author of A Seat at the Table details...Read more

The Sales Management Association’s research on tablet PC usage among business-to-business sales organizations was conducted in the first half of 2012. Target participants were sales and sales operations management within the Sales Management Association's membership and online community. Research objectives included understanding adoption trends among sales organizations, the impact of...Read more

In the rush to embrace “coaching,” sales organizations expect managers to offer salespeople one-on-one coaching sessions. As implemented by most firms, these are low-value, time-wasting affairs.  For coaching to work, management must forget the common view of what a successful one-on-one coaching session should be; namely, focused on past performance,...Read more

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) are performance metrics that drive important management decisions. There are many commonly-used sales performance metrics, including total sales revenues, number of products sold, average order value, and year-to-date sales. Individually, these metrics yield significant insight, but management sometimes lacks deeper knowledge into how specific metrics impact...Read more