The sales force’s success often depends upon its ability to improve the individual effectiveness of its salespeople. “B” performers – salespeople not yet performing at elite levels – but who are nevertheless proven contributors capable of improvement – represent the best and largest single opportunity to impact individual improvement. This...Read more
In part four of OpenSymmetry’s seven-part blog series on effective sales compensation plan design, we’ll discuss the power of an optimized payout curve and how to establish one. To start from the beginning of the series, follow this link to blog one. Incentive compensation payout curves are a challenging component...Read more
In this blog series, sales performance management (SPM) consulting firm OpenSymmetry explored key sales compensation plan design components and considerations for team-based incentivization. Continuing in the third installation of this series, we’ll examine different scenarios for which measuring sales performance by revenue and by margin are the most appropriate. All...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Quantifying Sales Enablement’s Value 
2 July 2019
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This research examines the extent to which firms are embracing "sales enablement," and the impact of its adoption on the sales organization. Sales enablement describes an emerging set of practices related to salesperson development, guidance, and content distribution. It is characterized by (a) connecting sellers to content most relevant for...Read more
Full Research Report
Research Report: Quantifying Sales Enablement’s Value
2 July 2019
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This research examines the extent to which firms are embracing "sales enablement," and the impact of its adoption on the sales organization. Sales enablement describes an emerging set of practices related to salesperson development, guidance, and content distribution. It is characterized by (a) connecting sellers to content most relevant for...Read more
This research examines the extent to which firms are embracing “sales enablement,” and the impact of its adoption on the sales organization. Sales enablement describes an emerging set of practices related to salesperson development, guidance, and content distribution. It is characterized by (a) connecting sellers to content most relevant for...Read more
OpenSymmetry and Sales Management Association continue to explore the many facets of sales compensation plan design in part two of our eight-part blog series, which focuses on team-based sales incentivization. To read more about sales compensation plan design basics, check out part one of the series here. There’s no one-size-fits-all...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Quantifying Sales Enablement’s Value
27 June 2019
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This research examines the extent to which firms are embracing "sales enablement," and the impact of its adoption on the sales organization. Sales enablement describes an emerging set of practices related to salesperson development, guidance, and content distribution. It is characterized by (a) connecting sellers to content most relevant for...Read more
Blog Post
Five Design Principles That Will Make Your Sales Compensation Plan Irresistible
24 June 2019
Sales Management Association is excited to feature a blog series from sales performance management (SPM) consulting experts OpenSymmetry on tips and best practices for sales compensation plan design. At the end of the series, OpenSymmetry will host a webcast bringing all principles from this series together in a hands-on setting....Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Emerging Practices in Sales Training and Development
24 June 2019
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Many sales organizations are changing how their salespeople learn and develop skills. These changes may build upon past training methods, or, as in some firms, represent bold new departures from conventional approaches to salesperson learning and development (L&D). This research surveys these developments, identifying current practice and emerging trends. It...Read more
Full Research Report
Research Report: Emerging Practices in Sales Training and Development
24 June 2019
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Many sales organizations are changing how their salespeople learn and develop skills. These changes may build upon past training methods, or, as in some firms, represent bold new departures from conventional approaches to salesperson learning and development (L&D). This research surveys these developments, identifying current practice and emerging trends. It...Read more
Many sales organizations are changing how their salespeople learn and develop skills. These changes may build upon past training methods, or, as in some firms, represent bold new departures from conventional approaches to salesperson learning and development (L&D). This research surveys these developments, identifying current practice and emerging trends. It...Read more
Solution based sales often require the coordinated effort of multiple actors, working as a team. And selling teams require the coordinated involvement of management, marketing, solution engineering, and other supporting roles. Aligning their activities requires collaborative account planning and dynamically updated tools integrated across the organization. In this web panel...Read more
Technology has already reshaped how companies manage sales forces. Now many experts predict that artificial intelligence (AI) will deliver transformational improvements in decision making quality, conferring to those firms who effectively apply AI significant advantages over their peers. This webcast examines what AI realistically means for sales performance management (SPM),...Read more
The Sales Management Association’s annual Sales Force Productivity Conference is the premiere conference for senior leaders focused in sales force effectiveness. The conference highlights emerging trends, leading practices, and the latest research impacting sales management, sales operations, sales enablement, and other functions engaged in supporting, managing, developing, or leading sales organizations. Visit...Read more
Webcast
Essential Planning Approaches to Managing Sales Capacity
5 June 2019
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A robust, data-driven approach to sales planning addresses sales capacity and headcount. This webcast explores capacity planning for sales organization, using best practice approaches and case examples. Topics include: Identifying risks and challenges to capacity Calibrating ramping assumption for new salespeople Anticipating salesperson attrition and understanding its impact on sales...Read more
Many sales leaders emphasize repeatable, consistent processes as the basis of sales organization productivity. But in so doing, they also may undermine an attribute important to the sales organization’s success: agility. This webcast presents research that suggests a single-methodology emphasis in sales process is counter productive, and offers in its...Read more
Driving the top line isn’t sufficient for the best sales forces. They also focus on selling profitably – by pursuing the most valuable prospects, offering an optimal mix of products and services, and pricing strategically to maximize value. This workshop explores programmatic approaches for managing profitable sales growth through focused...Read more
Sales enablement platform provider Highspot's annual "State of Sales Enablement" survey examines how sales enablement is perceived, utilized, and creating value at companies of all sizes. In this webcast, Highspot offers our audience a special look at findings from this year's research. Findings will address: The business impact of formal...Read more
Webcast
Managing Sales Performance While Adapting to Change
30 April 2019
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Constant change seems to be the sales organization's normal resting state. Customers, territories, salespeople, quotas, products, market conditions -- when any of these change, management must be able to adapt without compromising sales performance. In this webcast, we examine strategies for implementing a flexible approach to sales performance management capable...Read more
Once a firm establishes the sales organization’s strategy and performance objectives, aligning incentive compensation plans to these objectives is a critical next step. This webcast covers the tactical considerations of sales incentive compensation plan design, including selecting the most effective performance measures, determining performance targets, establishing accountability for the plans’...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Emerging Practices in Sales Learning and Development
23 April 2019
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Many sales organizations are changing how salespeople learn and develop skills, by adapting conventional training methods (classroom training, for example), but also by incorporating bold new approaches. This webcast provides our first look at recently concluded research on this topic. The research surveys a broad range of sales training practices,...Read more
Webcast
Salesperson Attrition: How to Plan for It and Model Its Impact
16 April 2019
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Employee attrition is costly for any firm function, but in sales it can jeopardize the firm's ability to make its number. In this webcast, we'll evaluate various models for quantifying salesperson attrition's impact and discuss how to select the best model for use in planning. Other topics include: Sensitivity analysis...Read more
Deal reviews give managers two valuable opportunities: one to get insight into sales pipeline, another to coach and develop salespeople. Effective managers capitalize on both, using reviews to help close specific deals, but also to make salespeople more effective over the long term. This web panel examines deal review best...Read more
Blog Post
Join Us in Atlanta at Simon-Kucher & Partners’ Fifth Annual Pricing and Sales Strategy Forum
5 April 2019
Join Sales Management Association Chairman Bob Kelly and 10 other speakers at Simon-Kucher & Partners’ Atlanta Pricing and Sales Strategy Forum, 25 April at the Waldorf Astoria. The half-day event features cross-industry experts sharing best practices in sales, pricing, marketing, and strategy. The event attracts executives and senior managers leading...Read more
Blog Post
Oracle’s Mark Hurd Keynotes the 2019 Sales Thought Leadership Conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business
3 April 2019
Mark Hurd, chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, will headline the Sales Thought Leadership Conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The biennial conference, which the Sales Management Association sponsors and helps produce, features a novel format and an exclusive audience, half of whom are leading sales academics, and half...Read more
The "service recovery paradox," a known effect in B2C sales is now a proven B2B phenomenon. Simply put, the Service Recovery Paradox says that it is possible to recover from a service failure or problem with a customer in a way that creates even greater customer loyalty and satisfaction than...Read more
Microsoft
29 March 2019
Setting sales quotas is a tricky thing. Set quotas too high and salespeople lose motivation. Set them too low, and you may distort sales force performance and incentive expense. This webcast examines approaches for individualized sales quota setting, and includes these topics: How flexible templates can organize quotas by salesperson...Read more
OpenSymmetry
12 March 2019
OpenSymmetry is a global consulting company that specializes in the planning, implementation and management of sales performance management (SPM) solutions supported by the industry’s leading technology suppliers. Since 2004, OpenSymmetry has enabled its customers, ranging in size and industry, to achieve greater operational efficiency and get better sales results. With...Read more
NICE
3 March 2019
NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) is the world’s leading provider of both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions that empower organizations to make smarter decisions based on advanced analytics of structured and unstructured data. Over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies, are using...Read more
Webcast
The Devil’s in the Data: Improving Sales Compensation Data Quality
27 February 2019
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Most organizations face sales compensation challenges such as overpayments, underpayments, and recurring disputes. Many assume the problem lies with inefficient compensation plans and calculation errors. But a review of decades' worth of sales compensation administration experiences reveals an altogether different root cause for such errors: poor data quality, and inefficient...Read more
Webcast
Sales Enablement in Real Time: How to Deliver Sales Knowledge When it Matters
26 February 2019
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Your sales force is the most important conduit for delivering information and insights to buyers which help them make informed decisions. Yet, many sales enablement organizations continue to take ad hoc approaches in their attempts to empower sellers to have the right conversation with their buyers, at the right time....Read more
Conga
25 February 2019
Conga is about creating and leading today’s intelligent, modern business through digital transformation. No matter the industry, technology is essential to delivering a great experience for customers, partners, and even employees. Conga technologies enable businesses of every size, across all industries around the world, to digitize the documents and contracts...Read more
Webcast
Opportunity Based Incentive and Quota Management
21 February 2019
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Sales quotas and incentives have a big impact on sales productivity. Discover the data linking these two functional areas and learn how best-in-class systems can bring quotas and sales objectives into alignment. In this webinar, you will learn how to strategically design sales incentive systems that supports price and margin...Read more
Conference
Thought Leadership on the Sales Profession Conference, Stanford Business School
20 February 2019
Bringing together the world’s foremost sales thought leaders from practice and academia, the Thought Leadership on the Sales Profession is held every two years at premier business schools. Past events have been hosted at the Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, and HEC Paris. The 2019 conference takes place 30-31...Read more
Forecasting sales performance is fraught with risk, and many sales organizations fail to anticipate changes that undermine success. Among these is the risk associated with salesperson turnover. In this webcast we examine staffing, hiring, and attrition variables that contribute to sales force capacity, and detail how to best model these...Read more
Lucidchart
2 February 2019
Lucidchart is the essential visual productivity platform that enables sales orgs to deliver clarity at every stage of the sales cycle. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, sales teams can work visually and collaborate in real time while building account maps, proposals, sales process flows, and more. Lucidchart is utilized in...Read more
Webcast
Emerging Trends in Sales Training and Development
31 January 2019
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Sales organizations are rethinking training investments and embracing a collection of emerging learning and development practices. In this webcast we'll review findings from Sales Management Association research over the past three years that highlight these practices, their impact on sales productivity, and implications for the future. An expert panel will...Read more
Assign too little potential to salespeople and they'll starve, but too much assigned potential leaves some opportunities unaddressed. Balancing potential across sales territories helps make quotas achievable for all salespeople and maximizes the firm's sales capacity and productivity. This webcast considers territory optimization approaches, including: Utilizing what-if scenario analysis to...Read more
Webcast
How Top-Performing Sales Managers Crush Their Quotas
16 January 2019
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How do top-performing sales managers consistently exceed their targets? Join Vantage Point partner Michelle Vazzana as she discusses the newly revealed secrets of rock star sales managers. Through the groundbreaking research in her new book, Crushing Quota, Michelle will demonstrate: How high-performing managers create clarity of task for the salespeople...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Managing Sales Organization Change
8 January 2019
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations, as are the markets and customers they serve. Join us for the first look at recently concluded research on how sales organizations manage change. This research reviews critical change management practices in business-to-business sales forces, focusing on management's efforts to anticipate and lead high impact...Read more
Courses
Fundamentals of Sales Territory Optimization and Management Well designed and managed sales territories allow firms to maximize sales force capacity, provide a foundation for other sales performance management activities (including incentive compensation and quota design), and have a host of other benefits to sales forces. This course reviews territory management...Read more
Sales forces are change-intensive organizations, as are the markets and customers they serve. This research reviews critical change management practices in business-to-business sales forces, focusing on management’s efforts to anticipate and lead high impact change initiatives. Research outcomes include the degree and speed of change facing sales organizations, sales organization’s...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Managing Sales Organization Change
17 December 2018
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations, as are the markets and customers they serve. This research reviews critical change management practices in business-to-business sales forces, focusing on management's efforts to anticipate and lead high impact change initiatives. Research outcomes include the degree and speed of change facing sales organizations, sales organization's...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Managing Sales Organization Change
17 December 2018
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations, as are the markets and customers they serve. This research reviews critical change management practices in business-to-business sales forces, focusing on management's efforts to anticipate and lead high impact change initiatives. Research outcomes include the degree and speed of change facing sales organizations, sales organization's...Read more
Webcast
Using Behavioral and Social Intelligence to Help Salespeople Succeed
13 December 2018
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Author Jason DeAmato considers behavioral and social intelligence key to sales success. In this webcast, he presents a model for categorizing buyers into one of four social styles: analytical, driving, amiable, and expressive. These styles, according to DeAmato, dictate how each individual person acts, thinks, and makes decisions. DeAmato shows...Read more
Webcast
How to Successfully Roll Out a Sales Compensation Plan for 2019
13 December 2018
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What are the secrets to rolling out a winning sales compensation plan? It's critical that the plan be easily understood and that it powerfully motivates the performance of everyone on your sales team, but there are other factors to consider as well, especially because the plan's success depends on your...Read more
Webcast
The CX Gap: the Existential Threat B2B Sales Forces Don’t See Coming
7 December 2018
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Business-to-business sales forces confront a "customer experience gap" born from the suddenly widening distance between buyers' expectations and experiences. B2B buyers now want two things they're accustomed to from consumer experiences, but that most B2B suppliers can't do simultaneously: accurate, on-demand answers addressing their unique issues, and interactions across a...Read more
This post is part two of a three-part series. In our last blog, we revealed many of the snarly situational factors that get in the way of coaching. The good news is that coaching obstacles are not insurmountable, and there are ways to improve sales performance in a meaningful, sustainable...Read more
Webcast
Quantifying the Business Impact of Sales Onboarding
14 November 2018
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Recent Sales Management Association research identifies best practices in salesperson onboarding, and quantifies the economic impact when firms effectively onboard new salespeople. Join Bob Kelly, Chairman of the SMA, who hosts a panel of thought leaders and practitioners to discuss the business case for onboarding investment. Bob and the panel...Read more
This post is part one of a three-part series. Recent research by Vantage Point and the Sales Management Association indicates that sales coaching is perceived by sales leaders to be the most important competency for sales manager training. And we agree! We believe strongly enough in this notion that we...Read more
Webcast
Enabling Salespeople for the Future by Refocusing Training Investments
13 November 2018
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Changes in buyer dynamics and market conditions have put increasing pressure on organizations to adapt and modernize their sales training programs. But what are L&D and enablement teams to do when the pace of product innovation, competitive threats, and new go-to-market strategies now require new readiness programs? Join Steven Wright,...Read more
Webcast
Challenging All Your Buyers Leads to Lost Sales
31 October 2018
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Companies need to stop believing the hype that there's only one way to sell. Top performers are not just consultative, challenging, transactional, or relationship sellers -- they are "situational" sellers who adapt their sales approach to different buying situations. In fact, 83% of customers say a salesperson's ability to adjust...Read more
Blog Post
Adoption and Integration of New Technology: The Key to Timely Agreement Administration
30 October 2018
The Sales Management Association’s latest research on studying agreement practices found that most firms take longer than expected to prepare and execute agreements. These delays are perceived as more acute from the sales organization’s point of view than from customers’ — understandable given that sellers are often more anxious to...Read more
Empowering sales reps with the tools they need to be more effective, efficient, and intelligent is paramount in creating a better customer experience. Join us to learn how companies are leveraging the simplicity, performance and embedded intelligence of SAP CPQ to increase revenue by offering the right product at the...Read more
Blog Post
Sales Enablement Function: A Necessity for Effective Training and Development
23 October 2018
The Sales Management Association recently concluded a detailed study of the state of training and development within sales organizations of 111 companies, covering over 80,000 salespeople and 15,000 sales managers. The study revealed some concerning details about the woeful state of training and development and shed some light on how...Read more
Webcast
Managing Sales in “Virtual” Environments: How Well Are Your Salespeople Getting Their Story Across?
23 October 2018
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According to a recent industry survey, 62% of sales people now conduct at least half of their meetings over the phone or online. It's clear that virtual sales calls are fast becoming the norm, but how can sales teams ensure their virtual selling efforts are as productive as in-person meetings?...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE: How to Sell New-to-the-World Products
16 October 2018
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Product or service innovation underlies many companies’ growth efforts. They invest mightily in R&D, or recruit new talent capable of generating the next big idea. These investments sour if new offerings aren’t effectively presented to buyers, and this last step in the process of commercializing innovation proves the trickiest for...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE – Managing Salespeople: Separating Madness, Myth, and Methodology
16 October 2018
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For many managers, aligning the sales force around a consistently practiced sales methodology is a top priority, and a notoriously difficult implementation challenge. Surprising new research suggests that it may also be a fool’s errand. Modern sales forces require more agile salespeople, adaptable to varied buying preferences and fast-changing customers....Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE – Case Study: Sales Force Effectiveness at GE Healthcare
16 October 2018
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GE Healthcare is the $19 billion healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE). As a leading provider of medical imaging, monitoring, biomanufacturing, and cell and gene therapy technologies, GE Healthcare enables precision health in diagnostics, therapeutics and monitoring through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services. With over 100 years of...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP: Quantifying Sales Learning Investments’ Business Impact
16 October 2018
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Sales organizations struggle to quantify sales training’s impact. As a result, learning investments are often the first area cut in a downturn, and the most difficult to secure budget for. New Sales Management Association research suggests how increased training investments can enhance sales force engagement, retention, and onboarding effectiveness in...Read more
Conference Archives
PANEL — Conducting the Symphony: Implementing a Coordinated Approach to Sales Planning
16 October 2018
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Sales planning can feel like conducting a symphony — it requires coordination, precise timing, and the integration of disparate parts into a harmonious whole. When done effectively, sales planning allows sales forces to mobilize effort at all levels of the organization and execute complex strategies. This session examines the essential...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP – Sales Process Management Clinic
16 October 2018
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Almost all sales organizations consider sales process important, but few use it effectively. This is unfortunate, because poor (or missing) process diminishes productivity, slows revenue growth, and undermines quality outcomes for salespeople and customers alike. It also hobbles management, who are less able to forecast performance, scale the organization, or...Read more
Conference Archives
CASE STUDY – Transforming Sales Operations at Winshuttle
16 October 2018
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For data solutions firm Winshuttle, sales operations is a vital function for directing and enabling a high growth sales organization in a fast-moving marketplace. Their recent efforts to transform sales ops over the past 18 months is profiled in this session. By streamlining sales operations’ planning and performance management efforts,...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP – Pipeline Management Fundamentals
16 October 2018
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Few problems are as vexing to sales management than the pipeline – the backlog of sales opportunities, at various stages of realization, that represent expected future results. Tracking, assessing, and prioritizing the opportunity pipeline is integral to managing what ultimately exits it, and becomes a realized sale. Sales Management Association’s...Read more
Conference Archives
CASE STUDY – Developing First Line Sales Managers at Schlumberger
16 October 2018
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Global oil field services leader Schlumberger operates in some of the least forgiving markets in the world, while employing 100,000 people from more than 140 nationalities. This presentation showcases Schlumberger’s efforts to build a world class first line sales management corps, capable of directing the firm’s sales efforts, adapting to...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP – Establishing a Center of Excellence for Sales Performance Management
16 October 2018
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Navigating the intricacy of enterprise-level sales operations is a challenge. Between dynamic industries, new products, and sales force turnover, there’s no end to elements that can impact your team’s effectiveness. This session presents the value of implementing a center of excellence to cut through the noise and focus your sales...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP – Improving Sales Effectiveness with High Impact Sales Coaching
16 October 2018
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Few activities are considered as important to the sales organization as sales coaching. Three-fourths of firms, in fact, consider sales coaching very important to sales force effectiveness, but despite this awareness over three-quarters of firms say they do very little, if any, coaching. Of greater concern is the quality of...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE – Sales Leadership Best Practices in Latin American Markets
16 October 2018
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Latin American markets, among the world’s fastest growing, present distinct deployment challenges to sales organizations. This session highlights key characteristics of Latin America markets, among the fastest growing in the world, and comprising 55 million consumers in the US alone. The session focuses on successful approaches to managing salespeople focused...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE PANEL – Best Practices in Salesperson Onboarding and Enablement
16 October 2018
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Sales onboarding represents a large, immediate, and under realized improvement opportunity for most sales organizations, recent Sales Management Association research has found. Modest improvements in onboarding capability reduce ramp time, increase new hire success rates, and allow managers to more confidently upgrade underperforming incumbent tales talent. In this panel we...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE – Case Study: Sales Enablement’s Role in Driving Sales Force Effectiveness
16 October 2018
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Productive sales organizations are retooling their learning and content distribution investments around an emerging discipline called sales enablement. This session features an overview of recently concluded Sales Management Association research on sales enablement practices, and a case study from a leading sales organization that made sales enablement the centerpiece of...Read more
Conference Archives
CASE STUDY – Putting Culture at the Center of a Sales Force Reorganization at Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health
16 October 2018
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After joining forces with Merial in 2017, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Animal Health sales organization doubled in size, combining a diverse set of animal health products, customers, and sales resources on a global scale. This presentation highlights the key elements of BI’s ongoing integration in the US, including its efforts to retool...Read more
Conference Archives
WORKSHOP – Building a Sustainable Sales Enablement Strategy
16 October 2018
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Sales enablement initiatives are often plagued with failure due to unclear objectives, misaligned stakeholders, or poor communication. These failures compromise the sales organization’s overall effectiveness, as sales enablement is crucial to meeting sales growth objectives. This session details a model for ensuring the sustainable success of sales enablement initiatives and...Read more
Conference Archives
KEYNOTE PANEL: Winning the Coming Channel War
16 October 2018
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The explosion of web based buying alternatives is ratcheting up channel conflict for many sales organizations. Channel conflict can quickly erode the sales force’s carefully crafted value propositions, while undermining profitable revenue growth. Worse yet, unauthorized resellers’ activities can destroy brand equity and firm reputation — generating disaffected customers and...Read more
Showpad
26 September 2018
Showpad is the leading sales enablement platform for the modern seller. Showpad’s all-in-one platform empowers sales and marketing teams to engage buyers through industry-leading training and coaching software and innovative content and engagement solutions. Using the most comprehensive data on successful sales interactions, Showpad fuels Artificial Intelligence to discover, replicate...Read more
Webcast
Quota Management: Driving Continuous Improvement
26 September 2018
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Setting quotas is a challenging process in and of itself, but an equally challenging yet often neglected aspect of quota management is the ongoing analysis and interpretation of quota effectiveness results. This webcast explores practical improvement ideas on how to regularly assess results and diagnose your need for change. Topics...Read more
Webcast
Territory Planning – Not Just for January Anymore
20 September 2018
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Leading payroll and HR provider Paychex is doubling down on its sales organization after a banner year in 2017. While most companies would simply keep the status quo, Paychex has ramped up sales hiring and is implementing a new sales territory strategy. Join Paychex, Sales Management Association, and TerrAlign as...Read more
Webcast
What Buyers Want Now: New Data & Lessons from Sales, Marketing & Customer Success Leaders
13 September 2018
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Winning sales organizations understand they must be agile when responding to changing buyer preferences. To do so successfully, they must first understand not just what buyers want from sellers, but how they prefer to buy, and the communications strategies that will drive the most effective engagement throughout the buying cycle...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Sales Operations Competencies
12 September 2018
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Sales Management Association's research on sales operations competencies focuses on skillsets and abilities important to sales operations, sales enablement, and other sales force effectiveness functions. It prioritizes competencies considered most critical by management, and suggests which competencies will be of growing future importance. Organizational staffing and recruitment practices are also...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Sales Enablement Practices
12 September 2018
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This research explores salesperson training and development practices in sales organizations, with special emphasis on the use of technology to support sales force learning initiatives. Using purpose oriented technology applications in this way is often characterized as “sales enablementâ€. Key topics encompassed in the research include identifying management priorities and...Read more
Webcast
Sales Compensation Trends and Best Practices
12 September 2018
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Gain first-hand knowledge into industry trends in sales compensation for planning and administration, based on recent survey results and 13 years of Xactly's live aggregated data. Learn the top challenges faced by compensation administration professionals, how to rate the effectiveness of your sales compensation administration process, and most important, tips...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Streamlining Agreements
10 September 2018
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Sales organizations expend considerable effort in establishing agreements. These aren’t just limited to commercial contracts, but span a broad range of other agreements, both external and internally focused, such as non-disclosure agreements, pricing exceptions, license agreements, memoranda of understanding, statements of work, and many others. The practices, processes, and tools...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Streamlining Agreements
10 September 2018
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Sales organizations expend considerable effort in establishing agreements. These aren't just limited to commercial contracts, but span a broad range of other agreements, both external and internally focused, such as non-disclosure agreements, pricing exceptions, license agreements, memoranda of understanding, statements of work, and many others. The practices, processes, and tools...Read more
Sales organizations expend considerable effort in establishing agreements. These aren’t just limited to commercial contracts, but span a broad range of other agreements, both external and internally focused, such as non-disclosure agreements, pricing exceptions, license agreements, memoranda of understanding, statements of work, and many others. The practices, processes, and tools...Read more
Adaptive Insights
10 September 2018
At Adaptive Insights, a Workday company, we’re powering a new generation of business planning. We recognize that in business, everybody plans, but traditional planning is too hard and too slow for today’s agile businesses. So, we invented the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud, which enables more than 4,000 organizations around...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Streamlining Agreements
10 September 2018
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Sales organizations spend lots of effort securing agreements - and not just customer contracts, but many other agreements such as pricing exceptions, license agreements, memoranda of understanding, non disclosure agreements, statements of work, and many others. The practices, processes, and tools sales forces use to communicate and formalize agreement -...Read more
Webcast
The Hottest Trends Driving (and Damaging) Sales Force Effectiveness
4 September 2018
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Sales organizations are change-intensive environments. They hire, fire, train, assess, retool, restructure, and even recast the fundamental strategies with which they approach their buyers. This puts an enormous burden on sales leaders to understand the disruptive factors driving such changes, so they can successfully navigate the stormy environment. Join Vantage...Read more
Many new technologies, even valuable ones, arrive in the world with more hype than substance. Over time, their value is revealed as applications proliferate and adoption ramps. But until then, it can be difficult to parse what’s truly impactful from what is simply noise. In this regard, blockchain is no...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Sales Enablement Practices
30 August 2018
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This research explores salesperson training and development practices in sales organizations, with special emphasis on the use of technology to support sales force learning initiatives. Using purpose oriented technology applications in this way is often characterized as "sales enablement". Key topics encompassed in the research include identifying management priorities and...Read more
This research explores salesperson training and development practices in sales organizations, with special emphasis on the use of technology to support sales force learning initiatives. Using purpose oriented technology applications in this way is often characterized as “sales enablement”. Key topics encompassed in the research include identifying management priorities and...Read more
High-performing sales forces operate differently today than even just a few years ago. Their management and enablement leaders are focused on four activities that differentiate them from their peers. Join us for a webcast which explores how modern sales leaders: Help salespeople have consultative, hyper-personalized buyer engagements Coach salespeople to...Read more
Webcast
Powering Right-Brain Selling and Left-Brain Management with CPQ
29 August 2018
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Sales staff need to have both analytical (left brain) and creative (right brain) skills. In this webinar, we'll discuss how you can streamline the sales process with rules-based guided selling, and how to respond to the complexities of ever-changing product configurations, regional currencies, customer-specific pricing, channel discount levels and contractual...Read more
Webcast
How Providing the Right Insights to Sales Managers Can Drive Sales Success
29 August 2018
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Does building your pipeline, committing to a forecast, transferring accounts, or making pricing decisions ever feel like blindly throwing items at a dartboard? Answering 'yes' to that is more common than we all want to admit. The reality is all of these efforts are interconnected and they need to be...Read more
Blog Post
The Innovative Legal Strategies Helping Sales Leadership Win the Channel Wars
28 August 2018
Web-based buying alternatives are ratcheting up channel conflict for many sales organizations. Warring channels erode the sales force’s carefully crafted value propositions, and undermining sales strategy and growth prospects in all aspects of the business. Technology businesses, often heavily reliant on indirect sales and distribution channels, are especially vulnerable. In...Read more
Which competencies are the most important for sales operations? Our recent research posed this question to our members, more than 100 of whom offered insights into 14 core sales ops competencies as they’re valued and practiced in their respective organizations. Sales ops’ role in the firm is sometimes the analytical...Read more
In the first part of this two part series, we focused on preparation — the critical first step in making great hiring decisions. Here we will focus on the second critical step, the interview. When you consider the ideal outcome for your interview — that you identify the best candidate...Read more
Join us for an exclusive first look at our research on sales enablement practices, focusing on technology supported sales force learning and content distribution initiatives. The research examines management priorities for salesperson learning and development, and how firms assign accountability for these initiatives among various firm functions (including sales management,...Read more
Coaching is pivotal to sales success. This is not a radical statement. If you’ve been in a sales management position for any length of time, it’s not even news. It’s now well-established that a strong coaching culture is something high-performing companies have in common. In study after study, coaching is...Read more
Technology can automate routine tasks or data analysis well. But technology alone isn’t so great at acting on those findings. Harvard Business Review recently discussed skills that aren’t automatable anytime soon. One thing I noticed when looking over this list is that all seven of these skills are characteristic of...Read more
Today's buyers are independent, informed, and demanding. They no longer look to salespeople as information providers, but as sources of insight that can improve decision making. They want to be guided, and favor those sellers who help point the way. In this webcast, we examine the emerging characteristics of the...Read more
Today’s buyers have information readily available making them independent, informed, and demanding. They now look to salespeople as sources of insight, rather than information. Highspot’s director of marketing, Shawnna Sumaoang, provides a first look at what you will learn at our webcast 26 July, Winning Over the Modern Buyer. How...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Sales Operations Competencies
17 July 2018
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Sales Management Association's research on sales operations competencies focuses on skillsets and abilities important to sales operations, sales enablement, and other sales force effectiveness functions. It prioritizes competencies considered most critical by management, and suggests which competencies will be of growing future importance. Organizational staffing and recruitment practices are also...Read more
Sales Management Association’s research on sales operations competencies focuses on skillsets and abilities important to sales operations, sales enablement, and other sales force effectiveness functions. It prioritizes competencies considered most critical by management, and suggests which competencies will be of growing future importance. Organizational staffing and recruitment practices are also...Read more
The disparity between the amount of time the average sales manager will dedicate to preparing for a customer meeting and the effort spent preparing for candidate interviews is amazing. Let’s assume a big sale is worth $250,000 to your company, and that on average a sales rep at quota is...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Salesperson Onboarding
16 July 2018
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Onboarding programs deliver learning and development resources to new salespeople in an effort to speed time-to-productivity. This study examines sales onboarding practices in business-to-business firms. Research focus areas include: Onboarding program best practices Emerging trends and metrics in onboarding approaches Onboarding program impact on time-to-productivity for new hires Effective approaches...Read more
Onboarding programs deliver learning and development resources to new salespeople in an effort to speed time-to-productivity. This study examines sales onboarding practices in business-to-business firms. Research focus areas include: Onboarding program best practices Emerging trends and metrics in onboarding approaches Onboarding program impact on time-to-productivity for new hires Effective approaches...Read more
Onboarding programs deliver learning and development resources to new salespeople in an effort to speed time-to-productivity. This study examines sales onboarding practices in business-to-business firms. Research focus areas include: Onboarding program best practices Emerging trends and metrics in onboarding approaches Onboarding program impact on time-to-productivity for new hires Effective approaches...Read more
Onboarding programs deliver learning and development resources to new salespeople in an effort to speed time-to-productivity. In recent research, we examine salesperson onboarding practices in business-to-business firms. The research focuses on emerging trends and metrics in onboarding approaches, onboarding program impact on time-to-productivity for new hires, and effective approaches for...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Sales Operations Competencies
2 July 2018
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This webcast features our first look at findings from research on sales operations competencies. The research identifies professional competencies important to sales operations, sales enablement, and other sales force effectiveness functions. It prioritizes competencies considered most critical by management, and suggests which competencies will be of growing future importance. Organizational...Read more
Webcast
Applying Business Intelligence to the Sales Organization
27 June 2018
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Decades ago, CRM's launch heralded a new era of technology enabled sales management. Its promised capabilities, at the time often oversold and under-realized, are now assumed in most organizations. Today's sales technology presents similarly transformative possibilities. However, with ever-changing trends in sales automation, sales performance, and now artificial intelligence, it's...Read more
Do you remember the last time you had to change a flat tire? (Okay, maybe you just called AAA, but let’s just imagine you’re going to address this roadside crisis on your own). Chances are, it’s been many years since you had to do this. As a result, the next...Read more
Everyone knows that dynasties develop winning cultures, but do we really understand what that means? All organizations want to win, but true dynasties create cultural imperatives around the behaviors that produce winning results. This session explores the cultural differences that allow some sales organizations to consistently outperform their competitors. Resources...Read more
Whether it’s your online shopping cart or your refrigerator, everything you interact with these days is capturing as much data as it can. Sales operations should be no different; after all, there’s plenty of internal and external data out there to gather, and practically no end to its usefulness. But...Read more
Webcast
Coaching the Situational, Just-In-Time Salesperson
13 June 2018
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The technology to enable in-the-moment, situational coaching and learning has been available for a while. The messaging, content and skills training you need to serve up in that format? Not so much... until now. Just-in-time, situational coaching and learning is now a reality that will help your salespeople rise to...Read more
The MHA Mind the Workplace study found 33% of respondents had missed work due to some form of workplace stress. That’s a sizable and troubling figure. If you work in a fast scaling business – your team will go through periods of stress at some point. Stress is a part...Read more
Blog Post
Cracking the Sales Management Code: Align Your Sales Force and Reach Your Goals
5 June 2018
Part Four of a Four Part Series This is the fourth and final installment in our series introducing research from our best-selling book Cracking the Sales Management Code. Previously we defined a framework for measuring and managing the sales force and revealed interconnections among the metrics identified. (See part 1,...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Optimizing Sales Territory Design
4 June 2018
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This research explores management practices related to territory design and optimization. It identifies how organizations assign salesperson responsibilities for prospects, customers, and geographies. The research quantifies management’s satisfaction with current approaches, emerging trends in territory planning, and best practice approaches for optimizing salesperson assignments. This PowerPoint presentation includes all analyses,...Read more
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Sales Coaching Practices
4 June 2018
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This research explores coaching practices in sales organizations. It identifies how organizations define sales coaching, and what activities and outcomes they assign to coaching initiatives. The research quantifies the prevalence and frequency of coaching activities, and management views of coaching’s importance to sales organization success. Lastly, the research identifies key...Read more
The high stakes environment of the sales industry is the reason a lot of people choose to pursue a career in sales. As any salesperson will tell you, there’s nothing quite like the buzz of successfully closing a sale. Working in sales can be a hugely fulfilling and rewarding career,...Read more
Webcast
Finding the Signal Through the Noise: Strategies to Optimize Pipelines and Improve Sales Forecast Accuracy
24 May 2018
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Today, sales leaders are often asked to make strategic decisions with incomplete or less-than-accurate information. In this environment, the challenge is to figure out which data is useful for increasing sales, and which isn't. In this webinar, our panel of experts will discuss strategies to sift through the data--to find...Read more
The hard part just got easy. Your sales team knows how to sell--that's their job, after all--but getting CEOs and other VIPs to schedule time with you is tricky enough to ground even the highest flying of your sales team. So what if that impossible-to-reach person wasn't so impossible to...Read more
Part Three of a Four Part Series In previous installments from our book Cracking the Sales Management Code (see part 1 and part 2), we shared research findings that revealed three types of sales force metrics, Sales Activities, Sales Objectives, and Business Results. We also identified five discrete sales processes...Read more
Sales territory management presents distinct challenges for many different organizations. This webcast explores industry best practices on how to strategically align and manage your territories. Topics include: Unique aspects of sales territory alignment across multiple industries Infusing territory alignment approaches with data: inputs you need for a successful planning process...Read more
Full Research Report
Full Research Report: Optimizing Sales Territory Design
20 May 2018
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This research explores management practices related to territory design and optimization. It identifies how organizations assign salesperson responsibilities for prospects, customers, and geographies. The research quantifies management’s satisfaction with current approaches, emerging trends in territory planning, and best practice approaches for optimizing salesperson assignments. This comprehensive report features all findings,...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Optimizing Sales Territory Design
20 May 2018
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This research explores management practices related to territory design and optimization. It identifies how organizations assign salesperson responsibilities for prospects, customers, and geographies. The research quantifies management’s satisfaction with current approaches, emerging trends in territory planning, and best practice approaches for optimizing salesperson assignments. This Research Brief, an abridged version...Read more
This research explores management practices related to territory design and optimization. It identifies how organizations assign salesperson responsibilities for prospects, customers, and geographies. The research quantifies management’s satisfaction with current approaches, emerging trends in territory planning, and best practice approaches for optimizing salesperson assignments.
Full Research Report
Full Research Report: Sales Coaching Practices
15 May 2018
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This research explores coaching practices in sales organizations. It identifies how organizations define sales coaching, and what activities and outcomes they assign to coaching initiatives. The research quantifies the prevalence and frequency of coaching activities, and management views of coaching’s importance to sales organization success. Lastly, the research identifies key...Read more
This research explores coaching practices in sales organizations. It identifies how organizations define sales coaching, and what activities and outcomes they assign to coaching initiatives. The research quantifies the prevalence and frequency of coaching activities, and management views of coaching’s importance to sales organization success. Lastly, the research identifies key...Read more
This research explores coaching practices in sales organizations. It identifies how organizations define sales coaching, and what activities and outcomes they assign to coaching initiatives. The research quantifies the prevalence and frequency of coaching activities, and management views of coaching’s importance to sales organization success. Lastly, the research identifies key...Read more
Here at x.ai, we make an AI that automatically schedules meetings for you. As you can imagine, we’re popular with salespeople. However, sometimes the early adopters–the first to embrace a new sales technology–need a little help getting the rest of their team on board. Why? Human beings are creatures of...Read more
Part Two of a Four Part Series In this series of blogs, we introduce research findings from our best-selling book, Cracking the Sales Management Code. In the first blog, we revealed that there are three levels of sales force metrics, as judged by their ‘manageability’: Business Results like percent revenue...Read more
How do dynasties know when they are, and are not, on the right path? They measure everything, especially things their competitors don't measure. In this session we will distinguish between the typical sales metrics and the unique set of data exceptional sales teams will be using to drive dramatically better...Read more
Technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. This research identifies how sales organizations prioritize technology’s potential benefits and quantify its return on investment (ROI). Various approaches for estimating ROI are examined, and various measures of technology impact are prioritized based on importance, accuracy, and prevalence of...Read more
TimeTrade
1 May 2018
Companion Exhibits
Companion Exhibits: Gauging Return on Sales Technology Investments
1 May 2018
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Technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. This research identifies how sales organizations prioritize technology’s potential benefits and quantify its return on investment (ROI). Various approaches for estimating ROI are examined, and various measures of technology impact are prioritized based on importance, accuracy, and prevalence of use. The research...Read more
Full Research Report
Full Research Report: Gauging Return on Sales Technology Investments
1 May 2018
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Technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. This research identifies how sales organizations prioritize technology’s potential benefits and quantify its return on investment (ROI). Various approaches for estimating ROI are examined, and various measures of technology impact are prioritized based on importance, accuracy, and prevalence of use. The research...Read more
Research Brief: Gauging Return on Sales Technology Investments
1 May 2018
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Technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. This research identifies how sales organizations prioritize technology’s potential benefits and quantify its return on investment (ROI). Various approaches for estimating ROI are examined, and various measures of technology impact are prioritized based on importance, accuracy, and prevalence of use. The research...Read more
Coaching is the most important job a manager has, yet so many sales managers fail to properly execute coaching conversations. Why are so many sales managers lacking this critical skill? It is a common practice to promote sales professionals to the role of sales manager based on the individual’s success...Read more
Blog Post
Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance
27 April 2018
Part One of a Four Part Series We’re delighted to write a four-part blog series to introduce the research findings from our best-selling book, Cracking the Sales Management Code. Ground-breaking research and insights from the book have transformed sales management thinking within global companies like GE, 3M, Tyco, and many...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Optimizing Sales Territory Design
27 April 2018
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Join us for a webcast of our latest research findings on optimizing sales territory design. Featuring input from more than 100 business-to-business sales organizations, this research explores management practices related to territory design and optimization. It identifies how organizations assign salesperson responsibilities for prospects, customers, and geographies. Research findings quantify...Read more
Nearly 500 B2B sales enablement, sales, and marketing leaders weighed in on the top priorities and biggest challenges of 2018 in Highspot's annual State of Sales Enablement survey. Join us for a live webinar and be the first to preview the results, including: How to tackle what your sales enablement...Read more
Join us for an update on our recently concluded research on sales coaching practices in sales organizations. This webcast offers a first look at research findings, focused on identifying how organizations define sales coaching, and what activities and outcomes they assign to coaching initiatives. The research also quantifies the prevalence...Read more
Dynasties always have great people... but it isn't by chance. Selecting the right people, and effectively immersing them into your process and system can pay tremendous dividends. However, many sales organizations evaluate candidates based on inappropriate characteristics or using ineffective methods. Join us to learn how to recruit and onboard...Read more
Disappointed by your sales process? New research reveals why. Companies need to stop subscribing to the hype that there's only one way to sell. Top performers are not challenging, consultative, transactional, or relationship sellers -- They are 'situational' sellers who adapt their sales approach to different buying situations. In fact,...Read more
The emergence of vast amounts of data from multiple sources, generating new information every second, has empowered buyers more than ever before. This is causing a paradigm shift in sales from being reactive to proactive, and from instinct-driven to insight and data-driven. To exceed skyrocketing expectations of its customers, modern...Read more
Webcast
No Process, No Sales Dynasty — Make Your Sales Coaching Process Superior to All Others
12 March 2018
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Building on what we learned in our second session in this series on defining the sales process, here we extend that logic to sales leaders leveraging examples from sports dynasties. In this session we discuss the critical role coaching plays in near-term and sustainable sales performance. We also provide a...Read more
To be effective, sales organizations must be aligned with company strategy and market demands. Join Goizueta Business School’s Professor of Marketing Sandy Jap, and the Sales Management Association’s Chairman Bob Kelly for a special two-day Goizueta Business School workshop: Sales Leadership and Channel Management, 13-14 March. This workshop focuses on...Read more
Webcast
Choosing the Right Sales Performance Management Solution for Your Sales Team in 2018
1 March 2018
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How can you drive increased revenue from sales performance management technology? What critical capabilities are most likely to improve your sales execution and operational efficiency? These questions deserve some discussion and guidance at the beginning of a new year. Join sales performance experts Mark Smith, CEO & Chief Research Officer...Read more
Territory and quota management are linchpins in any effective sales performance management system. In this web panel, we reviewed key concepts of sound territory and quota design, and discussed best practices related to these disciplines.
Webcast
No Process, No Sales Dynasty — Own Your Sales Process and System
19 February 2018
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Whether business or sports, dynasties have clearly defined processes for key behaviors and systems to support execution. Selling is no different but many sales teams are torn between their desire for predictability and their inclination toward creativity. In this second session in a series on building a sales dynasty we...Read more
Our research shows that sales managers consider forecasting important, and that it consumes lots of the sales force's time. But most managers consider forecasting efforts fraught with bias, and therefore unreliable; and not surprisingly, most are unsatisfied with forecasting accuracy. A dispassionate observer might reasonably ask: If forecasting is both...Read more
High quality market intelligence can significantly improve your sales team’s long-term effectiveness. But the process of gathering market intelligence is too often overlooked. This article provides a set of practical ideas for improving market intelligence, including sources of data you may not be aware of. We’ll cover: National Economic Analysis:...Read more
When it comes to sales, it’s all about the numbers, right? Quotas, pipelines, forecasts were laser focused on hitting those numbers. But is a number really enough to keep people in the game? Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick, authors of The Best Team Wins, recently analyzed the responses from more...Read more
Webcast
Research First Look: Gauging Return on Sales Technology Investments
25 January 2018
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Technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. This research identifies how sales organizations prioritize technology’s potential benefits and quantify its return on investment (ROI). Various approaches for estimating ROI are examined, and various measures of technology impact are prioritized based on importance, accuracy, and prevalence of use. The research...Read more
In sales organizations where salespeople come and go, and sales strategies change each year, often the only constant is change. But management is still expected to profitably grow revenues each year, often without additional resources or budget. In such environments, territory management serves as an essential tool for sales operations...Read more
Webcast
Building Sales Capabilities In The Digital World
25 January 2018
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68% of B2B buyers say they find going online superior to interacting with a salesperson, up from 53% just two years ago. B2B sales is a dynamic and challenging world with modern buyers wanting to purchase from modern sellers. It's time for sales organizations to step up or be left...Read more
A powerful sales performance management tool can work wonders in improving the performance of your salesforce. In my 5 years interacting with these systems, I’ve seen implementations that range from Grimm to fairy-tale. Gathering sales data and sharing reports with your team in a coordinated platform can give you insights...Read more
Dynasties consistently outperform their peers. Unfortunately, many sales organizations find themselves conflicted by their need to deliver near-term results and their desire to build a sustainable sales engine. Learn how to achieve both these objectives simultaneously in this web session.
Corporate Visions
16 January 2018
Webcast
Reducing Stalled Opportunities in the Sales Pipeline
16 January 2018
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Sales opportunities stalled due to no decision? wreak havoc on growth-focused sales forces. Over time, these stalled opportunities pile up, obscuring more actionable opportunities. Eventually, management finds these "sclerotic" pipelines of little use at all. Now new research indicates why so many opportunities fall victim to no decision, and how...Read more
Webcast
Empowering the Sales Organization with Analytics – Last In a Three Part Sales Planning Series
15 December 2017
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Sales leaders often have more data than they know what to do with. This webcast helps sales leaders sort out the metrics that matter most to driving sales force performance. The last in our three part sales planning series, this session features approaches to coordinating key performance metrics across functions...Read more
Blog Post
Behind the Scenes of the annual Sales Force Productivity Conference’s Panoramic Photo
11 December 2017
Every year at the Sales Force Productivity Conference, the Sales Management Association invites photographer Shawn McElroy to capture a group photo of the attendees. At first glance, the conference attendees appear to be seated in a line around the stage. However, the photo is actually a panoramic photograph with the...Read more
Webcast
Building a Sales Enablement Charter for 2018: Lessons from HubSpot
11 December 2017
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Running headlong into the world of sales enablement? You're not alone. According to new research from CSO Insights, 59% of organizations surveyed now have a dedicated sales enablement function, a YOY increase of more than 26%. Another 8.5% cited plans to add this function in the next 12 months. In...Read more
Webcast
Implementing Incentive Compensation Changes – Part Two of a Three Part Sales Planning Series
29 November 2017
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Though not all firms radically redesign incentive compensation plans each year, many make changes intended to drive significant behavior changes and shifts in sales force focus. This session, the second in a three part series on sales planning, details how to ensure incentive compensation plan changes align with business goals,...Read more
Webcast
Sales Forecasting Fundamentals – Part One of a Three Part Sales Planning Series
17 November 2017
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Many sales effectiveness leaders are currently focused in preparing new sales plans for the coming year. This webcast reviews the essential elements of sales forecasting, and kicks off a three part series on sales planning best practices. Topics addressed include establishing consistent practices that ensure year-round forecasting and pipeline management...Read more
Allego
9 November 2017
It’s not a new concept. Post a leader board in the office and everyone notices. No one wants to find their name at the bottom, or even worse, not make the leader board at all. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with sales reps who have worked for my clients...Read more
MindTickle
7 November 2017
Burdening the sales force with administrative responsibilities comes at a high cost. Displacing time that could be spent selling, low-value administrative tasks distract salespeople from more productive activity, and result in missed opportunity. This webcast presents practical approaches for minimizing the sales organization's administrative activities, and getting back to the...Read more
The buzz surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on sales organizations includes predictions of massive job losses and obsolescence for traditional sales roles. Are these claims over-hyping AI's potential, or do they reflect the inevitable consequence of continued technological progress? How should sales leadership anticipate a future that...Read more
Webcast
Why Your Sales Onboarding Process Is Broken & How to Fix It
25 October 2017
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Many of us are familiar with the 10,000 Hours rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers. The theory goes that for anyone to reach the tipping point of greatness, they must study or practice a specific skill for 10,000 hours. In the years since, the theory has been...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Making Sales Management Training Stick
18 October 2017
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Why do so many training initiatives have such little impact on performance? The answer, as many change management theories are quick to point out – is that training alone won’t get people to change what they do or how they do it, no matter how good, targeted, or relevant the...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Measuring Sales Force Activity: Research Based Insights
18 October 2017
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Selling activities – the essential tasks that comprise a salesperson’s job, and include things like making customer calls or generating proposals – ultimately determine salesperson productivity. But collecting sales activity data is notoriously tricky, and few firms do so effectively, leaving management with inadequate insight into root causes of performance....Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Scaling Sales Excellence at Tech Unicorn MongoDB
18 October 2017
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MongoDB's sales force has grown dramatically in the ten years since its founding in 2007. Now serving over half the Fortune 500, and more than 4,300 customers in 85 countries, the firm's sharp growth trajectory is supported with finely tuned sales effectiveness solutions. This session outlines MongoDB's five pillars of...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote Panel – Building a High Performing Sales Operations Function
18 October 2017
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High performing sales operations functions focus on a strategic charter, while efficiently executing tactical responsibilities. This panel discussion showcases leading practitioners’ approaches for staffing, planning, and executing core sales operations responsibilities. Panelists will discuss a range of topics including enabling technology, establishing strategic objectives, and assessing departmental effectiveness.
Conference Archives
Keynote Panel – The Four Salesmen of the Apocalypse: Automation, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Autonomous Workers
18 October 2017
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In the Book of Revelation, four horsemen (Death, Famine, War, and Conquest) open a can of world-ending whoop ass before the last judgment. Four forces are similarly positioned as harbingers of the sales force’s demise. They are automation, marketing, artificial intelligence, and crowdsourcing. Pundits would have us believe these technologies...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – New Trends in Sales Performance Management
18 October 2017
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Progressive firms are doing more with sales performance management (SPM) tools, which in the past often focused on incentive compensation management. Using metrics to model various territories, balance resources, and predict outcomes; implementing rewards systems that are aligned with corporate objectives and sales strategies; and offering mentoring to the sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Research on World Class Sales Practices: Actionable Insights for Sales Leaders
18 October 2017
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In this session, Seleste Lunsford shares data from the just-released 2017 World-Class Sales Practices Study. In its 20th year, CSO Insights’ study combines historical perspective with fresh, unique insights, while focusing on the most critical organizational practices that produce the greatest lift in results. The session offers actionable insights for...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Location Data: Sales Analytics’ Force Multiplier
18 October 2017
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Innovations in analytics, mobility, and applications are redefining what’s possible for sales organizations. Among these advancements is the use of geospatial and location data. By integrating location information into applications like CRM, firms are dramatically improving their sales team’s spatial insights into lead intelligence, customer data, and market opportunity. In...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Reengineering Sales Methodology at Siemens
17 October 2017
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Faced with fundamental shifts in the healthcare industry, Siemens’ healthcare business is undergoing a dramatic redesign. Rebranded Siemens Heathineers, and now managed separately as a company-within-the-company, the firm is applying its long history of engineering expertise to its healthcare division’s sales organization. In this presentation, Margaret Piekarski, Siemens’ Senior Director...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel – Taking the Babble Out of Sales Enablement
17 October 2017
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Heard of “sales enablement?” It’s a term cooked up by technology vendors a decade or so ago, hoping to add sizzle to content management solutions – platforms that distribute marketing content to, and through, sales forces. Distributing content might not be the sales force’s most urgent issue to solve, but...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Territory Optimization: A Critical Component to Manheim’s Sales Strategy Evolution
17 October 2017
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As North America’s leading provider of vehicle remarketing services, Manheim connects buyers and sellers to an extensive wholesale vehicle marketplace and auction network. Its 18,000 employees enable Manheim to register about 8 million used vehicles per year, facilitate transactions representing nearly $57 billion in value, and generate annual revenues of...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Transforming Sales through Centers of Excellence at VMware
17 October 2017
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Challenged with doubling its annual revenues from US$6 billion to US$12 billion in five years, VMware is retooling to better deliver sustained high growth. In this presentation, VMware’s Vice President of Global Operations provides an in-progress look at this transformative initiative, focusing on the firm’s efforts to drive sales force...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Salesperson Development Tools at 3M
17 October 2017
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Impacting salespeople’s skill development is challenging, especially in large, distributed sales forces. This session reveals 3M’s successful experience developing its Consumer Business Group sales force using an integrated set of learning tools. The session features a hands-on review of specific 3M tools, discusses learning process and tool design best practices,...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study – Sales Time Well Spent: New Improvements in Activity Analytics
17 October 2017
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Sales executives with even moderately large, distributed salesforces rely on data to help them understand which activities and behaviors lead to the best outcomes. Yet much of the information that sales executives rely upon today, such as CRM reporting tools and time studies, is based on self-reported data. Even with...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote – Building an Agile Sales Organization: Moving Beyond the "How To" Mindset
17 October 2017
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In this informative and provocative session, Michelle Vazzana and Leff Bonney will examine the conventional wisdom that is stifling the sales force. They will share powerful, yet surprising new research from both Florida State University and Vantage Point Performance representing hundreds of sales teams. The findings they provide will challenge...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Sales Management’s Role in Shaping Company Culture
17 October 2017
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Company culture can significantly affect salesperson engagement, satisfaction, and retention. And the sales force’s perception of company culture can be heavily influenced by the first line sales manager, and their frequent, direct interactions with salespeople. In this session presenters from two different firms with strong cultures discuss company culture’s impact...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Sales Leadership’s Guide to Strategic Partnering
17 October 2017
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Strategic partnerships and key account relationships are fundamental to pie-expansion and synergies, but many fall short of their potential. This session explains how to improve the odds by demystifying how business relationships develop and should be managed, while focusing on the practical how to concepts for handling the strategic account...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Retooling the Sales Force for the Digital Age
17 October 2017
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Few question technology’s pervasive impact on selling and the sales profession. Yet many firms are not adequately positioning their sales organizations for optimal performance in the digital age. This session examines the relationship of digital technology and the sales function, while offering specific strategies for leadership to fully leverage technology’s...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel – Assessing Return on Sales Technology Investments
17 October 2017
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Sales technology is a growing and increasingly strategic investment for sales forces. Quantifying technology’s business impact is a challenge for organizations evaluating potential investments, or assessing installed platforms. This session draws upon recent Sales Management Association research on technology ROI calculation practices, and their prioritized importance, accuracy, and prevalence of...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – Sales Performance Warning Signs – and What To Do About Them
17 October 2017
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Is your “check sales engine” light blinking? Asking a sales manager how the quarter is going typically results in a quick response regarding pipeline, plus the status of a few key deals. This barely scratches the surface of sales performance, and makes forecasting nothing more than a gut check. Sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop – The Three Conversations of Effective Sales Coaching
17 October 2017
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Employees are looking for regular feedback, authentic connections and a more collaborative relationship with their managers. As a result, coaching is getting a lot of attention as a way to unlock this connection and boost employee performance. But while it seems that everyone knows and talks about the importance of...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote Panel – Flipping the Sales Force: New Models for Sales Force Learning
17 October 2017
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Bad teachers and bad salespeople share a similar defect: rather than engage with their audience, they lecture them into glazed stupor. In education, progressive teachers are rethinking that approach with a new paradigm called the “flipped classroom;” it has a lot to offer sales organizations similarly interested in improving both...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote – Accelerating Growth Through Faster Knowledge Sharing at Nuveen
17 October 2017
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In this session, Nuveen’s Joy Crenshaw, managing director and head of sales development, shares how Nuveen is arming its sales force with timely, salient insights from internal thought leaders and peers in the field. Employing an agile, sales-centric approach, Nuveen uses mobile-enabled video sharing to put learning in the sales...Read more
Thank you for purchasing the 2017 Sales Force Productivity Conference Digital Archive. Below are links to each session in the digital archive. Each session's link includes audio or video as well as any Powerpoint files used in the session. Enjoy! Are you interested in purchasing full access to the 2017...Read more
ZS Associates
15 October 2017
ZS Associates?is one of the world’s largest business services firms specializing in transforming sales and marketing from an art to a science. We help clients gain market share at lower cost. We do so by creating data-driven strategies that they can implement rapidly and by taking on sales and marketing...Read more
Vantage Point Performance
15 October 2017
VantagePoint is the only agile sales performance company delivering diagnostic-based training and consulting solutions — all grounded in the latest academic-led, agile sales research. The VantagePoint proprietary Agile Sales & Coaching Platform includes an agile diagnostic that identifies the behaviors and unique situations your sales managers and salespeople face in...Read more
University of Houston
15 October 2017
The University of Houston’s?Sales Excellence Institute?(SEI) strives to be the leading global network for sales research and education. Part of U. of H.s C.T. Bauer School of Business, SEI is sponsored by over 25 corporations including 3M, State Farm, Ecolab, Liberty Mutual, Edward Jones and many others. SEI blends a...Read more
MapAnything TerrAlign
15 October 2017
MapAnything TerrAlign is a leading provider of solutions geared towards Sales Resource Optimization (SRO). Simply stated, this is getting the most out of the sales force you have. Successful companies often are particularly proficient at achieving more with less. MapAnything TerrAlign, through its software and consulting services, transforms sales forces...Read more
Salesforce
15 October 2017
Founded in 1999,?Salesforce?is the #1 CRM platform and the clear leader in sales, service, marketing and cloud platforms. Salesforce pioneered the shift to cloud, social, mobile and connected devices, and with this next generation of technology, its customers?are connecting with their customers in entirely new ways. With Salesforce’s four product...Read more
Qstream
15 October 2017
Qstream is a sales capabilities platform that combines performance analytics, coaching optimization and knowledge reinforcement in a powerfully simple mobile enterprise solution. Driven by science and data, Qstream is used daily by top companies in life sciences, technology and financial services (Pfizer,Linkedin and Mastercard) to optimize sales team performance at...Read more
Optymyze
15 October 2017
Optymyze helps companies improve sales force and sales operations performance with its award-winning enterprise cloud applications and business process management services. Optymyze Sales Performance Management helps companies align sales goals and compensation; efficiently execute sales strategies; drive greater sales results, faster; and gain visibility into sales performance. With Optymyze Sales...Read more
Integrity Solutions
15 October 2017
Integrity Solutions?develops the hidden potential in your team.We help our clients win more customers, keep more customers, and grow profitable revenue. We help organizations align attitudes and beliefs around a customer-focused strategy so they can increase sales, strengthen customer relationships, maximize productivity, and retain the best talent. Our values- and...Read more
IBM Cognos Sales Performance Management
15 October 2017
Varicent, an IBM Company, delivers Incentive Compensation and Sales Performance Management solutions to high performing companies across several industries. The solution is used across the enterprise by finance, sales, human resources and IT departments to streamline administrative processes, reduce errors, maximize efficiencies and drive improved sales performance. Companies rely on...Read more
Highspot
15 October 2017
Highspot helps sales teams increase conversion rates and generate more revenue faster. From sales content management to pitching and analytics, the Highspot platform delivers enterprise-ready features and platform integrations in a modern design that sales reps love. Using Highspot, sales teams are able to stay connected to the best-performing content...Read more
Florida State University Sales Institute
15 October 2017
Florida State University’s Sales Institute is among the largest US academic sales programs, with three?full-time faculty members and over 500 students participating in one or more sales courses each semester.?It is one of only two Tier 1 research universities in the nation that has a sales program and offers PhDs...Read more
DePaul University
15 October 2017
DePaul University’s Center for Sales Leadership was founded in April 2003 with a grant from 3M Corporation, and has since grown into one of the largest ?and best centers for sales management education. Drawing from a sizable and diverse student body, and a faculty with deep business expertise, the Center’s...Read more
DocuSign
15 October 2017
DocuSign? is changing how business gets done by empowering more than 250,000 companies and 100 million users in 188 countries to sign, send and manage documents anytime, anywhere, on any device, with confidence. DocuSign replaces printing, faxing, scanning and overnighting documents with the easiest, fastest, most trusted way to make...Read more
CallidusCloud
15 October 2017
Callidus Software (NASDAQ: CALD) helps clients consistently deliver sales results. Callidus’ Sales Performance Management (SPM) software applications and servicesmanage the entire sales life-cycle from sales on-boarding and accreditation, to deployment and communication, to incentives and rewards, to talent development. Companies use SPM solutions to optimize investments in sales planning and...Read more
Aon Hewitt
15 October 2017
Aon Hewitt is one of the world’s leading HR consulting and outsourcing companies, with offices in more than 30 countries. Hewitt’s Sales Effectiveness practice helps the world’s most effective sales organizations optimize sales organization design, talent management, performance and rewards, and sales performance improvement. Aon Hewitt’s?Sales Effectiveness Practice?works with complex...Read more
beqom
15 October 2017
beqom enables you to take control of your sales performance and deliver on strategy with the only adaptable Sales Performance Management (SPM) cloud platform built for the enterprise. beqom scales and adapts to your needs without compromise, with a “flexibility in a framework” approach that supports your unique data model...Read more
Webcast
Sales Operations’ Impact on Sales Talent Management
6 October 2017
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Smart sales organizations capitalize on every available opportunities to improve sales talent management. One often under recognized contributor is sales operations. Sales ops departments contribute mightily to salesperson effectiveness, job satisfaction, and sense of engagement. This webcast explores approaches for maximizing salesperson success and satisfaction through sales operations' contributions.
Each year at the Sales Force Productivity Conference we feature cross-industry practitioners discussing their best ideas. This year’s sessions include speakers from 3M, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Automotive, Google, Gulfstream, Microsoft, Nuveen, Siemens, Thomson Reuters, VMware, x.ai, Xerox, and many more. We’ve curated sessions focused on real-word practices, led by...Read more
We want actionable information, not data challenges. In the age of big data how can sales leaders avoid being caught up in information overload? Having access to so much information can sometimes feel as if we re swimming in it. As a sales leader, you want to make the most...Read more
We invite you to attend the seventh annual Sales Force Productivity Conference, taking place October 16-18 in Atlanta, Georgia at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead. This is the premiere education and networking event for sales leadership, sales operations, and sales effectiveness professionals. The Sales Force Productivity conference is unique in its focus...Read more
Organizations usually look to increase revenue, but often lack clear action plans for achieving their growth objectives. This webcast examines three sources of revenue growth -- acquisitive growth, market growth, and organic revenue growth -- while suggesting analysis techniques that help management diagnose growth impediments, identify actionable priorities, and quantify...Read more
Webcast
Transform Your Sales Onboarding to Drive Better Outcomes
11 September 2017
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No matter the size of your sales team, the turnover you experience or the solutions you provide, onboarding new people can be an enormous challenge. Studies indicate the longer the time to achieve quota, the less likely someone is to succeed in their sales role. But how do you onboard...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Manager Training Tactics
1 September 2017
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As a follow-on study to last year’s research on sales manager training, this first look research review webcast takes a more detailed look at the specific topic, tactics, and priorities given to sales management training initiatives. It benchmarks firms’ investments in manager training, as well as specific approaches used...Read more
Last year Symantec acquired Blue Coat, defining its position as an innovative cybersecurity leader. At the time, Blue Coat was scaling rapidly with revenue exceeding $750 million. Chris Fulmer was a part of BlueCoat's sales enablement team as it scaled and is now Director of Sales Enablement for Symantec. In...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Measuring Sales Force Activity
10 August 2017
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Salesperson activity is an important indicator of organizational productivity and effectiveness, but presents significant data collection challenges. Join us during this first look webinar as we investigate how sales organizations account for salesperson activity, and the nature of the insights they gain through such efforts. Topics addressed include the nature...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Sales Performance Management Priorities
8 August 2017
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This research examines sales organizations' sales performance management (SPM) practices. SPM, as popularized by sales technology solution providers, has come to refer to a portfolio of planning and resource allocation activities. These are sales budgeting, performance forecasting, territory design, salesperson deployment, quota allocation, and incentive compensation management. Our study identifies...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Performance Management Priorities
4 August 2017
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Join us for a first look at the recently concluded research where we examine practices associated with sales performance management (SPM) in sales organizations. The practices include approaches to sales planning, performance forecasting, territory design, resource deployment, quota assignments, and incentive compensation management. The research will identify which elements of...Read more
Productive sales forces make sales process improvement a core competency. Most do so without comprehensively reengineering their sales process. Instead, they find incremental improvement opportunities, test new approaches, and frequently assess results. Over time, these changes accrue as substantial benefits, and include increased selling time, higher quality sales outcomes, and...Read more
Webcast
Your Customer Service Training is Sabotaging Your Sales Training
24 July 2017
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Twenty years ago, it took a relatively long time to build a bad reputation. Today, with the megaphone of social media, it can happen in seconds. And when it does, all the good will your salespeople have worked so hard to build up will be wasted. Without a consistent...Read more
For many organizations, sales forecasting is a massive exercise in futility. No matter the approach, it always seems to consume a tremendous amount of energy and produce a dubious result. It doesn't have to be this way! During this session, attendees learn a simple, new approach that will forever change...Read more
You’ve heard the saying: “The only constant in life is change.” In the world of sales compensation, that couldn’t be more true. In fact, change tends to be on hyper-drive. Technology, globalization, regulations, and demographic changes are dramatically impacting the way companies make money, go to market, sell products, and...Read more
Webcast
Building for Growth — Creating a Successful Model of Future Sales Compensation
20 July 2017
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As companies move through the growth curve towards maturity, selling strategies need to change. During this period, legacy sales compensation plans and processes often struggle to keep up. This can create misalignment between the tactics needed for growth and the motivation of the sales force. This webinar describes the top...Read more
In the age of Snapchat and YouTube, today’s sales professionals live on their mobile devices to connect, collaborate and learn. Considering people process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, and that adding visuals increases information retention 5.5x, it’s critical that modern sales teams incorporate video into their sales learning strategy....Read more
According to a recent study from Sales Management Association, "organizations consider less than one out of five new sales hires added over the past 24 months to be successful." If you are a sales leader, meeting quota may seem daunting. As we rapidly approach the middle of the calendar year...Read more
Webcast
The Missing Link in Your Coaching Initiative — The Head Coach
29 June 2017
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Many sales organizations recognize the tremendous value effective coaching can add to their other sales initiatives. Unfortunately, most coaching programs produce little change in the behavior of sales managers. Why is this, and what can you do to ensure your coaching initiative doesn't suffer a similar fate? Join us for...Read more
Webcast
When Challengers Fail – Refocusing Sales Efforts to Keep and Grow Customers
26 June 2017
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What happens when a salesperson accustomed to challenging the status quo becomes the status quo? Like the dog that catches the car its chased, or a gadfly unexpectedly elevated to political power (to wit: our current US political drama), those best at upending the present may offer dubious value in...Read more
Webcast
Transform Sales by Leveraging Sales Operations as a Service
8 May 2017
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Are your incentive compensation plans driving the right behaviors? Do you have the information you need to effectively plan your territories and quotas? Do you lack essential skills in your sales operations function? Sales Operations as a service is an approach that can address a growing sales operations function's challenges....Read more
Webcast
Sales Enablement: Making the Pain Worth the Gain
27 April 2017
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According to the latest Sales Enablement Optimization Study from CSO Insights, the research division of Miller Heiman Group, the percentage of organizations that have a Sales Enablement function has grown by 69 percent since 2013, while only 1/3 of organizations have met or exceeded their Sales Enablement outcomes in the...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Enabling Indirect Sales Channels
24 April 2017
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This research investigates tactics used by firms in support of indirect sales channels ? the salespeople, agencies, affiliates, and networks engaged (but not directly employed) by sellers. Special focus is given to indirect salesperson effectiveness, and how selling firms can affect it with investments in content, technology, and training.
Research Brief
Research Brief: Sales Analytics Capabilities
21 April 2017
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This research examines how sales organizations turn data into management ready insights. Doing so often involves aligning the efforts of two distinct populations: managers who must make decisions, and analytics support professionals. This latter group has access to data, but not always an understanding of how best to investigate them...Read more
This webcast summarizes findings from recently concluded Sales Management Association research on sales organization's analytics capabilities. The research explores how sales analytics are currently used to support sales leadership decision making; it identifies gaps between sales management needs and routinely available reporting output, and explores emerging analytics capabilities such as...Read more
Webcast
Driving Sales Enablement Adoption and Engagement
17 April 2017
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This webcast focuses on deploying sales enablement technology. Addressing best practices in content mapping, training, and platform adoption it will equip sales enablement leaders with practical frameworks and actionable ideas for driving platform success.
Webcast
Forecast Accuracy: Five Best Practices in Sales Analytics and Planning
10 April 2017
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Sales forecast accuracy is especially challenging in business-to-business organizations, and is frequently cited as sales operations? most important improvement priority. Join this web panel as we discuss five areas essential to effective sales forecasting, as supported by recent research from Ventana Research.
Research Brief
Research Brief: Salesperson Learning Preferences
10 April 2017
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This research investigates the range of training and development practices utilized by sales organizations. These practices are rapidly evolving in response to emerging technology and the quickening pace of change in sales job content and learning objectives. This study illuminates which approaches yield the best results for sales forces, and...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Salesperson Learning Preferences
6 April 2017
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Join us for a first look at a recently concluded research on how salespeople prefer to learn, and the effectiveness of various learning delivery approaches. This webcast examines training modalities such as in-the-field coaching, online courses, and classroom instruction, as well as more specific communication media such as web, print,...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Salesperson Retention and Turnover
3 April 2017
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Sales positions are notoriously tricky to recruit for, and high performing salespeople challenging to retain. Join us for a first look at recently concluded research as we investigate sales force practices in hiring, onboarding, and retaining key performers. It identifies root causes of salesperson churn, methods used by organizations to...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Salesperson Retention and Turnover
31 March 2017
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This research investigates sales force practices in hiring, onboarding, and retaining key performers. It identifies root causes of salesperson churn, methods used by organizations to retain salespeople, and the impact of these strategies on sales force and firm results.
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Force Attitudes Towards Forecasting
30 March 2017
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Our recent research reveals surprising differences in how sales managers and salespeople view forecasting. In this web-based video panel, we explore what these differences and their impact on forecasting effectiveness. Join two practitioners and Vantage Point Performance’s Jason Jordan for a fascinating look at an infrequently considered but critical influence...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Salesperson Development Priorities
29 March 2017
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Two questions underlie every firm's efforts to build a successful sales force: What qualities make salespeople successful?? and How do we develop these qualities?? This research identifies how organizations answer these two fundamental questions. Most importantly, it investigates the alignment between management's priorities (suggested by the first question), and the...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Salesperson Development Priorities
24 March 2017
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Join us for a first look at recently concluded research on how firms develop salespeople, the value sales leaders place on specific salesperson characteristics, and how well actual sales training and development activities align with those values. The research defines how companies answer the question, What makes an effective salesperson?...Read more
Process discipline characterizes the approach many productive sales organization take to managing selling activity, but those same firms often neglect to treat sales manager activities with the same rigor. This webcast makes the case for establishing sales management process, while detailing how successful firms implement effective management process.
Sales enablement leaders map content investments to crucial buyer/seller interactions. A comprehensive “content map” helps promote cross-organizational endorsement and aligned objectives. This webcast reviews best practices for taking stock of available content, prioritizing needs, and positioning content where sales and marketing teams can make the most of it, while developing...Read more
Webcast
Data-Driven Sales Coaching: Using Analytics to Boost Your Team’s Performance
16 March 2017
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Sales coaching is widely acknowledged as a high value productivity investment, a view reinforced by Sales Management Association research. Yet few sales forces have impactful coaching programs due in part to the challenges of effectively allocated management's limited coaching bandwidth. This webcast focuses on how technology enabled analytics can focus...Read more
Webcast
Harnessing Mobile Video to Certify Learning Outcomes
14 March 2017
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Sales organizations invest mightily in salesperson training. But these investments are often ineffective, in large part because desired outcomes are not observed, validated, and certified. This webcast explains how mobile video can address these challenges, transforming conventional training approaches and dramatically improving training outcomes. Topics addressed include: Shortening ramp time...Read more
Webcast
Calculating the ROI of Your Sales Enablement Programs
9 March 2017
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What if not just what? you sell, but how? you sell is your most compelling competitive advantage? To answer that question (and many more?) an increasing number of companies are investing in sales enablement talent and technology as a means to increase team productivity, improve competitiveness, and ultimately, grow revenue....Read more
The New Year is an excellent time to reexamine the sales enablement initiatives. This webcast reviews how to craft a coherent sales enablement strategy around practical objectives for 2017, focusing on foundational ideas relevant to firms just starting their enablement journey, as well as best practice approaches for optimizing existing...Read more
Sales organizations have always invested in their most important customers, by providing customized solutions, dedicated personnel, and other resources. More recently, firms are adopting these high-touch approaches to broader customer segments, using enabling technology and anemerging discipline known as “Account-Based Marketing (ABM)”. Account-Based Selling (ABS) describes how sales forces execute...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Enabling Indirect Sales Channels
23 February 2017
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This webcast features a first look at recent research on sales channel enablement. The research examines support tactics for indirect sales channels -- salespeople, agencies, affiliates, and networks engaged (but not directly employed) by vendor firms. Special focus is given to indirect salesperson effectiveness, and how selling firms can affect...Read more
TM: Analytical Foundations (exposure draft)
8 February 2017
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Research Brief
Research Brief: Investments in Salesperson Skill Development
25 January 2017
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations. With each new shift in market demand or buyer preference, sales organizations may change sales messaging, sales performance expectations, or job descriptions; in some cases, firms may even recast fundamental assumptions of how their salespeople deliver value to customers. Managing through this kind of change...Read more
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Series Webcast 5: Aligning HR and Sales with Effective Sales Targets
23 January 2017
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Our five-part sales performance management series continues with a session on targets and incentives. Setting sales targets and performance incentives are complex sales management challenges. Leadership must balance the need to incentivize while minimizing over-payment risk. This webcast offers frameworks and best practices for establishing effective sales objectives and incentives.
With a strong enough pipeline, sales teams can consistently hit their numbers. Where should sales leaders invest to ensure a healthy and sustainable pipeline? In this webcast, we help make sense of the dizzying array of pipeline investment alternatives, such as sales development roles, sales communication platforms, and account-based marketing...Read more
Research Brief
Research Brief: Managing Sales Compensation
5 January 2017
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Sales compensation overshadows other sales-related expenses, and at times dominates the sales organization's attention. Firms? ability to design, adapt, administer, and communicate their sales compensation programs is therefore a significant management concern. This research examines current sales compensation management practice, quantifies factors differentiating high and low performing firms in this...Read more
Focus areas for this research include: Identifying how sales operations function drive efficiency in core responsibilities like reporting. Measure the ideal and actual focus on strategic issues by sales operations departments. Cataloging emerging and innovative practices contributing to sales operations' success in balancing tactical and strategic responsibilities. Sales operations staffing...Read more
Webcast
Case Study: Simplifying Sales Process with Workflows at Siemens
19 December 2016
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Using workflow automation to simplify selling effort and increase efficiency, Siemens realized improvements in customer satisfaction and well as productivity. Join us as Siemens shares there experience with sales workflows and details best practices for automating sales process.
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Series Webcast 4: Motivating the Right Behavior with Incentive Compensation
15 December 2016
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Every sales manager needs to strike the right balance between recognizing top performers and incentivizing strong sales growth all while ensuring the incentive compensation plan is fair, competitive, and profitable for the business. With the complexity of sales commission structures, there is no single right answer for how to set...Read more
Webcast
PNC Bank Case Study: How a Single Dashboard Transformed Sales Management
14 December 2016
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PNC Bank's Lending Business Intelligence team radically reconfigured the management reports it provided sales leadership, streamlining insights into a single, powerful dashboard. In this webcast, they'll review three techniques critical to their efforts, and will demonstrate the Tableau reporting tools used to transform their reporting environment.
Webcast
Improving Sales Growth With Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
14 December 2016
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Improving cross-selling and up-selling existing customers can dramatically impact overall sales growth, and represents highly actionable and profitable opportunity for most sales forces. This webcast explores how aligning sales efforts with customer success can improve cross-selling and up-selling success while also keeping your customers happy.
Learn how Tableau uses data to create a culture of accountability and foster a data-driven sales organization that routinely hits targets. Watch sales representatives explain what data drives their behaviors and even see the dashboards that they use most. Learn how to leverage data visualization within your sales organization to...Read more
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Series Webcast 3: Creating a Comprehensive Approach to Sales Forecasting
7 December 2016
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Our five-part sales performance management series continues with a webcast on sales forecasting. Sales forecasting is an essential sales planning activity, but is too often characterized by guesswork, gamesmanship, and missed targets. This webinar focuses on ways sales leaders can drive transparency and accuracy in the context of a comprehensive...Read more
Webcast
Enabling Advanced Pricing Analytics at United Rentals
6 December 2016
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United Rentals has 5000+ contractual agreements with its largest and most valuable customers. These agreements are primarily maintained by the sales team of 2000+ sales professionals who utilize Salesforce.com as the primary CRM platform. In addition to Salesforce.com the sales team is also heavily dependent on internal data that is...Read more
Webcast
Beyond the Numbers: Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Salesperson Capability in Assigning Territories and Quotas
2 December 2016
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Territory and quota setting should be based on more than just financial measures of customer potential, or the market demographics of a certain geography. While these are important, best practice firms also consider the performance capability of salespeople and their available capacity. In this webcast, Sales Globe's Mark Donnolo makes...Read more
Webcast
Transforming Your Mid-Tier Sales Team into Top Performers
18 November 2016
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According to recent studies, ROI in training quadruples from 22% to 88% when reinforced with in-field coaching. Yet, 50% of reps are stuck in the middle, never graduating to top level performers. Erik Charles, vice president of product marketing at Xactly, talks through how to motivate and create a top...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Sales Force Attitudes on Forecasting
17 November 2016
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Sometimes we ask our members, who are sales effectiveness leaders and senior sales leaders, to name their most vexing challenges. A topic that always comes up? Sales forecasting. It's easy to see why. In many leaders' opinions, forecasting is undertaken with uncertain objectives, requires lots of effort, is fraught with...Read more
Sales operations functions serve a vital, strategic role in sales organizations, frequently engineering large scale change initiatives in sales coverage models, or comprehensive incentive plan revisions, or launching new offerings. Along the way, they must also respond to the sales organization's day-to-day tactical support requirements--like reporting, territory alignment, or compensation...Read more
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Series Webcast 2: Transitioning From Spreadsheet-Based Territory Management and Sales Capacity Plan
10 November 2016
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Our five-part sales performance management fundamentals series continues with a session on sales territory planning. Planning sales territories is, in theory, simple: put the right salespeople on the right accounts with the right targets. In practice, however, it requires consolidating disparate data sets while actively collaborating with frontline sales--two things...Read more
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Series Webinar 1: Account Segmentation and Scoring
8 November 2016
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We kickoff a five-part series on sales performance management fundamentals with a webcast on account segmentation and lead scoring by Rowan Tonkin from Anaplan and Tony Yeung from ZS Associates. This topic focuses on aligning sales coverage with marketing strategy, and touches on account reassignments, an often problematic issue that...Read more
Blog Post
Thanks for Making Sales Force Productivity Conference 2016 a Huge Success!
7 November 2016
SFPC 2016 is in the books and we re already looking forward to SFPC 2017. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the great moments that came out of this year’s conference. We had 300 registered delegates with...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Built to Scale: Creating a Consistent Value Message Across Red Hat’s Global Sales Team
26 October 2016
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With 2,000+ globally-dispersed salespeople and an expanding product line, Red Hat must manage daunting communication challenges. Chief among these: making sure each seller effectively communicates Red Hat's value to customers and prospects. Doing so requires salespeople to absorb and retain critical business information essential to driving performance. Red Hat has...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote Panel: Big Data = Big Changes?
26 October 2016
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We hear a lot about big data a buzz phrase popular among many organizations and sales leaders. Because of the hype, leadership often discounts big data's near-term impact. However, ignoring big data now may cause organizations to miss big opportunities in the long-term. Join ZS's Arun Shastri for a comprehensive...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Five Steps to Optimizing Inside Sales
26 October 2016
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Drawing on best practices and emerging trends, this workshop focuses on how to optimize inside sales for your particular organization. Topics include: Aligning to your company's go-to-market strategy What type(s) of inside sales teams are required Processes and definitions that should be established early Key metrics, tools and templates to...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Thawing the Sales Force’s Frozen Middle
26 October 2016
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The value of top-performing salespeople is easy to understand. But managers may too often underestimate the value of middle performers -- those solid citizens whose numbers are less stellar, but who may have an unrealized reservoir of potential. Unlocking this potential can be the secret to predictable, long-term growth, and...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: The Future of Sales Compensation
26 October 2016
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Sales compensation programs were built by, and for, Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers. But newer generations--like Millennials (born after 1977) and Gen 2020 (born after 1997)--will soon represent the majority of sales workers. Their needs, interests, and motivations are different than their predecessors; yet few firms seem to be adapting...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel: No Buyer Left Behind: Designing Territories to Engage Every Opportunity
26 October 2016
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How do firms optimize existing resources when facing deployment decisions such as: How many sales reps do we need? Who should call on which accounts/prospects? and How do we design territories maximize the resources we have? This expert panel discusses specific ways to address these challenges, and fields audience questions...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: The ROI on Sales Force Effectiveness Initiatives
26 October 2016
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As the largest expense on many firms? operating statement, the sales force attracts plenty of management scrutiny and frequent assessment of its ROI. This session considers how sales organizations attempt to improve sales force effectiveness through various initiatives, how they measure success, and how ROI should be determined for such...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Sales Talent Assessment: When, Where, and Why You Should Use a Structured Approach
26 October 2016
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“Will” and “skill:” two ingredients essential for a successful salesperson. Innovations over the past decade help managers drive and measure “will,”but fewer tools offer insight into “skill.” Often sales candidate selection is left to inexperienced field sales managers poorly-equipped to assess talent or hire effectively. This workshop details a business...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel: Developing Rock Star Sales Managers
25 October 2016
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Most of our sales managers were once rock star salespeople. Then they got promoted. Then the music stopped. How do we take those former stars and get them rocking once again as world-class sales managers? Join a hand-picked panel of sales enablement rock stars as share how the built high...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study: Elevating Sales Effectiveness at Oracle: A Journey in Building a High Performance Sales Team
25 October 2016
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For Oracle, the sales game had changed, and management needed to remake its performance culture. Presented by Oracle sales leader TJ Pomian, this presentation reveals how Oracle utilized analytics, innovative coaching techniques, and new incentives to strengthen the firm's competitive advantage. Integrating mobile, automation, and gaming technologies, Oracle's revamped sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study: Raising Front-Line Managers’ Sales Coaching Proficiency at Dun & Bradstreet
25 October 2016
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Dun & Bradstreet implemented a front-line sales leader initiative over the past year. After educating sales managers on coaching, D&B measured and tracked managers' coaching performance. This session describes the firm's experience, as shared by the initiative's catalyst, Wayne Silverman, vice president, technology market. Wayne and sales effectiveness consultant Everett...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study: Kowa Pharmaceuticals America: Outsourcing Sales Operations
25 October 2016
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Kowa's 2008 entry into the US market helped realize the Japanese company's vision of a global pharmaceutical organization. Focused in cardiometabolic therapeutics, Kowa encountered challenges common to fast-growing sales forces in complex selling environments. Chief among these was establishing a sales operations function capable of enabling a productive, effective sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote Panel: Getting CRM Right: Three Stories from the Front Lines
25 October 2016
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CRM's promised benefits have tantalized and tormented sales organizations for two decades, but few firms have realized CRM's full potential. Now innovative companies are turning the tide, and improving the value they receive from CRM investments. In this session, Vantage Point Performance's Jason Jordan facilitates a lively discussion with three...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Sales Coaching Program Essentials: Enablement and Accountability
25 October 2016
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Research shows sales coaching produces more effective sales teams. And, it tells us that sales leadership considers coaching among the most important places for managers to focus. But maddeningly, research also reveals that most coaching initiatives fall flat, and little manager time is spent in meaningful coaching interactions. How can...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Cultivating a Performance Based Culture in the Sales Organization
25 October 2016
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Join Lindsay McGregor, co-author of New York Times bestselling book, Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation, for an informative session on how sales organizations can transform their cultures. In this session, Lindsay demystifies the counterintuitive science of high-performing culture, and...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel: Scaling the High Growth Sales Force
25 October 2016
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As management problems go, it's a good one to have. How do you exponentially grow a sales force--fast? Early decisions can have dramatic effects on a high-growth sales organization's future ability to scale, remain flexible to changing circumstances, and achieve high levels of productivity. This panel discussion addresses how successful...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel: Redefining Sales Operations’ Charter
25 October 2016
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Sales operations' charter cuts a wide swath in many organizations; its efforts span strategic, tactical, and administrative responsibilities. The most successful sales operations departments narrow their focus on core strategic imperatives, while efficiently executing tactical responsibilities. This session draws on Sales Management Association research and expert insight into how high-performing...Read more
Conference Archives
Panel: A Sales Force Built to Learn: Refocusing Training on Continuous Development
25 October 2016
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations. With each new shift in market demand or buyer preference, sales organizations may change sales messaging, sales performance expectations and job descriptions; in some cases, firms may even recast fundamental assumptions of how their salespeople deliver value to customers. Managing through this kind of change...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study: Assessing Sales Managers’ Ability to Lead Sales Transformation at Iron Mountain
25 October 2016
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In transforming its sales organization, Iron Mountain knows sales managers must lead the way. Success depends upon managers' ability to identify salesperson strengths and gaps; effectively coach; and apply critical thinking skills to how they approach their accounts and opportunities. To focus on these three competencies, Iron Mountain has created...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Transformation Case Study: Realigning Enterprise Sales at ADP
25 October 2016
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ADP's large enterprise sales group faced transformational change among buyers; to adapt, it embarked on its own transformation. Presented by two senior sales operations leaders who lead the initiative, this session details ADP's comprehensive realignment of its enterprise segment's competency profiles, deployment model, objectives, talent management, and incentive compensation. An...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: How Sales Forces Launch Products New-to-the-World
25 October 2016
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While organic growth is the top strategic priority of many CEOs, few firms conduct even rudimentary due diligence on the sales organization's ability to launch new products. Even fewer may be aware that launching new products--especially innovations truly new-to-the-world--requires a counterintuitive set of approaches sometimes at odds with selling a...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Solving the Sales Methodology Puzzle
25 October 2016
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Most sales organizations believe in the value of a defined selling methodology. But when it comes to selecting a specific methodology, consensus can be hard to come by. Consultative selling, insight selling, challenge selling; the list of alternatives the list goes on and on. How should a sales leader select...Read more
We all know the struggle. The CRM report comes out and you stare at it, willing it to easily give you the information you need to cultivate leads and foster higher performance in your sales reps. Here, Jason Jordan, Partner at Vantage Point Performance, tells us how to avoid the...Read more
Blog Post
Your Incentives Plan May Be Bringing Down Your Revenue: An Interview with Lindsay McGregor
20 October 2016
It’s a reality we’re all facing as more and more millennials enter the workforce: commissions and bonuses are no longer a sales reps’ biggest motivator. In some situations, your incentive plan may actually be hurting your company’s revenue. Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi have conducted extensive research, questioning thousands of...Read more
Webcast
From Boss to Coach: Turning Great Sales Managers into Great Coaches
19 October 2016
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Success in sales isn't based solely on following a set of mechanical, process-driven rules. It begins within the head and heart of the salesperson. Unfortunately, few managers are well equipped to understand a salesperson's internal drivers/barriers, much less have a meaningful discussion about them. Sales leaders end up ignoring the...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Investment in Salesperson Skill Development
13 October 2016
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Sales forces are change-intensive organizations. With each new shift in market demand or buyer preference, sales organizations may change sales messaging, sales performance expectations and job descriptions; in some cases, firms may even recast fundamental assumptions of how their salespeople deliver value to customers. Managing through this kind of change...Read more
With a digital sales playbook, salespeople can easily find the right messaging and content, in context, right when they need it. In this session we provided a framework on how to take your existing sales messaging and content, link it to each sales process stage, and ensure its effective delivery...Read more
Webcast
Five Signs You Need to Graduate from Sales Effectiveness
28 September 2016
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You make your number sporadically, but not consistently, and not always. Your revenue goal is very hard to make, and may be unrealistic. What distinguishes top growth executives from their peers is they have graduated beyond sales effectiveness. They have embraced a new emerging best practice called the Revenue Growth...Read more
Channel partners are difficult to reach, and competition for channel mindshare intense. Reaching channel sellers with messaging, training, and marketing collateral is essential to enabling a productive channel. In this webcast, we reviewed key elements of effective channel enablement strategy and practical initiatives for maximizing access, coaching, and engagement with...Read more
Webcast
The Cost of a Bad Sales Manager (…US$3.5 million)
15 September 2016
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We all recognize that sales managers play a key role in the sales force. Great managers elevate the performance of their entire team, and everybody knows it. Sellers want to work for them, other managers envy them, and senior executives want more of them. But what about poor-performing sales managers?...Read more
Sales compensation dwarfs other sales-related expenses, and commands plenty of the sales organization's energy and attention. Firms' ability to design, adapt, administer, and communicate their sales compensation plans is therefore a significant management concern. This webcast presented initial findings from recently-concluded Sales Management Association research on Managing Sales Compensation. The...Read more
Should you take the risk and promote your top-performing salesperson to manager? The stakes are high. You’re not only going to lose a great player on the field, you’re also making a bet that their outstanding current performance will translate into this new role. The debate over whether the...Read more
Webcast
How to Map Sales Enablement with the Buyer’s Journey
25 August 2016
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High-performing sales leaders know that the buyers now drive the sales process, and sales teams trained to navigate the buyer journey can close more deals and build stronger relationships. During this live webcast, Octiv chief marketing officer Brad Gillespie and GameTime VP of Marketing & Product Development, Fred Wiechmann, discussed...Read more
Webcast
Sales Talent Assessment: When, Where, and Why You Should be Utilizing a Structured Approach
11 August 2016
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Will and skill: two ingredients essential for a successful salesperson. Innovations over the past decade help managers drive and measure will, but fewer tools offer insight into skill. Often sales candidate selection is left to inexperienced field sales managers poorly-equipped to assess talent or hire effectively. In this webcast, we...Read more
Webcast
Sales Development: An Emerging Selling Role Driving Sales Productivity
3 August 2016
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High-growth technology firms are abuzz with sales development? ? a specialized sales role focused in prospecting. Sales development reps (SDRs) concentrate on lead development, outbound prospecting, and moving prospects through the earlier stages of the sales funnel, before handing them off to others in the sales force. SDRs are widely...Read more
In crew, coxswains don’t row the boat, but they use their intelligence to help the boat run more efficiently. They steer the boat straight, keep everyone on rhythm, and correct any technical errors. Much like the coxswain, a sales operations manager might not sell themselves. Rather, they enable the sales...Read more
Sales forces spend countless hours installing new sales processes and training salespeople to execute them. But despite these investments, most fail to reach adoption levels sufficient to make the new sales methodology stick. The reality is that successful sales transformation requires both short-term and long-term steps that engage and align...Read more
Webcast
Sales Messaging: Managing Quality, Consistency, and Effectiveness
12 July 2016
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Sales organizations with predictable, profitable revenue growth are defined by consistency in process, messaging, and execution. This webcast focused on how high performing firms establish consistent practices in these three areas. Using case study examples and best practice management approaches, presenters detailed how to develop effective sales messages, link them...Read more
Within the world of employee compensation and total rewards, I can’t think of a more ‘target-rich’ environment than the area of sales compensation. The fact that general salary growth has been relatively flat for all employees over the past several years, just places more of a spotlight on the importance...Read more
When it comes to sales compensation, managers realize two things early on. The first thing is that paying salespeople accurately, and on time, is vitally important. The second, realized not long after the first, is that they're going to need to change their sales compensation programs sooner or later. And...Read more
Webcast
The Art and Science of Proposal Content Management
29 June 2016
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In any given year, a proposal manager can be responsible for impacting tens to hundreds of millions in business via sales proposals. But what makes a good proposal? What does great look like? RFP responses and unsolicited sales proposals are critical elements in driving business, yet often are considered administrative...Read more
Less than effective sales compensation programs suffer from poor design decisions. Powerful and aligned sales compensation plans subscribe to a set of market tested building codes. Use these best-of-breed principles to build effective sales compensation plans that are simple, easily to understand and reward the right results. Join Kevin Gray,...Read more
The best performing companies know that it's buyers who now control the B-to-B sales process. That's why it's more important than ever for companies to craft personalize buyer journeys using a mix of prospect data, reliable information sources and meaningful interaction with the right decision-makers and influencers. The result is...Read more
Upgrading the sales force? Your first stop should be first-line sales managers. No single role in the firm has a bigger impact on sales performance. Join us for an expert web panel exploring how firms are meeting manager development challenges. Panelists will also address audience-submitted questions. Drawing from our recent...Read more
Webcast
13 “Must Know” Management Approaches for Sales Leaders
3 June 2016
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Talent, compensation, CRM, enablement- there are many priorities competing for the attention of today's sales leader. Join us to take a look at 13 key dimensions of a sales ecosystem, and how to prioritize when they all seem important to a successful sales transformation. Our customers are changing the way...Read more
Join us for our latest research insights on assessing sales tools. Over the past two decades, technology-driven innovation has profoundly changed selling and sales organizations. PCs and smart mobile devices are now essential selling tools; CRM platforms are virtually ubiquitous; and new applications appear daily to help automate, enhance, or...Read more
Webcast
Enhancing Sales Operations’ Role as the Sales Force’s Change Agent
26 May 2016
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Sales operations functions serve a vital, strategic role in sales organizations – as change agents. Increasingly, sales organizations must restructure deployment models, rethink selling roles and messages, and wring greater efficiency out of existing resources. Sales operations departments are uniquely positioned to drive these efforts. But supporting strategic sales changes...Read more
Webcast
Reassigning Sales Territories: A Change Will Do Your Sales Force Good
19 May 2016
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Many sales forces grew large and successful with a hands-off approach -- one that might have included hiring good salespeople, putting them on commission plans, handing them a phone book and turning them loose. If they were good, they made lots of money. If not, they starved themselves out of...Read more
This blog has focused recently on the new realities facing B2B sales organizations as buyers take increasing advantage of more information, analysis tools, and online feedback from fellow buyers. Indeed, sales teams have ceded much of the power that traditionally enabled them to enter into the sales funnel and control...Read more
As sales managers, it’s our job to drive sales performance. The question is: what actions, specifically, should we take to do that? Recently, the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research undertook a major study to determine what those actions should be. The results were fascinating, especially as they relate to...Read more
Over the past two decades, technology-driven innovation has profoundly changed selling and sales organizations. PCs and smart mobile devices are now essential selling tools; CRM platforms are virtually ubiquitous; and new applications appear daily to help automate, enhance, or speed up how salespeople sell. This research examines how business-to-business firms...Read more
Technology is transforming how sales organizations sell, but also how they're managed. Among technology's greatest potential management benefits relates to coaching salespeople -- an activity under-prioritized and poorly supported in most firms. This webcast explores multiple technologies that amplify, automate, and enhance management's coaching efforts. Our expert panel will present...Read more
Webcast
Indecent Proposals: How Your Proposals Undermine Sales (and How to Fix Them)
21 April 2016
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In many companies, proposals are not effective as they could be. In some, proposals may actually turn business away. For a variety of reasons, sales organizations often overlook the importance of well crafted, effectively presented proposals. As a result, a vital sales tool goes under optimized. In this webcast we...Read more
Fairness matters to salespeople. Research conducted by University of Houston professor Mike Ahearne proved that eliminating overachievement rates and capping payout in the sales comp plan will result in reduced revenue. Even some studies and research in the animal kingdom can be used to better understand salesperson behavior. One study...Read more
Webcast
Re-boarding the Sales Force: Leveraging Onboarding Principles to Keep Seasoned Salespeople Sharp
8 April 2016
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Enlightened sales organizations invest in salesperson "onboarding" - a structured effort to speed new salespeople up the learning curve. As our recent research shows, successful onboarding dramatically impacts salesperson productivity and new hire success rates. A newly emerging idea attempts to leverage this approach for veteran salespeople too. Called "re-boarding,"...Read more
Sales organizations demand a daunting breadth of planning expertise: from prioritizing high-level objectives to align with firm strategy, to allocating limited resources to adequately cover opportunities, to establishing tactical performance goals at multiple levels within the organization, and, along the way, coordinating input from many corporate functions, on behalf of...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Assessment of Sales Opportunities
5 April 2016
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Accurately assessing opportunity is an essential competency for sales organizations. It underpins critical resource allocation decisions, such as how and where to deploy salespeople, and it determines how essential work is prioritized within the sales force. Opportunity assessment involves a continuum of activities, from identifying and qualifying leads, to sizing...Read more
This research focuses on how business-to-business firms support sales manager development through training. It surveys the training practices in use, the training topics and managerial competencies deemed important, the effectiveness of various training approaches, and management’s priorities in improving training efforts. The research attempts to benchmark firm investment in sales...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Hiring Top Sales Management Talent
4 April 2016
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Sales managers play a vital role in high-performing sales organizations; sourcing and developing effective managers is therefore critical to any firm fielding a sales force. It’s a challenge approached in two ways: sourcing talent from outside the firm, or developing internal talent – usually salespeople promoted into their first management...Read more
Webcast
Solving Sales Operations Biggest Challenges in 2016
24 March 2016
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Sales operations leaders play a crucial role in translating firm objectives into actionable sales force plans and programs and ultimately achieving sales growth. In fact, recent research from the SMA shows that sales operations' responsibilities are expanding, and that sales operations departments face increasing pressure to deliver both strategic and...Read more
Webcast
Improving the Sales Organization’s Change Readiness
15 March 2016
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As markets and buyer preferences change, so too must the sales organizations that serve them. Sales forces slow to adapt compete at a disadvantage to faster-moving competitors. This webcast examines capabilities essential for sales forces in dynamic markets, including: Optimizing coverage Aligning account assignments Managing sales capacity (i.e. recruitment, hiring,...Read more
Webcast
Coaching Hacks for High Velocity Sales Organizations
14 March 2016
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Salespeople often say they'd like more coaching from leadership. But faced with so many other priorities, sales management often puts coaching on the back burner -- with costly ramifications. Inadequate coaching diminishes firm performance, salesperson job satisfaction, and sales force productivity, while contributing to salesperson turnover. In this web based...Read more
Webcast
Managing the Sales Organization through Mergers and Acquisitions
10 March 2016
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M&A activity is running at all-time highs, surpassing 4.5 trillion dollars in 2015. Cheap financing and the need to grow quickly helped drive this trend. Yet more than half of these transactions fail to deliver on promised returns. Optimizing the combined sales organizations resulting from corporate combinations remains a top...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Assessment of Sales Opportunities
1 March 2016
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Join us for our latest research insights on Assessment of Sales Opportunities. This initiative investigates how accurate sales predictions are and what can be done to improve them. To best allocate resources and effort, sales management assesses opportunities in the pipeline. Bias can cause the sales force to overestimate or...Read more
Webcast
The Future of Sales Compensation: Peering into the Crystal Ball
26 February 2016
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Do you know where the future of sales comp is going? Attend this webinar to find out. Join Steve Marley and Chad Albrecht, principals at ZS Associates and authors of the upcoming book The Future of Sales Compensation. The authors share their vision for the direction of the sales compensation...Read more
Join us for our latest research insights on sales manager training. The ROI for sales manager training is driven by higher productivity and better retention. In this research initiative we are identifying sales manager training practices in business-to-business firms, and the development activities considered most effective for sales managers. This...Read more
Coaching salespeople improves their performance, and drives improved firm sales growth. Few managers would contest this assertion, and research, including our own, shows that firms investing in sales coaching outperform their peers. Nevertheless, coaching is inconsistently practiced, poorly delivered, and woefully supported by most firms. This webcast explores how emerging...Read more
Webcast
Three Milestones for the Learning Sales Organization
11 February 2016
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Building a "learning sales organization" - a sales force that values continuous development, responds quickly to market changes, and adapts to changing priorities - doesn't happen overnight. It requires a careful capability building, and significant culture change for many organizations. This webcast reveals how high-performing sales forces make learning a...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Leading the Social Sales Force
11 February 2016
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Join us for our latest research insights on leading the social sales force. Social media is among the many technologies refashioning business-to-business buying and selling. Social selling -- the systematic use of social media to enable salespeople -- offers promise to sales organizations looking for new approaches to reaching and...Read more
Join us for our latest research insights on Sales Planning Practices. Sales planning allows sales organizations to align with business strategy, organize resources, and prioritize action plans. Planning required of sales management encompasses a wide range of disciplines, from forecasting and budgeting to establishing objectives at multiple organizational levels. This...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Content Investments and Sales Effectiveness
1 February 2016
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Sales and marketing organizations make a wide range of investments in content, collateral, presentation aides, and other tools to support effective selling. This research provides a survey of these various investments, quantifies their effectiveness, and identifies management’s best strategies for provisioning them. Additional questions addressed relate to sales organizations’ preferences...Read more
Sales organizations allocate investments across a varied portfolio of growth opportunities. Given finite resources, sales management’s challenge is to calibrate these investments (in personnel, technology, collateral, tools) such that profitable firm sales are optimized. These sorts of decisions are myriad in even the simplest organization; they include explicit investments made...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Hiring Top Sales Management Talent
28 January 2016
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Join us for our latest research insights on hiring top sales management talent. High performing firms find attracting effective sales management talent is a critical success factor. In this webcast, we provided a preliminary look at research findings before we finalize results in a comprehensive report. Joining us as a...Read more
Webcast
Five Places Sales Operations is Focusing for Productivity
28 January 2016
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Sales operations has a broad charter in most organizations, and their efforts often span both strategic and tactical issues. The most successful sales operations departments are finding success in a few essential areas, highlighted in this webcast from MHI Research Institute's Tom Chamberlain. Drawing on MHI Research Institute's extensive research,...Read more
Webcast
The Hybrid Sales Channel, Bridging the Gap Between Direct and Indirect Sales
22 January 2016
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End customers are changing how they buy. As a result, they create a market mandate for vendors to change the way they sell, and to reflect an "outside-in" approach to structuring sales coverage, all the way down to the direct territory and partner sales rep level. In this webcast Rich...Read more
Join us for our latest research insights on the path to profitable growth. Sales organizations allocate investments (resources, people, technology, collateral, tools) across a portfolio of growth opportunities. Driving growth from new customers is different than developing revenue from existing customers in terms of cadence, messaging, process, selling costs, marginal...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Performance Data’s Impact on Manager Decision Quality
19 January 2016
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In this webcast, we provide a preliminary look at research findings, before we finalize results in a comprehensive report. Joining us will be Evan Randall, VP of Sales Operations at Tableau Software who will comment on research implications and participate in audience discussion. Research focus areas: Surveying current practices in...Read more
In this session we'll look at how you can use data from Salesforce.com, embedded right into Tableau, to empower your entire sales force with information that can help them be more productive. This session will cover: Use cases in marketing, sales, and customer support for embedding analytics in Salesforce. The...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Content Investments and Sales Effectiveness
29 December 2015
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Join us for our latest research insights on content investments and sales effectiveness. Sales and marketing organizations make a wide range of investments in content, collateral, presentation aides, and other tools to support effective selling. This research provides a survey of these various investments, quantifies their effectiveness, and identifies management’s...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Sales Performance Data’s Impact on Manager Decision Quality
29 December 2015
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Performance data are essential to managing sales organizations; without accurate data, management’s decision-making effectiveness is crippled. This research examines when, where, and how managers consume performance data, and quantifies performance information’s impact on management decision-making. The research also explores how sales organizations support management’s effective use of performance data. It...Read more
Join us with a panel of experts as we explore 2016 sales predictions: what will happen, who will be affected, and why potential changes may be important.
The term “sales operations” describes a set of activities that support sales force efficiency and effectiveness. The Sales Management Association’s recently completed research into sales operations’ practices, challenges, priorities, and emerging trends reveals new insight into this emerging corporate function. This research found that sales operations departments are most...Read more
How happy are you with the accuracy of your company’s sales forecasts? If you are like most sales leaders, you may feel that there is a little room for improvement. Or, if we are being completely honest, maybe a lot of room for improvement. In a survey of 52 companies,...Read more
Our research shows that companies spent A LOT of time managing their sales pipelines -- several hours per sales rep, per month, in fact. Yet a minority of those same companies believe they are effective at the task. Inconsistent practices, poor quality deals, low close rates, little coaching -- Sound...Read more
This study continues the Sales Management Association’s inquiry into sales operations’ practices, challenges, priorities, and emerging trends. This study is conducted to provide data and practice benchmarks for members of the association, many of whom are sales operations practitioners. The term “sales operations” is used to describe a...Read more
Although sales coaching’s importance and impact is widely acknowledged, coaching initiatives remain poorly supported in most sales organizations. Time and resource intensive, management’s coaching focus is too easily diminished by competing priorities, inconsistent practice, and ineffective delivery. Organizations’ efforts to support coaching are therefore essential to maintaining managers’ coaching focus,...Read more
Webcast
How Concur Created a Data-Driven Sales Culture
12 November 2015
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How do you satisfy a data-hungry fast-paced sales force, while maintaining accuracy and confidence? How do you efficiently provide sales leadership with high-level insights while also accommodating requests for customized inquiries, and quick drill-down capabilities? How can you best utilize the power of self-service reporting to provide actionable and accurate...Read more
Webcast
Content Automation Trends: Is Your Sales Content Keeping Pace?
9 November 2015
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As buyers demand more and better insights from supplier partners, the importance of content-based sales and marketing approaches has intensified. This webcast reveals emerging practices in sales organizations' use of content, and trends defining how effective organizations realize return on content investments. Based on Qvidian's first edition of the Content...Read more
Blog Post
The Death of the Sales Funnel: A New Reality for Sales Organizations (Part 2)
5 November 2015
In part 1 we shared how greater access to information has fundamentally changed the way B2B customers buy products and services. As buyers take more control of their purchasing journey, they seem to enter and exit the sales pipeline at various points in the buying process. This essentially renders the...Read more
Sales teams are learning to shape the sales process to follow the buyers journey. Along the way, many organizations realize their sales and marketing efforts are poorly aligned not only to buyers' expectations, but poorly aligned with one another. Exposing these gaps is the first step toward closing them. This...Read more
We’ve been hearing for years now about how sales motions are becoming more complex, personalized and completely dictated by the customer. A new study by CSO Insights highlights this further by sharing that rising customer expectations combined with a complex and constantly changing selling world are driving the need for...Read more
Webcast
Making More Than the Number: a Navigational Approach to Sales Forecasting
29 October 2015
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Sales forecasting should establish more than the number that represents the sales force's commitment. It should also deliver an inventory of known risks, contingent plans for course correction, a prioritized set of tactical objectives, and a road map of potential management coaching opportunities. Most firms realize few of these additional...Read more
Coaching is time and resource intensive. Done right it can create a big impact. However, without the right organizational support,coaching’s impact can be easily undermined by competing priorities,inconsistent practice, and ineffective delivery. This webinar takes a first look at insights on how business-to-business sales organizations support coaching initiatives. This includes...Read more
Webcast
Learn-ablement, a New Approach to Sales Training
22 October 2015
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In this webcast, SPI's Directors of Learning and Enablement will present a new approach for effective sales training that merges these previously disparate management practices into one unified -- and more effective -- way to train and enable sales professionals. Along with improved retention, sales leaders are now more effectively...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Transforming the Sales Function at hibu: Enabling Change with Analytics
15 October 2015
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Transitioning its business from print publications (like yellow page directories) to digital media, hibu is executing a sales force transformation as significant as any attempted. With a database of 13 million business, served by more than 1,100 salespeople, hibu has led a comprehensive reorganization of its customer segmentation, go-to-market strategy,...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Putting Sales People in Front of Decision-Makers: How Great Sales Organizations Make It Happen
15 October 2015
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Executive-level decision makers are adept at repelling salespeople. It's a skill borne of necessity. Most salespeople arrive ill-prepared, waste time in meetings, and add little value as potential suppliers. But there are exceptions... In fact, a few salespeople have no trouble at all connecting with decision-makers. These salespeople run meetings...Read more
Sales managers are evolving just as the organizations they lead are also changing. New sales leaders need skills different than those of an earlier generation – skills essential for interpreting new data, leveraging technology, and aligning their organizations with shifting customer and market requirements. And as before, they're also expected...Read more
Historically, global companies have made significant investments in sales training on an annual basis, and in many cases invested in enablement “playbooks” for daily process and methodology application. While the two activities are typically linked conceptually, they have traditionally been two separate offerings – with training for each occurring independently. ...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Five Places Sales Operations is Focusing for Productivity
14 October 2015
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Sales operations has a broad charter in most organizations, and their efforts often span both strategic and tactical issues. The most successful sales operations departments are finding success in a few essential areas, highlighted in this keynote presentation from MHI Research Institute’s Tom Chamberlain. Drawing on MHI Research Institute’s extensive...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Not All Proposals End in Marriage
14 October 2015
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A great proposal won’t win you the business on its own, but a poor proposal can undo a lot of the hard work up to that point, or even leave you standing alone at the altar. To help you end in more happily-ever-afters, this session will examine the role of...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Segmentation and Specialization: Putting Them Together for Sales Productivity
14 October 2015
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There have been many stories in the press recently about the challenges associated with organic revenue growth. China’s growth is slowing and the price of oil has brought several markets to a halt, but our research shows that there are additional issues in play. Many companies are not getting the...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Balancing Sales Territories: How DocuSign Assesses, Aligns, and Optimizes Territories
14 October 2015
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Faced with shifting sales territories, a growing sales force, and exploding demand, DocuSign’s sales territories were a deployment challenge of no small consequence. Using an array of supporting technologies, DocuSign’s implemented a territory management approach that optimizes sales coverage, balances workload, and tames administrative complexity. In this presentation, DocuSign’s Manager...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Insights into Sales Operations Practices
14 October 2015
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This session delves into the Sales Management Association’s inquiry into emerging practices, challenges, and trends related to sales operations. We define “sales operations” as a corporate function focused on sales force effectiveness. Many firms, however, use different names for this function. Common variations include sales effectiveness or sales excellence, commercial...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Aligning Internal Functions with the Sales Force
14 October 2015
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Customer experiences don’t begin and end with the sales call. They span a continuum of interactions, involving multiple functions and touch points. If these are poorly coordinated with selling activities, firms miss vital opportunities to impact their success with customers and prospects. This session presents frameworks for integrating other functions,...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Sales Analytics Truths, Myths and Realities
13 October 2015
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The escalating role of sales analytics in driving business growth and strategic advantage is both an opportunity and a threat for today’s sales and marketing executives. Big data, technology advances, and advances in sales analytic techniques are fueling a new generation of fact-based decision making, and leading to significant increases...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Improving Pipeline Management: A Case Study
13 October 2015
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Research conducted with the Sales Management Association shows that companies spent A LOT of time managing their sales pipelines. Several hours per sales rep each month, in fact. Yet a minority of those same companies believe they are effective at the task. Inconsistent practices, poor quality deals, low close rates,...Read more
Conference Archives
Best Practice Research on High Performing Sales Organizations
13 October 2015
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MHI Research Institute’s Joe Galvin presents findings from MHI’s recent research on sales organization best practices. Now in its 12th year, the MHI Sales Best Practices Study captures and measures the behaviors, attributes and performance of World-Class Sales Performers, providing a foundation for benchmarking organizations against World-Class Sales Performers and...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Interpreting Sales Data to Change Behavior
13 October 2015
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Since CRM systems gained a foothold many years ago, sales organizations’ appetite for data has increased exponentially. Most organizations now collect far more information than they know what to do with. These sales forces are no longer asking “What are salespeople or customers doing?” but “What does this information mean?”...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Why CRM Fails… and What to Do About It
13 October 2015
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You’ve invested significant time and money in your CRM system, yet the ROI is difficult to find. You’ve trained and re-trained your sales force, yet your user adoption still suffers. You’ve done everything you know to do… So what now Join Tom Disantis from Vantage Point as he delves into...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Implementing Effective Coaching Programs
13 October 2015
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The evidence is overwhelming; better coaching produces more effective sales teams. But how do you implement an effective coaching initiative and how do you measure the impact? In this session Ray Bonis, Sales Effectiveness Leader at CommScope and Bob Sanders, CEO at AXIOM share practical insights about CommScope's coaching initiative....Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Managing the Social Sales Force
13 October 2015
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Technology has forever changed how buyers buy. Web-enabled and hyper-informed, they’re identifying suppliers, researching solutions, and evaluating alternatives – all things that used to require a salesperson’s help. Sales forces that have adapted to this and embraced social media have thrived. Social selling is leveling the playing field for these...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Uncover Hidden Insights in Your Sales Compensation Data
13 October 2015
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Sales compensation programs are a treasure trove of data. The best companies know that it's important to make optimal use of such information - but it hasn't always been easy. This session will explore how new developments in natural language-based cognitive computing promise to help your compensation team see non-obvious...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Big Data for Sales – Taking Analytics from Insights to Action
13 October 2015
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Machine learning techniques, marrying big data and analytics, offer the potential to transform sales and marketing targeting, helping focus activity on the most attractive opportunities for cross-sell, up-sell and new customer acquisition. With the right approach, sales process enablement, and monitoring, insights derived with machine learning can be an engine...Read more
Conference Archives
Workshop: Sales Enablement Done Right
13 October 2015
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Companies want top-line growth, but typically don’t invest enough in those closest to the ground to truly affect it: Sales, the “frontline face” of your brand to your customers. Most look at equipping the sales force with the tools and assets they need to be successful as a fractional part...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Research Insights on B2B Sales Planning Practices
13 October 2015
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Sales planning allows sales organizations to align with business strategy, organize resources, and prioritize action plans. Sales managers’ planning efforts must encompass a wide range of disciplines, from forecasting and budgeting to establishing objectives at multiple organizational levels. This presentation details findings from a recently concluded Sales Management Association research...Read more
"Sales operations" is the corporate function focused on sales force effectiveness. This webcast offers the first look at our recently-concluded research on sales operations' emerging practices, challenges, and trends. The research reveals core practices among sales operations departments, identifies leadership's most important sales ops priorities for the coming year, and...Read more
Webcast
Implementing Sales Process: Informatica Case Study
25 September 2015
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Disciplined processes are the hallmark of highly-productive sales organizations. But salespeople don't follow sales process guidelines unless they're effectively implemented and well supported. This webcast details Informatica's experience implementing a new sales methodology and their successful efforts to drive sales process adoption. Presented by Informatica's Julie Rhodes, Director of Sales...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Leading the Social Sales Force
2 September 2015
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Social media can be used by companies and their sales organizations for an array of purposes, from strategic (building brand image) to tactical (generating leads) to organizational support (identifying job candidates). Whether gathering information on markets and competitors or sharing information on products and promotions, social media expand a company's...Read more
Webcast
Enabling the Complex Sale: JDA Software Case Study
31 August 2015
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Complex sales take longer, involve more sophisticated solutions, and demand more highly-tuned support resources than typical sales. This complexity can easily overwhelm sales enablement initiatives intended to improve sales rep effectiveness. This webcast describes JDA Software's highly successful approach to taming sales process clutter at JDA Software, the leading supplier...Read more
Webcast
Selling to Customers Who Keep You at Arm’s Length: Relationship Strategies that Work
28 August 2015
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Building customer relationships is increasingly difficult for salespeople. Face time with buyers is dwindling, while the rise of electronic auctions, RFPs, managed procurement, and third-party buying influences make it tougher than ever to demonstrate value and differentiate offerings. In this panel discussion, we examine strategies for building valuable customer relationships,...Read more
Your sales team has an end goal in sight quotabut do they know how to get there? It is a long way from prospecting a new account to making a final sale. There are lots of twists, turns and decisions sellers have to make along the way to closing a...Read more
Webcast
Research-Based Sales Forecasting Practices Proven to Improve Accuracy
7 August 2015
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Every company forecasts revenue, but few are happy with the results. Despite highly-focused effort and attention, most sales forecasts are frustratingly inaccurate. So how can this critical activity be improved to yield better outcomes? Join best-selling author Jason Jordan as he shares findings from a joint research project with the...Read more
With the recent quarter close, sales leaders are preparing reports on last quarter's wins, forecasting next quarter's outcomes, and identifying gaps to solve for this quarter. This webcast addresses common forecasting challenges, focusing on how leaders can fine tune forecasting strategy, and better align metrics and selling activities to improve...Read more
Webcast
Sales Forecasting: Ten Practical Ideas for Improving Usefulness and Accuracy
21 July 2015
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Sales forecasting yields insufficient insight to many sales leaders, yet few firms know where to start in building better forecasting practices. In this Sales Management Association web panel, three experts present a series of practical ideas for improving forecast accuracy and enhancing the insights it offers sales leadership.
Research
Research Brief: Benchmarking Sales Manager Activity
16 July 2015
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Sales managers have an outsized-impact on sales force productivity. That impact is shaped by decisions sales managers make in allocating their time. We wondered, are organizations optimizing sales management’s time allocation decisions? The Sales Management Association undertook a research effort to answer that question in our recently-concluded sales manager activity...Read more
Top-performing sales professionals understand that securing a sale isn’t the end goal. These professionals have a longer view of the customer experience and know that a sale is but a step in a much longer journey. For newer sales reps, or those in high-churn industries, it is easy to think...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Measuring Sales Manager Performance
8 July 2015
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Sales managers crucially influence overall sales force performance. How do firms ensure managers are measured on the most impactful metrics? Results from our recent survey explores how firms define and measure the effectiveness of their first-line sales managers (FLSMs). Specifically, we examine: What tools and processes are used to define,...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Benchmarking Sales Manager Activity
7 July 2015
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Sales managers have an outsized-impact on sales force productivity. That impact is shaped by decisions sales managers make in allocating their time. We wondered, Are organizations optimizing sales management’s time allocation decisions? The Sales Management Association undertook a research effort to answer that question in our recently-concluded sales manager activity...Read more
Webcast
Talent Analytics: The Sales Leader’s New Competitive Edge
26 June 2015
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Sales leaders are confronted by a continuing challenge -- low sales productivity. Too few reps are making quota (down from 63% to 58.2% according to CSO Insights) and it takes too long for new reps to become a productive member of the team (69% of reps take 7+ months to...Read more
Webcast
Reuniting Sales and Finance: The Real Power Couple
25 June 2015
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Enterprise Performance Management was supposed to be for the Enterprise. What happened? Finance people are on a constantly moving hamster wheel of planning, closing, reporting, and analyzing data to ensure profitability and revenue goals are met. As soon as the month/quarter/year ends, the cycle starts once again. Although we've improved...Read more
Change happens. And in today's business environment, it happens more quickly than ever. With the globe connected by technology, world economies feel interlocked, the lines often blurred into one continuous operational environment. For sales organizations, managing change can sap the time and resources of everyone from management to the field...Read more
As B2B buying cycles grow more complex, sales professionals must continually acquire and adopt new skills to compete and win. Yet too often, when evaluating their team's performance, sales managers focus exclusively on metrics such as quarterly bookings or quota achievement. Of course, these are important but they are also...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Impact of Sales Force Effectiveness Initiatives
12 June 2015
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The sales force remains one of the largest single-expense lines on a company’s balance sheet, and sales effectiveness leaders continually struggle with the concept of measuring investment versus return in increasing the effectiveness of the sales force. This research attempts to quantify the success of sales force effectiveness (SFE) initiatives,...Read more
Few companies would discourage salespeople from making sales calls, even when sales effort reaches the point of diminishing returns. But that’s exactly the right thing to do, when incremental activity no longer correlates with incremental sales. Response curves help management determine how many sales calls – or other sorts of...Read more
Sales forecasting is fairly consistent across organizations around the globe. The standard forecasting process usually begins with lead identification. The lead is then qualified and an attempt is made to understand the prospect’s needs. A proposal is presented to the prospect to address the needs, and the sale is usually...Read more
Webcast
2015 MHI Sales Best Practices Study – Decoding the Decision Dynamic
26 May 2015
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MHI Research Institute's Tom Chamberlain presents findings from MHI's recent research in a special webcast for the Sales Management Association's audience. Now in its 12th year, the MHI Sales Best Practices Study captures and measures the behaviors, attributes and performance of World-Class Sales Performers, providing a foundation for benchmarking organizations...Read more
In this webinar, you will see how sales analytics and dashboards become part of the sales team daily routine. The focus will be on dashboards that sales leverage to manage their time, measure performance, collaborate globally, strategically target territories, and more! Tableau Sales Vice President of Sales Operations will show...Read more
The CRM promises enormous potential for improving sales organization productivity, but companies have had mixed success in leveraging CRM to drive transformational sales effectiveness improvements. This research attempts to understand CRM's impact on sales organization effectiveness, identifies what drives successful CRM deployments, and prioritizes where organizations can improve their utilization...Read more
Teaching and selling share common challenges. That glazed look in a reluctant prospect's eyes? It's surely familiar to teachers, who, like salespeople, too often lecture instead of interacting. Bueller Just as sales forces are rethinking how to engage customers, educators are similarly innovating in the classroom. In both cases, technology...Read more
How do you know if your sales plans are delivering on their promises? What if you need to make course corrections or new opportunities are presented? Are you ready to answer these questions? Every year, it’s the same cycle, you model the right territories, set quotas, model variances, build plans,...Read more
Webcast
How to Build Business Awareness and Drive Sales Productivity
1 May 2015
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If you're a sales leader, you understand how vital it is to improve sales productivity. Listen to this webinar in which Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer of the MHI Research Institute, shares the latest data on productivity drivers that support sales leaders in making decisions about strategic investments to drive...Read more
There is a lot of talk in the sales world about winning the hearts and minds of salespeople? through training, but what does this really mean? How do sales managers win the hearts and minds of salespeople and what impact does it have on sales force performance? If we take...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Measuring Sales Managers’ Effectiveness
20 April 2015
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Sales managers crucially influence overall sales force performance. How do firms ensure managers are measured on the most impactful metrics? Results from our recent survey explores how firms define and measure the effectiveness of their first-line sales managers (FLSMs). Specifically, we examine: What tools and processes are used to define,...Read more
Webcast
Beyond the Commission: Staying Ahead of the Sales Performance Management Maturity Curve
17 April 2015
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In many companies today, the sales department is managed independently of the Human Resources function. Sellers are naturally different in that they hold more of the fate of the company's fortune in their hands than any other line of business. Join Peter Ostrow, VP and Group Director at the Aberdeen...Read more
This research examines our recent study of emerging trends and best practices for sales leadership as it relates to sales forecasting in business-to-business organizations. We identify core practices, processes, and resources considered essential to forecasting; reveal factors that contribute to effective sales forecasting; and determine how salespeople and managers interact...Read more
Webcast
Incentive Compensation Design: Factoring Forecast Accuracy Into Your Plans
2 April 2015
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How much will your organization sell this year? Who will sell it? When? And at what margin? Being able to answer these questions not only helps you set investor expectations, it enables you to implement accurate sales quotas, design effective compensation incentives, and drive performance. Join Donya Rose, director at...Read more
This webcast features business leaders from TinderBox and Angie's List describing how their firms drive predictable sales results. Areas of focus include creating a repeatable process, developing effective messaging and value delivery, and ensuring consistent messaging.
Industry research illustrates emphatically that effective selling is being disrupted by more forces than ever before. Against this backdrop of increasing change, there are literally hundreds of ideas and solutions that potentially could improve the capabilities of your sales organization. And so, in today's world of hyper-change, what does the...Read more
Webcast
Make the Numbers Talk: Using Advanced Analytics to Uncover the Hidden Story in Your Sales Data
23 March 2015
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Wall Street has punished your stock for missing your revenue estimates. Your CEO realized that your revenue actuals and forecasts were out of sync. FP&A had no time to course correct because your revenue models were a tangle of spreadsheets and disconnected apps. You lost time dumping sales data to...Read more
Immediate access to actionable customer insights help salespeople identify the best customers and geographies to target, tailor each customer interaction, and drive business to meet their goals. Without this readily-available insight, salespeople waste time pouring through data from multiple sources and trying to interpret what it means. Join Kelly Tousi,...Read more
Webcast
Exploring New Territory – the Geography of Compensation Planning
17 March 2015
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Successful territory mapping can help create focus and accountability, especially when synchronized with well-designed incentive compensation. Do your territory assignments help guide your reps to do their best or just box them in? Join Clinton Gott and Per Torgersen, principals at Better Sales Compensation, for an in-depth discussion on realizing...Read more
Sales forces effective in salesperson onboarding – getting new salespeople up-to-speed efficiently – enjoy surprising productivity advantages over their peers, our recently-concluded research shows. These firms have 10% greater sales growth rates, and 14% better sales and profit objective achievement. But onboarding isn’t easy – just 40% of firms with...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Forecasting Effectiveness
27 February 2015
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A study of emerging trends and best practices for sales leadership. This research examined sales forecasting in business-to-business organizations. Research questions identified core practices, processes, and resources considered essential to forecasting; revealed factors that contribute to effective sales forecasting; and determined how salespeople and managers interact in sales forecasting initiatives.
Webcast
Five Key Trends Shaping Sales Compensation Today
26 February 2015
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New technology, new research, and an evolving work force are changing the landscape of sales compensation. Listen in on this webinar to find the 5 biggest trends shaping sales compensation, why they re occurring,and what it means for your role. Specifically, we will cover: Globalization of sales compensation and thecentralization...Read more
Webcast
2015 Sales Execution Trends Research Findings
23 February 2015
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Feel confident in what you’re going to achieve in 2015? Want to see what your peers said? Qvidian surveyed sales and marketing executives from companies around the globe to better understand their outlook for 2015. They’ll share what they uncovered, including: Executive management priorities imply that most organizations continue to...Read more
On-Demand Sales Training vs. Live Sales Training It’s no secret that part of the value of live and in-person sales training is the opportunity to engage in discussion and practice the art of selling through real-life simulations and role play. And of course, in-person training provides sales trainers with the...Read more
Quota setting is consistently at or near the top of the list of sales compensation challenges for most companies. One reason is because ineffective quotas can derail even a well-designed sales compensation program. Many sales organizations consider poorly-set quotas among the chief threats to sales force motivation. Prevailing practice contributes...Read more
Sales performance reporting guides leadership’s decision making, and represents an important information management priority for many firms. This research investigates the use of performance reporting in business-to-business sales organizations, and identifies management priorities and best practices. Specific areas of focus for this research include: Identifying current approaches for provisioning sales...Read more
Webcast
Uncover Hidden Insights in Your Sales Comp Data
13 February 2015
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Sales compensation programs are a treasure trove of data. The best companies know that it's important to make optimal use of such information - but it hasn't always been easy. This webinar will explore how new developments in natural language-based cognitive computing promise to help your compensation team see non-obvious...Read more
The concept of sales as something that could be trained and improved upon began in the late 1800s when NCR opened the first sales training school after demonstrating their methods at a trade show. While many aspects of sales have changed in the last couple hundred years, a few things...Read more
When they work, onboarding programs improve salesperson productivity and new hire success rates, which can profoundly impact overall sales organization performance. Yet onboarding approaches vary in scope, intensity, and outcomes across firms. This study offers a survey of onboarding practice in business-to-business sales organizations, identifies onboarding program elements that contribute...Read more
Webcast
US Job Market — Economic Update For Sales Leadership
29 January 2015
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What better way for sales leaders to ring in the New Year than taking a nice look back on 2014’s job market. In this webinar, we will shed light on the employment market as it applies to sales organizations. We will be taking a deeper look at the economic trends...Read more
Webcast
Sales Leadership’s Guide to Sales and Marketing Alignment
26 January 2015
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There's lots of talk about aligning sales and marketing. But the truth is, sales and marketing may always butt heads. It's the natural consequence of competing agendas in resource-constrained corporate environments. This webcast presents effective strategies for sales leadership in resolving the inevitable with marketing. Topics include: Common points of...Read more
Webcast
Three Steps to Make Sales Manager Training Stick
23 January 2015
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Why is it that just weeks after a sales manager training, everything goes back to the way it was, as if the training never took place? When this happens, a company may conclude that sales training is a waste of time and money, but you know that the problem isn't...Read more
Webcast
Organizing The Sales Force to Grow Existing Accounts
16 January 2015
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We are well-aware of the need for new business, but how often are sales forces leaving money on the table with existing accounts? In this webcast, we will offer insights for enabling the sales force to identify potential, strengthen relationships, and grow opportunities within established accounts. Specifically, we will address...Read more
Webcast
Linking Sales Training to Business Results: The Three C’s of Success
9 January 2015
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For years, the Holy Grail of training has been the ability to go beyond information delivery and simple skills assessment to identify a direct, positive impact on business results. Sales managers in particular are frequent victims, frustrated by their inability to associate training investments to sales performance and new revenue...Read more
Does sales manager training fail to deliver expected results at your organization? Perhaps change happens for a brief period of time, but before long, things go back to the way they were before the training. If this sounds like your organization, you are not alone. In fact, disappointing sales manager...Read more
As a sales manager, you are responsible for a lot of metrics—really important metrics, in fact, including revenue growth, customer retention, product mix, and dozens of other performance metrics. But these metrics are more than numbers to you and your sales force because they define your force’s performance. Whether you...Read more
Webcast
Process vs. Technology – The Battle for Sales Productivity in 2015
18 December 2014
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Less than a third of companies didn't see ROI from their sales technology investments in 2014, according to a research study conducted with the Sales Management Association. Meanwhile, 54 percent of high-performing sales teams have a clear, well-defined process. These two statistics illustrate what could be the most important question...Read more
Webcast
Improving Your Sales Team’s Closing Skills and Win Rates
15 December 2014
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Top-performing sales organizations understand that closing is much more than a single event. Rather, it’s a process of successful decision-making that happens long before the contract is ever signed. Winning or losing the sale often is a direct reflection of how much insight and help sellers add to buyers’ decision-making...Read more
Webcast
Research Update on Sales Onboarding Practices
11 December 2014
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Onboarding programs attempt to accelerate new salesperson productivity and new hire success rates. Our recent research examines sales onboarding programs in business-to-business firms. Join us for this webcast, in which we’ll provide preliminary findings from the research, addressing issues such as: Onboarding program best practices Supporting tools and platforms used...Read more
Blog Post
Process vs. Technology: Which Comes First in the Battle for Sales Productivity?
9 December 2014
Running a sales team takes a great amount of balance between process and technology, especially now that technology is such an integral part of a sales team's tool set. The catch is that less than a third of sales organizations have seen an adequate ROI from their investments in sales...Read more
Webcast
Sales Force Enablement Best Practices and Emerging Trends (Webcast)
3 December 2014
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Strong Sales Managers are important to the success of a selling organization. There are many tactics used to build and test the strength of Sales Managers within organizations. However, are there skills and competencies that can’t be taught or learned? According to our?Developing Sales Manager research initiative, there are 4...Read more
Management Tool
The annual sales meeting is an important event to set the tone for the year with your sales teams. It is the perfect time to communicate strategy, set priorities, and generate excitement for the year. We have organized a toolkit to help you get started.
The Sales Management Association’s recent research identified “lack of field input on prioritized meeting content” as a frequently cited shortcoming of annual sales meetings. This document provides a survey tool for use in soliciting field input on their content priorities, and how best these might be presented at an annual...Read more
Sales can't be automated. There are too many variables in complex selling interactions that require sales professionals to be able to adapt in the moment. Instead, an effective enablement strategy must consider how to harness the best practices of your team and ensure these practices permeate the organization. Supporting the...Read more
Though most firms acknowledge first-line sales managers’ critical role, few organizations react quickly enough in responding to sales manager turnover. Vacant manager positions have an outsized impact on sales performance, since an entire sales team may be adversely affected. By developing sales manager “bench strength,” firms can more quickly react...Read more
Inside sales staffing is outpacing traditional salesperson growth by more than 50%, according to our recently completed study in inside sales trends. As expected, participants in our recent study (senior sales and sales operations managers) said inside sales’ lower cost structure helped drive headcount growth. However, even more important is...Read more
Webcast
Sales Compensation Plan Designs That Improve Profitability — 3 Case Studies
10 November 2014
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Sales organizations must do more than simply grow the top line – they must grow revenue profitably. And most firms empower salespeople with enough decision-making authority to impact profitability. Decisions that involve pricing, product mix, solution development, and customer expense management can all profoundly affect profits as well as sales....Read more
Our recently concluded study on inside sales trends surfaces emerging issues, management priorities, and best practices associated with inside sales channels in large sales organizations. Research topics include: Current approaches in inside sales force deployment Leadership’s inside sales management challenges Assessing the adoption and effectiveness of enabling technology used to...Read more
Webcast
Extending a Learning Event: Best Practices for Sales Managers
6 November 2014
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Sales Managers are integral to driving change in organizations, especially when implementing training or learning initiatives. The key to successful adoption of any of these new initiatives lies in developing a strong framework for supporting the acquisition of new skills and processes over time. In this webinar, Nattalie Hoch, Executive...Read more
This webinar will goes through some key areas to consider as you plan your Sales Kickoff meeting. Also shared is research from Sales Management Association around best practices in preparation and planning for sales meetings and ideas around motivating salespeople. Viewers will learn: Best practices to ensure objectives are carried...Read more
Sales coaching remains a hot topic among sales effectiveness leaders. Our audience shows a persistent interest in sales coaching practice – the coaching approaches managers are using to affect meaningful change in their sales organizations. This research study examines sales managers’ practices, priorities, challenges, and impact areas related to sales...Read more
Does your sales forecasting accurately predict the future results of a sales force? Staying apprised of trends and best practices for sales leadership is one way to improve upon forecasting effectiveness…. and to make sure you re not about to be a cast member on Sales Forecasting: What NOT to...Read more
Webcast
Preparing the Sales Plan: Best Practice Approaches from High Performing Sales Forces
29 October 2014
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It’s planning season for sales organizations – a whirlwind of activity that includes reviewing performance, assessing forecasts, assigning growth targets, building budgets, aligning territories, and allocating quotas. Unfortunately, many sales plans don’t produce what the sales organization most needs: insight into what changes are required to meet performance expectation, and...Read more
There are few things more critical to a company’s top and bottom line results than sales compensation. Businesses can't survive without sales, and sales compensation is the primary vehicle to inspire motivation and track and reward sales success. Yet even as businesses turn to enterprise systems to streamline key processes...Read more
Top performers in sales organizations are recognized, applauded, and held up as the standard? to aspire to by other members of the sales team. At quarterly or annual sales events, the leaders are recognized for their revenue performance and growth. Metrics, in other words, are the standard bearer of success....Read more
A recent Aberdeen report on sales performance effectiveness reveals that there’s a large gap between best-in class firms and the rest of the pack when it comes to meeting quotas. While 84% of the best-in-class companies met quota, only 55% of average and 15% of laggard companies reported hitting their targets....Read more
Webcast
How to Avoid the 5 Most Common Mistakes with Sales Incentive Systems
8 October 2014
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By now, most companies have put in place an Incentive Compensation Management system to automate incentive calculations. Discover the 5 most common things that are holding back these companies from truly realizing the promise of Sales Performance Management systems. From poorly designed dashboards to ineffective use of data, most firms...Read more
Webcast
Refocusing Sales Enablement Investments — On Sales Enablement
6 October 2014
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Sales enablement solutions – even successfully implemented ones – don’t always improve salesperson effectiveness. Instead, they improve Marketing’s ability to reliably deliver content into the hands of prospects and customers. Along the way, actual selling activity often gets lost. Today’s savvy buyers have heightened expectations of your reps, often giving...Read more
Management spends plenty of effort designing salesperson incentive compensation plans, but the first-line sales manager pay plan is often an afterthought. This webcast reviews essential plan design principles important for first line sales managers; explores common plan design pitfalls; and takes a close look at three commonly-used manager pay plans.
Fall – the time of year when sales compensation managers review pay plans, dissect performance data, and determine next year’s sales comp plan changes. It’s also the time of year when freshmen college students are matriculating in Literature 101 classes, reviewing syllabi, buying books. Coincidence? Hardly: turns out that sales...Read more
Webcast
Driving Sales Profitability through Incentive Compensation
25 September 2014
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Sales organizations must do more than simply grow the top line – they must grow revenue profitably. And most firms empower salespeople with enough decision-making authority to impact profitability. Decisions that involve pricing, product mix, solution development, and customer expense management can all profoundly affect profits as well as sales....Read more
There are lots of terms that get tossed around by sales forces, such as “sales process” and “sales coaching,” and many of these have very vague meanings. Another term that we frequently hear used in various ways is “sales enablement.” Sometimes this is a code word for a sales operations...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Leadership’s Planning Priorities
23 September 2014
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A sales force’s sales attainment curve – the distribution of performance across low, mid, and high-performing salespeople – offers unique insights to management. Leaders that listen to their sales organization’s attainment curve can discover opportunities for increased revenue and reduced costs. Discover where top performers may be minimizing revenue opportunity,...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Force Enablement – Best Practices and Emerging Trends
17 September 2014
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The term “Sales Enablement” is used for almost everything that has to do with content, training, coaching, technology and collaboration to improve sales productivity. The function is rarely a strategic and holistic discipline that translates selling challenges into integrated sales execution plans to create sustainable business impact and to drive...Read more
Gain a clear understanding of talent evaluation techniques, the link between competencies and sales performance, and how best to apply these principles in elevating sales training ROI. Sales and sales ops leaders have always struggled to maximize sales team effectiveness and hire top-performing new talent. CSO Insights reports this is...Read more
Conference Archives
CSO vs. CFO Conflict: Winning the Battle for Growth Investment
17 September 2014
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Chief Sales Officers routinely butt heads with corporate CFOs. For the most part, this is a natural consequence of their assigned roles in the corporate ecosystem. Understanding these roles can go along way toward effectively resolving CSO vs. CFO conflict. CSOs are tasked with growth, and with expanding the firm’s...Read more
Just like a football game, client building requires a solid strategy executed by a series of well-designed plays. While the ultimate objective of a sports team is to put points on the board, the plays are designed to systematically get the team into scoring position. The score itself -- a...Read more
Conference Archives
Use Sales Metrics to Be a Better Coach
17 September 2014
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Have sales reports? Like to coach? Then you are in business! In this one-hour working session, you will learn a research-based framework that enables more powerful sales coaching through the use of sales metrics. You will also learn to apply this practical framework to common sales management issues, and clear...Read more
Conference Archives
Aligning Sales Territories: New Approaches for Optimizing Productivity
17 September 2014
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This workshop offers perspective on developing an end-to-end territory management process; from territory optimization through ongoing maintenance and sales crediting. Few management decisions have a greater impact on sales productivity than territory assignments. Well-designed territories allow quick response to dynamic market conditions and changing customer coverage requirements. This workshop offers...Read more
Conference Archives
Is Sales Enablement Making Salespeople Stupid? (Panel Discussion)
17 September 2014
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As the job of selling becomes ever more complex, companies are struggling to assure their salespeople keep pace with the changing landscape. Traditional sales training simply isn't meeting the need, but companies may find the right peak performance recipe by looking to other disciplines. From music to sports to mathematics...Read more
Conference Archives
What Your Reps Will Never Tell You
17 September 2014
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Learn from recent sales effectiveness research initiatives, evaluate upcoming technology trends, and discover how more informed sales teams are staying ahead of the curve. Keeping up with sales effectiveness trends is critical for a successful sales organization. Sales technology investment is on the rise, sales teams are going mobile, and...Read more
Conference Archives
Why Deliberate Practice Is the New Frontier for Accelerating Sales Performance
16 September 2014
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As the job of selling becomes ever more complex, companies are struggling to assure their salespeople keep pace with the changing landscape. Traditional sales training simply isn't meeting the need, but companies may find the right peak performance recipe by looking to other disciplines. From music to sports to mathematics...Read more
Conference Archives
The Quantified Sales Force (Panel Discussion)
16 September 2014
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The latest health trend is the "quantified self" movement. Using personal technology, its adherents track sleep, exercise, diet, and other health-related activities. Now a broad-based consumer phenomenon, the quantified self movement started with fitness geeks obsessed with data and performance improvement. Companies also are adopting technology to measure things in...Read more
Conference Archives
CRM and Sales Management: A Match Made In Heaven or Hell?
16 September 2014
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CRM is a part of every sales manager’s daily life, but how useful is it really? Most sales forces observe low adoption and low impact from their CRM investment, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Learn the REAL challenge with CRM and how you can transform it into...Read more
Conference Archives
Avoiding Deadly Sales Manager Missteps
16 September 2014
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Sales managers are essential in any organization. Yet in selecting and managing sales managers, many firms fall far short -- and in fact repeat the same costly mistakes that continually undermine sales managers' effectiveness. Leveraging an analysis of more than 500 companies' compensation and performance management practices, presenters Alan Benson...Read more
Conference Archives
Increasing the Quality of New Sales Hires
16 September 2014
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Better understand the impact of competency-centered hiring processes and sales talent analytics on improving the quality of sales hires. Manpower's annual Global Talent Shortage Survey ranks sales representatives as one of the most difficult roles to fill (#1 In Asia Pacific, #2 in Americas and #3 in EMEA). While many...Read more
Conference Archives
Managing Salespeople in the Do-What-You-Love World
16 September 2014
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How should sales managers lead in an age where "Do What You Love" is the dominant mantra in society? A popular approach is for organizations to make their work seem "lovable". Apple, for instance, tells its sales staff that they are "doing something far grander than just selling or fixing...Read more
Conference Archives
Mobile Technology’s Impact on Sales Productivity (Panel Discussion)
16 September 2014
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Mobile technology is impacting the sales force in ways large and small. This session profiles several organizations' use of mobile technology to speed sales process, automate routine tasks, and improve the quality of sales interactions.
Conference Archives
Getting Greater Value from Your Investment in Sales Training
16 September 2014
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A well-trained and knowledgeable sales force can be a significant advantage in today’s crowded and competitive marketplace. For that reason, companies invest significant resources in training and development of their sales representatives and managers. And that investment pays off. But sales training can, and should, pay even greater returns than...Read more
Conference Archives
Global Sales Forces, Emerging Markets
16 September 2014
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Emerging markets have become a key source of global economic growth. For many global firms, emerging markets represent the single most important source of future growth. This session examines fundamental challenges, evolving management practices, and important trends in how global firms approach emerging markets, and direct growth efforts across complex,...Read more
Conference Archives
Developing Sales Managers (Panel Discussion)
16 September 2014
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Sales managers are evolving just as the organizations they lead are also changing. New sales leaders need skills different than those of an earlier generation – skills essential for interpreting new data, leveraging technology, and aligning their organizations with shifting customer and market requirements. And as before, they're also expected...Read more
Conference Archives
Building a Business Case, Fine Tuning SPM, and Driving ROI (Panel Discussion)
16 September 2014
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Sales Performance Management (SPM) software solutions promise to enhance essential sales management activities, and interest in these solutions is surging. How are practitioners using SPM, and are they realizing value from SPM investments? This panel examines the impact of SPM from the perspective of practitioners and solution providers. Topics include:...Read more
Conference Archives
Managing Millennials: Building Trust through Transparency
16 September 2014
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This presentation discusses two underlying themes: the paradoxical nature of millennials and the value of transparency. Dr. Adam Rapp and Joe Calamusa combine decades of academic and practical sales experience for a new perspective on managing and interacting with the Millennial Generation. Using primary research from thousands of millennials and...Read more
Conference Archives
Solving the Toughest Sales Compensation Problem – Setting Good Quotas
16 September 2014
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Annual surveys perennially show that setting good quotas is the number one issue faced by sales compensation professionals. But you don’t need to struggle – there is a proven best practice for setting fair quotas. In this session you will learn: Four ways companies set bad quotas How many salespeople...Read more
Conference Archives
Leading Sales Force Transformation (Panel Discussion)
16 September 2014
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Change management is an essential sales leadership competency, given how often sales organizations must realign their capabilities. This panel focuses on transformation case studies at leading sales organizations, and offers transformation best practices and frameworks for assessing successful transformation.
Conference Archives
Seven Steps to Simplified Sales Management
16 September 2014
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Sales leaders: Another year, another struggle. Marketing still is not giving you enough leads. The ones you have received aren't good enough. Territories aren't properly balanced. Sales reps don't have easy access to resources to be effective in appointments. Too many manual approval processes. Can't get quotes out the door...Read more
Conference Archives
Course: Better Sales Management Through Better Time Management
15 September 2014
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Learn how to take back your calendar and focus on the high-impact activities that drive sales results! If there’s one thing that sales managers DON’T have, it’s enough time to do all they need to do. So what happens? The important stuff (coaching) gets squeezed out by the urgent stuff...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Training ROI Measurement Framework
15 September 2014
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Quantifying sales training's value proves difficult for most firms. Worse yet, credible measures of sales training efficacy can yield disheartening results. ES Research, for example, has reported that 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. This course offers practical insights for measuring sales training ROI, and...Read more
Conference Archives
Optimizing Market Coverage to Drive Organic Growth
15 September 2014
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With limited resources to deploy in the market, to achieve today’s aggressive growth objectives it’s critical that those resources be deployed optimally to maximize market coverage and drive results. This workshop with Marshall Solem and Scott Sims from ZS Associates explores how to apply best practices and address vital real...Read more
Conference Archives
Motivating the Sales Force with Incentives
15 September 2014
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Variable compensation -- as an inducement to stimulate performance -- is an obvious tool for business, and the sales industry is legendary for its reliance on this type of carrot. But unfortunately most companies use it as a blunt cudgel, like putting with a three iron! And when businesses make...Read more
Social selling - a trendy, yet ill-defined phrase. How many business-to-business salespeople are actually using social media to sell – and how? In this session we introduce a framework for leveraging social media to improve sales productivity, and share examples of sales organizations who have unlocked the power of social...Read more
When the CEO says “We need a defined sales process”, what are they really saying First, the CEO clearly has a belief that process will increase sales. Secondarily, I believe the CEO is asking for a repeatable, visible and measurable system that replicates top sales performers. The devil is in...Read more
Webcast
Three Best Practices for Modernizing Lead-to-Money Processes
22 August 2014
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Smart devices, cloud platforms, and mobile applications promise productivity increases for sales organizations. By 2020, 450 billion business transactions will take place on the Internet daily, and already mobile device sales are out-pacing those of PCs. But some sales organizations may find themselves scrambling to keep pace with these changes,...Read more
Sales Enablement software has a solid foothold in many sales organizations. Better than the knowledge management platforms it replaces, Sales Enablement solves a common sales force “distribution” problem; that is, the problem of distributing marketing content to, and through, the sales force. Sales Enablement’s oft-stated purpose is to provide the...Read more
The most crucial connection in an organization seeking to grow is between sales and strategy. US companies, for example, spend more than 3x on sales efforts than they spend on all media advertising and 20x more than the total spent on digital marketing. Yet, research indicates that, on average, companies...Read more
Webcast
Managing Unfair Competition: Sales Organizations and the Law
18 August 2014
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Sales organizations thrive in competitive environments, but how should sales leadership respond when competitors take unfair advantage? This webcast reviews several common competitive scenarios faced by sales management, explains their legal context, and suggests proactive management approaches for avoiding outcomes disadvantageous to your firm. Presented by Elarbee Thompson attorneys Richard...Read more
By the end of the fiscal year, most sales compensation leaders are feeling good about where they are in the next year's sales incentive plan design process (we hope). The management team is finalizing the design, developing the rollout plan and expressing confidence that the plan is aligned with the...Read more
Automating sales process holds great promise for improving sales force productivity. In this webcast we review findings from our recent research initiative on sales process automation, focused on how, why, and to what extent sales organizations are automating core sales processes. Research focus areas include: Which core processes are most...Read more
CRM and Sales Force Automation have been with us for several decades now, and most companies have gone through many iterations of the constantly improving technology. From basic contact management to advanced data analytics, Rolodexes and spreadsheets have been replaced by sophisticated technology platforms that are increasingly easy to deploy...Read more
Why do Slumps happen, and how to can we coach reps through them Salespeople have at least one thing in common with pro baseball players: Slumps. All major leaguers ? even all-stars ? go through extended periods where they can’t get a hit. Pressure builds. Confidence erodes. After a while...Read more
Our recently concluded study on inside sales trends surfaces emerging issues, management priorities, and best practices associated with inside sales channels in large sales organizations. Join us for this first look at research results and expert commentary from SAP Global Vice President Shawn Robertson. Research topics include: Current approaches in...Read more
Webcast
Pipeline Management Practices in High-Growth Firms
17 July 2014
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Nearly every sales force maintains a sales pipeline - an inventory of opportunities in various stages of realization. Most firms use their pipeline for forecasting, or for other less-impactful purposes. A few sales organizations; however, manage sales pipelines with strategic intent. Recent research conducted by the Sales Management Association and...Read more
By 2025, 3 out of every 4 workers worldwide will be Millennials (Time). Is that shocking to anyone else? One of the most impassioned discussions I heard at Columbia University’s recent Sales Thought Leadership Conference surrounded the younger generation and how they communicate in the workplace. Many were irked by...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Performance Reporting – Usage and Practices
30 June 2014
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Sales performance reporting guides leadership’s decision making, and represents an important information management priority for many firms. This research investigates the use of performance reporting in business-to-business sales organizations, and identifies management priorities and best practices. Specific areas of focus for this research include: identifying current approaches for provisioning sales...Read more
Webcast
Pursuit of Performance: Findings from the 2014 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study
20 June 2014
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Learn how trends in the complex business to business landscape are evolving with the latest findings from the 2014 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study. In this webcast, Joe Galvin shares for the first time the collection of behaviors that lead to World Class Sales Performance in the current...Read more
You probably know what it is, but do you know why the Cloud matters to your sales organization? The Cloud has changed how buyers buy, how employees work, and how sellers go to market. Everything is faster. There is an expectation of instant gratification. With this shift, the way we...Read more
Organizations implementing new sales methodologies often face a stark realization: despite huge investments in training, new approaches simply don’t work. Sales coaching can dramatically remedy these expensive failures. This webcast explores five “must have” qualities of effective coaching programs, and provides tactical suggestions for sales coaches. Topics include: Focusing...Read more
Technology is changing how organizations direct and support field salespeople. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the explosion of cloud-based productivity tools. In this webcast, we review strategic trends in cloud-based sales force enablement, and examine case examples and best practices from three leading cloud innovators.
Webcast
Research Update: Management’s Sales Coaching Impact
23 May 2014
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Our most comprehensive sales coaching research to-date, this study examines sales managers’ practices, priorities, challenges, and impact areas related to sales coaching. Specific focus include: Which sales coaching objectives represent the most important management priorities? Where are managers focusing coaching efforts? Where and how is sales coaching most impactful? What...Read more
Sales management considers performance reporting essential, and sales managers are often the loudest constituents served by sales operations departments. But our recent research suggests that salespeople, not their managers, may be a more important “customer” for performance reporting. Our study’s 85 participating business-to-business firms rated the amount of time their...Read more
Implementing sales organization change is notoriously difficult. Yet sales organizations are frequently faced with circumstances that require large-scale change initiatives. How do successful firms drive change in the sales organization? This webcast reviews critical success factors associated with four common sales change initiatives: launching new offerings, entering new markets, changing...Read more
Webcast
Evaluating Territory and Quota Management Effectiveness
1 May 2014
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Judging the effectiveness of territory and quota assignments is difficult. Firms, markets, and industries may each have unique challenges making quota setting and territory alignment problematic. However, there are characteristics common to highly effective territory and quota management efforts – characteristics critical to driving desired selling behavior and profitable...Read more
Once upon a time there was a little red hen who lived in a big sales organization. She had three fluffy yellow chicks. One morning as they were busily scratching about the yard, looking for something to eat, the little red hen found a prospect. “Look!” she said. “See what...Read more
Webcast
Accelerating New Salesperson Productivity: Strategy and Best Practices
14 April 2014
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Productivity lost as new-hire salespeople ramp up costs sales organizations dearly, and new-hire failures even more. Yet sales forces too often adopt a "sink or swim" approach to new salesperson success - accompanied by management's grudging acknowledgement that new salesperson turnover will be forever high. A better approach is...Read more
Last year TinderBox, Miller Heiman, and the Sales Management Association conducted research on sales proposal effectiveness. Drawing on input from 76 participating business-to-business sales organizations, findings show that proposal effectiveness correlates closely with sales growth, but that several facets of proposal management remain under-optimized. These include making proposal easier for...Read more
What’s a sales force’s most expensive asset? Its sales managers’ time. Firms that waste it on low-value activities do so at the enormous cost of lost coaching opportunities and diminished influence on other business outcomes. The trouble is, it’s not always easy separating managers from administrative activities. One area...Read more
Webcast
Getting More from Marketing: Strategies for Sales Leadership
27 March 2014
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Aligning the sales and marketing function is a long-standing challenge. But it’s taken on greater urgency of late, as disruptive technology has changed what buyers expect from salespeople. In response, firms are re-thinking how best to sell and market, even restructuring responsibilities between sales and marketing departments, and implementing...Read more
Lots of companies consider sales coaching a priority – but few invest in it. Most sales managers consider themselves coaches – but few find time to truly coach salespeople. Why do these disparities persist, and what are their root causes? This webcast examines the real reasons managers don’t coach....Read more
You started the year with a bulletproof sales plan – one that aligned resources with opportunity, calibrated achievable performance targets, and offered clear direction to the sales force. But as Q1 closes, troubling issues are emerging – issues that may disrupt sales productivity and threaten results. These can include...Read more
Close your eyes and think about one of the following songs: Michael Jackson’s ABC, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, or Neal Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. Can you hear the beat in your head? Do you remember the chorus? How about the lyrics? Does it evoke a certain emotion? Music is amazing in the...Read more
Webcast
The Next Level of Transparency: Improving Sales Leadership’s Performance Insights
6 March 2014
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There is no status quo in sales, only constant evolution. Too often, the speed of change facing sales leaders forces them to make decisions without data - or worse, with data that isn't trusted. What's needed are data gathering and reporting platforms that keep pace with business changes, and...Read more
What makes a great sales dashboard? It’s more than just clever visual design or the latest technology. In fact, sales reporting standards are evolving quickly with innovations in data accessibility, technology, and analytics. We’re hoping to capture a few new insights into business-to-business sales organizations’ reporting practices through our latest...Read more
Many firms consider sales coaching important, but remain unsatisfied with their coaching model. In fact, basic approaches to sales coaching have often been in place for decades, despite their lackluster impact. Management training reinforces poor-performing coaching approaches, guaranteeing the same poor outcomes. Breaking this cycle of failure must start with...Read more
Webcast
Lead to Money: Aligning Finance with Sales and Marketing Processes
14 February 2014
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We all agree that sales and marketing alignment is critical. Companies that have the two teams working together reap the rewards. But the "lead-to-money" process isn't fully optimized without integrating Finance’s involvement. This webcast outlines how an optimized lead-to-money processes combines the coordinated involvement of the Sales, Sales Operations, Marketing,...Read more
Effective sales plans require a wide-ranging set of inputs: performance targets, segmentation strategy, territory and quota assignments, expense projections, incentive compensation approaches, and more. Bulletproof plans distinguish sales organizations that execute flawlessly from those with poor direction and underwhelming results. What makes a great sales plan? This webcast examines...Read more
Several weeks ago we held our first Google Hangout – a discussion on Sales Leadership’s Social Strategy. The discussion featured Richardson’s CEO David DiStefano and Gerry Moran, SAP’s Head of Social Media, North America. We’d hoped also to include a speaker from InsideView, who couldn’t join because of technical issues...Read more
Webcast
Sales Performance Management Strategy for 2014
7 February 2014
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Does your organization have a clearly articulated strategy around Sales Performance Management? If not, you probably should -- research shows that companies that invest in sales performance management have a higher percentage of reps that make quota, lower sales turnover, shorter sales cycles, and faster revenue growth. This webinar is...Read more
Sales organizations are embracing social selling, taking advantage of social media’s new approaches for reaching buyers. Along the way, sales leadership faces a new set of management challenges. This session – our first hosted on the Google Hangouts platform – explores emerging issues impacting the social sales manager. Panelists: David...Read more
Who deserves credit for closing a deal? In many organizations, the answer is complicated. Sales that involve more than one seller, long decision horizons, or multiple customer touch points often require a complex crediting scheme. Sales organizations that credit sales effectively do these things well: they anchor their crediting model...Read more
It’s sales kickoff meeting season, the time when companies reveal strategy and marching orders to their sales forces. Kickoff meetings set the tone for the entire year, so there’s a lot riding on getting them right. To help you out, we’ve put together a toolkit with some sales kickoff meeting-related...Read more
Forecasting accuracy is a problem for sales organizations. Too often forecasts reflect little more than a sales force’s collective intuition about future results. Not the reliable predictor management needs. New approaches to forecasting are proving much more valuable. They combine technology, salesperson activities, and a focus on verifiable customer outcomes....Read more
Webcast
New Salesperson On-boarding and Enablement Best Practices
20 December 2013
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New salesperson onboarding programs address a productivity-killing problem for all sales forces: getting new sellers up to speed. Effective sales leaders are addressing onboarding with a range of tools, including new ways to measure onboarding success. This webcast presents best practices in salesperson onboarding for sales management. Topics Case examples...Read more
Webcast
Moving Proposals Online: Emerging Trends, Key Outcomes, and Best Practices
19 December 2013
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Proposals are a challenge for managers, customers and salespeople, our recent research suggests. Managers can’t get data on proposal activity, such as the number of proposals outstanding, and their status. Customers can’t understand overly-complex proposal documents, and salespeople can’t deliver proposals consistently, effectively, and quickly. Online proposal tools are addressing...Read more
Later this winter I’ll present with several leading marketing academics on the topic “Personal Selling and Sales Management in Emerging Markets: A Research Agenda†at the 2014 American Marketing Association’s Winter Marketing Educators’ Conference. I’m looking for perspective on which aspects of this issue might be most important to the...Read more
CRM and other automation systems have contributed to many sales organizations’ success, yet there is untapped potential in the data they contain. With innovative business analytics and mobile tools, companies can use data to expose sales trends, answer crucial client questions, and allow real-time mobile sales and marketing. Whether at...Read more
Webcast
Mobile Sales Enablement: Intelligence, Policies and Tools For an Agile Sales Force
4 December 2013
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Mobile technology can drive revenue growth, productivity and effectiveness in the sales organization. This webinar examines best practices in mobile sales enablement and management frameworks for aligning mobility investment for maximum ROI. Topics include gaining mobile salesperson acceptance through technology tools and defining success measures for the organization and sales...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Pipeline Management Practices
27 November 2013
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Sales organizations often track prospective sales opportunities using “sales pipeline” or “sales funnel” reporting tools. These usually show pending sales opportunities or prospective customers, in the context of a sequential sales process. Yet practices vary significantly among firms that utilize these tools. In this Sales Management Association webcast, we review...Read more
Webcast
Winning the Business Case for Sales Performance Management (SPM)
22 November 2013
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Your organization needs a solution to manage sales performance, but in a world of decreasing budgets, how do you get the buy-in you need to make your dream a reality? Learn how to win the business case and secure funding for a Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution. Learn how you...Read more
Webcast
Assessing Sales Talent for Front-Line and Management Roles
21 November 2013
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Drawing upon their recent best practice research on first-line sales manager staffing practices, Aon Hewitt’s Steve Grossman and Miriam Nelson offer insight into the sales manager’s essential contribution to sales organization performance. Topics include benchmarks for FLSM investment, recruitment and selection practices, job focus and role clarity, and correlating FLSM...Read more
The sales force plays a critical role during the implementation stage of a new product launch. If they don't buy in, the product fails. In fact 65% of new product launches fail at a cost of billions of dollars. How can you effectively communicate new products to the sales force...Read more
Webcast
How To Coach, Motivate, and Incent To Exceed Sales Quotas in 2014
8 November 2013
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Sales leadership’s planning and development efforts in the last quarter of the year will have a profound effect on next year’s performance. What considerations are essential for sales leaders planning for 2014? In this webcast we’ll review best practices for assessing current performance, leveraging supporting data, developing course corrections, and...Read more
Social media is changing how buyers buy, how sellers sell, and how buyers and sellers interact. This webcast explores how sales forces are harnessing social media to gain better customer insights, secure access to difficult-to-reach buyers, and foster collaborative relationships with partners. Presented by Gerry Moran, head of social media at...Read more
Blog Post
Breaking the Sales Coaching Dilemma: Four keys to jumpstart your coaching efforts and overcome sales leaders’ greatest blindspot
5 November 2013
A recent study of more than 800 front line sales reps and sales leaders highlights a disturbing trend in sales management. While organizations are making ever greater investment in technologies and operational processes to improve performance, sales reps are citing Training and Development as being one of their greatest challenges...Read more
Webcast
Improving Sales Productivity: an End-to-End Approach
3 November 2013
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Sales leaders are challenged to drive profitable sales growth in the face of a continually changing buying environment. In doing so they must align their firms' selling activities with the way customers buy; they must insure the sales force communicates value; and must make sure deals and opportunities are addressed...Read more
Sales compensation is a powerful tool for motivating and managing the sales force. But it is definitively a double-edged sword as companies that get it right enjoy significant benefit, while those who get it wrong feel material downside. Companies that manage sales compensation well also actively manage various compensation program...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Performance Management Practices
16 October 2013
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OpenSymmetry recently concluded a global study on sales performance management. The study focuses on processes, tools and reporting approaches used to enable sales organizations. In this webcast, OpenSymmetry will share results from the study, and suggest implications for sales and sales operations leadership. Topics Establishing which performance management approaches are...Read more
Conference Archives
Making Data Come to Life: Putting Sales Technology to Work for You
9 October 2013
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More data is not the problem, it's what to do with the data we already have. With so much data available to support sales management decisions, why isn't it getting easier to make data-based decisions? This session addresses how to extract meaning from your organization's volumes of customer management data...Read more
Conference Archives
Workforce Planning for the Sales Organization
9 October 2013
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Too often companies approach strategic changes -- like implementing solution selling, or cutting sales costs -- with tactical approaches, such as changing commission rates or quotas. In contrast, top-performing companies continually adjust their organization and its talent through strategically-driven workforce planning. When applied to the sales force, workforce planning incorporates...Read more
Conference Archives
Selling Innovation: How Research is Re-Shaping New Product Selling
9 October 2013
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Conference Archives
Sales Productivity Drivers for 2014
9 October 2013
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If you're not getting better... you're getting worse. There is no status quo for sales organizations as they strive to adapt to constant customer, competitor and market changes. Improving performance requires increasing the productivity of sales reps, managers and leaders. Dana Palmblad, Senior Vice President of Sales for Miller Heiman,...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: New Models for Sales Coaching
9 October 2013
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Sales coaching models have been around for decades, yet few companies are satisfied with the results that they achieve. Regardless, we continue to train our sales managers on the very same models, with the very same results. How do we get off of this sales coaching failure treadmill Join Vantage...Read more
Sales Training, well-known to sales organizations around the world, has died after a long battle with terminal ineffectiveness. Sales Training was instrumental in educating millions of salespeople in the course of its 80-year career. Hailed as the answer to sales organization effectiveness at the end of the 20th century, Sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Performance Management: Emerging Models, Best Practices
9 October 2013
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Adoption of “Sales Performance Management” (SPM) systems is surging as sales organizations realize its significant benefits. Among these is the value SPM provides sales organizations confronting reorganizations or sales deployment changes. As SPM adoption increases, new models for utilizing SPM are emerging. This panel focuses on the identifying SPM needs...Read more
Conference Archives
Transforming Sales Operations: Two Perspectives
8 October 2013
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The intersection of traditional sales operations, emerging sales technology and sales effectiveness teams have transformed sales operations from a Finance-driven organization to one with a much broader charter and higher impact. Ian Levine, Iron Mountain's sales operations architect and sales effectiveness strategist reviews key lessons from his firm's sales transformation,...Read more
Conference Archives
Using Video to Improve Sales Enablement
8 October 2013
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The power of video allows companies to tell their unique story and communicate their value proposition in a way that grabs attention and ensures greater retention -- both for prospects and for salespeople. In this session, Brainshark's chief marketing officer Andy Zimmerman shows how leading companies are using video to...Read more
Conference Archives
Aligning Go-to-Market Activities and Sales Motion with Your Buyers
8 October 2013
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The ability to connect go-to-market activities directly to how buyers purchase products and services is an age old problem. Too often, it's met with technology investments that are not cohesive and confusing to salespeople. These initiatives promise improved productivity, but fail because they aren't relevant to how sales reps sell....Read more
Conference Archives
How Excellent Sales Competency Models Make Excellent Sales Forces
8 October 2013
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Salespeople today contend with increasingly sophisticated buyers and intense competition. As a result, they need more than the traditional relationship-building and closing skills -- they must have business acumen, sharp analytics, effective cross-functional collaboration, and creativity to create and prove their value in this complex selling environment. A competency model...Read more
Conference Archives
Realigning CRM Investments for Sales Productivity
8 October 2013
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CRM used solely for data capture is an expensive and unproductive investment. This workshop and case study focuses on extending CRM's capabilities to create value in ways that drive value for all sales organization stakeholders, while driving overall sales productivity. Essential to unlocking CRM's ROI is aligning CRM with sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Realizing Higher Returns from Sales Coaching
8 October 2013
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Despite a surging interest in sales coaching, few sales coaching programs yield hoped-for results. Common reasons for failure are overly complex frameworks, low adoption rates, anemic reinforcement, lack of accountability, or all of the above. But it is possible to overcome all of these issues and deploy a successful, high-impact...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Territories: Aligning, Analyzing and Optimizing
8 October 2013
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Territory and location data is an underutilized asset for sales operations departments. This session focuses on how firms can leverage territory data to make decisions that impact sales productivity.
Conference Archives
Analytics Strategy for Channel Intensive Sales Organizations
8 October 2013
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Channel organizations represent unique challenges for sales performance analytics. These challenges include gaining access to data; cleaning, standardizing, and staging information from disparate sources; and coordinating an analytics strategy across multiple organizations. In this panel discussion three sales effectiveness leaders address the special challenges of channel performance management, and their...Read more
Conference Archives
Developing Managers: New Priorities for the Sales Force
8 October 2013
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Just as quickly as sales organizations are evolving, so too are the leadership roles guiding them. Sales leaders now need skills different than those of their predecessors, skills essential for interpreting new data, leveraging technology, and aligning their organizations with shifting customer and market requirements. And as before, they're also...Read more
Conference Archives
Forces of Disruption: Drivers of Radical Change in B2B Sales
8 October 2013
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With astonishing speed, firms are responding to disruptive forces affecting every business-to-business sales force. Their impact has changed how sales forces are sized, deployed, and managed; the kind of work they do; and, in some cases reflect a fundamentally new answer to the question "What makes a salesperson valuable to...Read more
Conference Archives
Predicting the Outcomes: Optimizing for Success with Analytics
8 October 2013
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Salesforce productivity is a top priority for leaders. But how do you ensure your team is performing at their best and positioned for success? What data should you really be looking at to coach to higher productivity? Jim Benton, chief operating officer and co-founder of ClearSlide shares findings from a...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Winning With Sales Analytics
8 October 2013
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When it comes to leveraging big data, technology and analytics to enhance sales force decision making, companies are climbing the learning curve at different speeds. Many undervalue and therefore underinvest in developing sales analytics capability. However, other companies have recognized immense opportunity and are building expertise that enables them to...Read more
Webcast
Managing Quotas: Separating Superstition from Fact
26 September 2013
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In this webcast we’ll address five common management practices that govern sales performance management. We’ll debate the factual basis for each approach, and attempt to dispel unfounded, but commonly held assumptions that undermine effective management. Our presenters will examine five commonly held assertions: Quotas should be over allocated All reps...Read more
Webcast
Using What-if Analysis to Manage the Risk of Comp Plan Changes
20 September 2013
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“If we change the comp plan, will it have the desired results?” This is a question that can paralyze decision making. Though change impact can't be predicted with 100% certainty, “what-if” analysis can provide clarity and insight before changes are implemented, allowing you to move forward with reduced likelihood of...Read more
Research
Ideal versus Actual Number of Sales Calls: An Application of Disconfirmation Theory
16 September 2013
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The current study focuses on the relationship that buyers have with their salespeople. Specifically, the study uses disconfirmation theory to evaluate whether a salesperson that meets or exceeds the buyer’s ideal number of sales calls has higher levels of commitment, trust, and satisfaction from the buyer than a salesperson that...Read more
Webcast
Territory and Quota Planning Checklist: Preparing for 2014
13 September 2013
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It’s planning season for sales operations departments, the time of year when territory assignments, quotas, and compensation plan changes are considered for the coming year. Effective quota and territory planning starts with the right mix of standardized practices and field participation, combines efficient work flows and communications, and includes...Read more
Achieving the sales forecast requires fact-based decision-making and resource allocation. Successful sales organizations that routinely achieve their sales goals, address the following preliminary questions in developing their execution plan: How many resources do we have and what can each produce Who are our target customers/prospects and what will they buy...Read more
Webcast
Hunters and Farmers: Best Practice Approaches to Incentive Pay and Job Design
30 August 2013
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Are you just doing more of the same thing as your sales team grows? Are you making the mistake of having your Hunters farm old accounts, while also expecting them to cold call into new prospects? Do you just make a tweak to the incentive plan and give the same...Read more
Like many companies experiencing hyper-growth, LinkedIn struggled to meet its sales teams’ reporting demands. Conventional business intelligence tools proved inadequate for team members, who were expected to make their own data-driven decisions. After recasting its analytics strategy, LinkedIn provided its decision makers with greatly improved visibility and insight, ultimately establishing its analytics...Read more
It must seem like Shark Week for sales operations departments, who use this time of year to plan next year’s territory assignments, quotas, and compensation plan changes. Like Shark Week, planning season for sales ops seems a lot longer than advertised. And, like Shark Week, quota planning season often ends...Read more
Webcast
Using Sales Data and Analytics: Insights for Leadership
22 August 2013
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Sales Performance Management (SPM) combines disparate information sources into essential intelligence for sales leaders. This webcast describes how sales organization can identify new profit sources and enable growth strategies through SPM. By integrating data from product, marketing, finance, and HR, SPM’s analytics yield insights previously unavailable to management. Examples include:...Read more
Communicating a formal offering to prospective customers represents a pivotal sales process stage. This research initiative examines current proposal management practices in business-to-business sales organizations. Research objectives include assessing what high-performing sales organizations do differently from others during the proposal stage of their sales process; and prioritizing potential investment strategies...Read more
This webcast presents key trends, emerging practices, and challenges in quota management. Topics include quota setting methodology, best practices for promoting quota accuracy and fairness, goal allocation approaches, and analytics to measure quota management effectiveness. Also presented are findings from Aon Hewitt’s recent study of quota management practices among business-to-business...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Process Adoption and Usage
14 August 2013
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Sales process is widely acknowledged as an important feature of a productive sales system, sales process discipline varies widely across firms. This research examines how large business-to-business sales forces are using defined sales processes, their impact on firm performance, and factors contributing to sales process adoption and effectiveness. Specific areas...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Enabling Sales Methodology through Technology
9 August 2013
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Deploying a consistent selling approach is an important priority for many sales organizations. Technology represents a potentially valuable tool for communicating, reinforcing, and driving adoption of sales methodology. This Sales Management Association Research Initiative investigates how companies are using technology to enable effective sales methodology. Research results focus on: Identifying...Read more
Managing high performing sales forces begins with defining success. It also depends upon management’s ability to correctly diagnose performance issues, surface root causes, and introduce corrective measures. This webcast presents a framework for identifying, measuring, monitoring, and managing sales organization effectiveness. Presented by Marco Madero and Scott Barton from Aon Hewitt's...Read more
Webcast
How Excellent Sales Competency Models Make Excellent Sales Forces (webcast)
18 July 2013
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Sales teams today contend with increasingly sophisticated buyers and intense competition. They must engage with their customers in more sophisticated ways to create and prove their value. Salespeople need more than the traditional relationship-building and closing skills - business acumen, sharp analytics, effective cross-functional collaboration, and creativity are essential in...Read more
Blog Post
Mobile Device Field Enablement: Five Keys to Designing An Effective Strategy and Getting Result
12 July 2013
Guest blogger Mark Ippolito from sales and marketing consultancy Lenati contributed this post. With the powerful capabilities of mobile devices to integrate location data, seller activity, real-time transactions and much more, sales managers in leading organizations are leveraging these capabilities to drive exponential performance gains among their sales teams. Looking to...Read more
Though sales organizations have invested heavily in sales productivity, many are finding returns on "sales enablement" initiatives elusive. Mobile devices are proving to be a critical component of successful enablement programs. Effectively implemented, they provide sellers with engaging content at the right place and time to move a sale forward....Read more
Jason Jordan is Vice President and Partner at Vantage Point Performance, and the author of Cracking the Sales Management Code, and contributed this guest post. I was recently speaking at the American Society for Training and Development’s international conference, and I happened into a conversation that yielded a very interesting...Read more
Research
Testing an Enhanced, Process-Based View of the Sales Process
2 July 2013
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This paper proposes that traditional process-based frameworks of selling may be underspecified given three realities affecting the sales role today: (1) longer sales cycles, (2) an increased customer demand for total solutions, and (3) a shift from a product- to a services-centric economy. An argument is offered that suggests that...Read more
Social media is changing the way sales people interact with buyers and prospects. For sales managers, optimizing the sales organization’s social media utilization is an emerging priority. In this panel discussion, we ask two social media thought leaders to address sales leadership’s challenges and opportunities in managing social media engagement....Read more
As selling gets more complex, salespeople depend more on managers, subject matter experts, and specialized resources to succeed with buyers. How do world-class organizations apply the right resources to the right deals? Join us to learn what world-class organizations do differently to support collaborative culture and effective social sales communities....Read more
“Mobile Sales Enablement†is emerging as an important topic for our audience, judging by the response to several recent webcasts. Mutual Mobile‘s Sam Gaddis and Mike Nowlin’s presentation “Mobile Sales Enablement: What Sales Operations Needs to Know†offered a succinct business case and a summary of benefits for mobile enablement initiatives...Read more
Webcast
Implementing a Successful Coaching Program: Lessons from the Field
24 June 2013
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At some point, most sales forces try to implement a coaching methodology. These programs typically attempt to improve coaching conversations between managers and sellers, and to realize sustainable sales performance improvement. Many fail. So what could they have done differently to increase their odds of success Join researcher and author...Read more
Webcast
Making CRM Talk: Getting to Know Your Customers By Their Data
21 June 2013
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Anyone who uses CRM knows that analyzing the data it holds is a must for supporting sales organizations. Whether it’s monitoring daily wins, deal pipeline or even workforce activity, leveraging CRM data separates exceptional businesses from the rest of the pack. How can CRM data yield insights that go one...Read more
Webcast
The Growing Gap Between Good and Great: Highlights from the 2013 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study
20 June 2013
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The annual Miller Heiman study, now in its 10th year, captures and measures the behaviors, attributes and performance of World-Class Sales Organizations. Miller Heiman's Joe Galvin highlights the 2013 study's most important findings for sales leaders focused on achieving success in the coming year.
This practical, high-impact discussion offers approaches for gauging sales compensation plan effectiveness, and guidelines for identifying potential plan improvements. Topics addressed include: Key Do's and Dont's for Assessing Plan Effectiveness Core Plan Effectiveness Metrics to Utilize Warning Signs to Look For Presented by Shawn Rossi, North American Practice Leader, Sales...Read more
Our recent webcast Building a Winning Sales Management Team: The Force Behind the Force, featured two perspectives on first line sales manager effectiveness. ZS Associates, whose intellectual Godfathers Sinha and Zoltners recently published an eponymous book on this topic, have much to say about sales effectiveness generally, and have focused...Read more
Managing large-scale change initiatives is a priority for most sales organizations. In fact, the prevalence and intensity of change in the sales force means that sales leaders must be among the most adept change managers in the organization. In this Research Update, we review findings from The Sales Management Association’s...Read more
Webcast
Building a Winning Sales Management Team: The Force Behind the Force
6 June 2013
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Would you rather have excellent salespeople with an average sales manager, or average salespeople with an excellent sales manager? Research suggests there is a clear answer - if your focus is on sustained high performance. This webinar combines concepts and strategies from ZS Associates’ recent book, Building a Winning Sales...Read more
Marketers and technologists may be slow to admit this, but great conversations are important to B2B selling. Not in the euphemistic, marketing-speak context of a blog post’s comment thread, or an invitation to “join the conversation” by filling out a web-enabled registration form. We’re talking about honest-to-God conversations, where humans...Read more
Webcast
Mobile Sales Enablement: What Sales Operations Needs to Know
31 May 2013
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The rapid adoption of mobile devices has sales and marketing leaders reinventing how they go to market. Many sales operations departments are embracing mobile in the effort to enable sales organizations. In this webcast, we examine how sales operations can utilize mobile technology to increase win rates, improve sales force...Read more
Webcast
Helping Your Sales Force Break Through the Status Quo Barrier
30 May 2013
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Your biggest competitor is not who you think it is. When 60% of sales are lost to no decision, moving customers off the status quo is key to increasing sales effectiveness and closing more business. Join the Sales Management Association for this Brainshark-sponsored webinar featuring Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategist and...Read more
Each quarter the Sales Management Association publishes a scholarly research article from The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, the most important academic journal wholly focused in sales. In the future, we plan on featuring these articles – and other academic research work – with content that “translates” research...Read more
Symmetrics Group’s Michael Perla recently joined us on a webcast to review findings from our research Annual Sales Meetings – Best Practices in Preparation and Planning. Conducted in collaboration with Symmetrics Group, the research examines how large organizations plan effective annual sales meetings. It includes input from 51 business-to-business sales...Read more
CallidusCloud’s Chris Lesar offered several ideas for improving proposal effectiveness on our recent webcast Optimizing Sales Proposals and Quoting. Lesar frames the discussion by suggesting fouressential elements in a CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quotation) process: Product Selection Proposals Negotiations and Approvals Order Fulfillment Each element poses significant challenges, including delivering...Read more
Sales manager effectiveness contributes mightily to overall sales force productivity, yet many firms are unsure how to develop sales manager talent. This Sales Management Association webcast summarizes results from a recently concluded Research Initiative examining how firms make sales manager training and development investments. Presented by Sales Management Association Chairman...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Annual Sales Meetings — Best Practices in Preparation and Planning
7 May 2013
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For the sales organization, the annual sales meeting can be invaluable for communicating strategic priorities and setting the tone for yearly expectations. This Sales Management Association Research Update examines findings from a recently concluded Research Initiative on examining how large organizations plan for effective annual sales meetings. It provides insight...Read more
We recently completed fascinating research on corporate training and development programs for sales managers. In a recent webcast (Research Update: Developing Sales Managers), research underwriter Business Efficacy’s Kurt Theriault joined me for a preliminary review of the study findings. The research show that firms spend less, per-person, on sales manager...Read more
Technology is enabling new approaches to streamlining sales proposal and quoting processes for sales organizations. This webcast offers instructive insights for firms working to improve proposal and quoting effectiveness. Key topics include a review of: Technology’s role in enabling productivity The impact of improved management control Important process considerations for...Read more
Sales organizations that replicate their top performers’ strengths establish effective practices throughout their sales organization. This webcast focuses on how to identify teachable traits embodied by your best salespeople, and how to promote those traits throughout your organization using tools and technology. Presented by TinderBox and their client, Advisa, this...Read more
We recently featured Splunk sales effectiveness leaders Bart Fanelli and Kym Wood in “Case Study: Sales Enablement at Splunk.” Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) has taken the “big data” space by storm; the firm IPO’d in April. Their webcast is noteworthy on several fronts: it offers great practitioner-focused perspective on effective sales enablement;...Read more
Webcast
Optimizing Sales Territories: Best Practice Planning Approaches
18 April 2013
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Productive sales forces ensure their salespeople are both effective and efficient. That includes focusing sellers on spending the right amount of time with the right opportunities, doing the right tasks. Achieving the optimal balance of salesperson impact and efficiency requires well calibrated planning and support. This Sales Management Association webcast...Read more
Splunk (SPLK) is a leader in "big data," a fast-growing and quickly-evolving market. Splunk's recent IPO and impressive growth are due in no small part to its sales organization's speed and agility. Splunk supports its sales force with a sophisticated enablement strategy using playbooks designed to replicate their best sales...Read more
Webcast
The Perfect Sales Call: Creating Value Customers Will Pay For
5 April 2013
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Are your messages resonating with your prospects and customers? What value or insight do you bring to a sales call? Would they write you a check after a sales call? Many organizations are challenged to differentiate not only what they sell, but how they sell. In this webinar we outline...Read more
Two sales effectiveness leaders discuss how they're addressing key priorities in their organization. Intended as a "practitioner roundtable," our panel also responds to issues submitted by the webcast audience. Topics addressed include mobile enablement, ensuring report quality, soliciting feedback from Sales Operations' internal customers, integrating advanced analytics, and strategies for...Read more
Research
The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Gender on Customer Evaluations During a Web-video Sales Encounter
26 March 2013
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The use of virtual environments as a support platform for demonstrating products and providing after-sales advice is today relatively commonplace. The Web-video interface represents a fundamental shift away from traditional selling atmospherics where the facial appearance of sales personnel replaces many traditional dimensions of service quality. Although salesperson attractiveness has previously been studied...Read more
Mercer’s Shawn Rossi discussed sales strategy development in a recent webcast, Sales Planning and Strategy: Optimizing Resources, Tactics, and Outcomes. Sales strategy, says Rossi, answers three questions: What, How and Where What What is your growth target? Many factors impact this – including budget resources, past achievement, and demand projections. Rossi...Read more
Webcast
Returning to Growth: Eliminating Bad Sales Management Habits
8 March 2013
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The recent economic downturn hurt more than sales performance – it allowed potentially destructive management practices to gain a foothold in many organizations. Hyper-vigilant forecasting, constant reporting, and increased spans of control are some of the sales management approaches borne of necessity in crisis, but which foster dysfunction during recovery....Read more
Webcast
Sales Planning and Strategy: Optimizing Resources, Tactics, and Outcomes
5 March 2013
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Recent surveys of sales, sales operations, and executive leaders found that optimizing “sales strategy” is expected to have the greatest impact on sales force productivity. (Greater than improving pipeline management, quota setting, sales compensation, or sales training.) Given it’s perceived importance, you’d think most companies would be good at sales...Read more
Webcast
Four Steps to Creating an Effective Sales Dashboard
5 March 2013
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Sales executives deal with a daily barrage of data - forecast numbers, pipeline velocity, lead volume, territory effectiveness, win/loss reports. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to consume the data and translate it into better decision-making. How is this accomplished? The answer for an ever-increasing number of successful professionals...Read more
Blog Post
Developing New Business: A Key Emerging Trend in Sales Force Effectiveness
28 February 2013
Richardson’s Mike Kunkle and Dario Priolo recently presented Six Emerging Trends in Sales Force Effectiveness; among the trends they spotlight: a resurgent focus on new account acquisition. Their excellent webcast is archived here. Most markets, they point out, are thawing after the recession’s long winter. But with the relief of...Read more
Webcast
Six Emerging Trends in Sales Force Effectiveness for Sales Managers
24 February 2013
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The past few years have unlocked unprecedented innovation in the areas of sales force effectiveness. More than ever, sales managers have tools at their disposal to help them improve the productivity and success of their sales teams. In this webcast, we discuss six emerging trends that could be the source...Read more
By applying data analytics, sales organizations can increase effectiveness through greater coverage, better-aligned territories, and more timely interventions with at-risk sales people. But few organizations make the best use of data often readily available to management. This webcast describes how sales organizations can get the most out of performance data,...Read more
Webcast
Game On! Why Top Sales Teams Will Coach and Gamify in 2013
31 January 2013
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Cash incentives alone are not sufficient to drive sales force adoption of critical behaviors, tools, and training. Leading sales organizations are turning to "gamification" - the integration of game dynamics – to enhance coaching plans and foster salesperson engagement, and create a culture of constructive competition. Gamification is changing how...Read more
Research
The Role of Top Management in Developing a Customer-Oriented Sales Force
2 January 2013
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Reprinted with permission from The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. A national random sample of industrial salespeople was surveyed to examine the effects of salespeople’s perceptions of top management long-term orientation, top management emphasis, and top management risk aversion on customer-oriented selling behaviors. The results indicated that perceived...Read more
Using emerging mobile technology and a focus on improving sales meeting effectiveness, Recall launched a pilot program to test the effectiveness of virtual sales coaching. This session features their experiences and presents compelling insights into the future of technology-enabled virtual coaching for sales organizations. Presenters focus on technology implementation issues,...Read more
Webcast
High Touch without a Hard Sell: How iPads are Transforming Sales Meetings
13 December 2012
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Tablets are transforming face-to-face selling. More engaging than laptops, and easier to share than mobile phones, tablets are proving useful at overcoming the physical barrier between buyer and seller, making sales meetings more interactive and content-rich. In this webcast we illustrate how sales organizations are using tablets to reimagine sales...Read more
Webcast
Social Media and Sales Management Practice: Research Update
7 December 2012
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Social media has changed the way customers buy, and redrawn relationships between buyers and sellers. In response, sales operations departments are refocusing support investments, and aligning social media strategy with their sales organizations. This presentation features updates to Sales Management Association's recent research initiative on Social Media and the Sales...Read more
For decades, companies have trained and re-trained their sales managers on how to coach their reps. Yet, no organization we’ve met believes that their managers coach well enough or often enough to maximize sales performance. Truth is, the existing coaching models are to blame. These coaching models (and you probably...Read more
Webcast
Comparing Your Incentive Compensation Management to Top Firms’ Programs
19 November 2012
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How does your incentive compensation management program compare to those of other firms? Using data gathered from their 2012 Sales Performance and Technology Survey (administered for the first time this year in conjunction with WorldatWork), OpenSymmetry details what sets the best sales compensation programs apart from those of others. By...Read more
The volume, variety, and velocity of sales and marketing data that executives sift through on a daily basis is overwhelming. Pipeline. Deal Size. Win rates. Lead conversion. Social media sentiment. The data points available for consumption are endless. Join Domo Senior Director of Enterprise Solutions Chris Wintermeyer and Tom Knight, Founder...Read more
Social selling sounds great, but will it drive more revenue? This is one of the most common questions from today’s sales leaders who refuse to buy into investing in social media for their sales teams unless they KNOW that there is tangible ROI. In this Sales Management Association webcast, InsideView's social selling...Read more
Webcast
Transforming the Sales Organization: Change Framework and Case Study
13 November 2012
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Sales transformation is not about tweaking your sales comp plans or having a one-day offsite workshop to review your sales objectives. If transformation were that simple, wouldn’t all under-performing sales organizations be transformed by now? Wouldn’t every sales team exceed its targets, year after year? This Sales Management Association webcast...Read more
Sales managers have an outsized impact on business performance, but garner only a fraction of corporate learning and development efforts. Many company training programs for sales managers simply are not targeted to the sales management job. Instead, they provide generic management training not specific enough to sales team leadership’s unique...Read more
Conference Archives
Motivating Salespeople – What Really Works
25 October 2012
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No sales force consists entirely of stars; sales staffs are usually made up mainly of solid performers, with smaller groups of laggards and rainmakers. Though most compensation plans approach these three groups as if they were the same, research shows that each is motivated by something different. By accounting for...Read more
Conference Archives
Rethinking Sales Pipeline Management
25 October 2012
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Pipeline management describes a sales organization's approach to qualifying, quantifying, prioritizing, and pursuing opportunities. Manage the pipeline well and good things happen: forecasts are more accurate, resources are deployed more efficiently, and sales force productivity increases. However, many traditional pipeline management strategies actually damage pipeline health, leading to erratic forecasts,...Read more
Conference Archives
Technology’s Impact on the Learning Sales Organization
25 October 2012
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Launching a corporate sales training initiative? You'll be sailing into a strong headwind, with two currents of gathering strength. One is the poor ROI on traditional classroom-style classroom training -- a learning mode many firms are divesting in; the second is the force of change buffeting sales organizations. Selling models,...Read more
Conference Archives
Social Media and Sales Management Practice
25 October 2012
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Social media has changed the way customers buy, and redrawn relationships between buyers and sellers. In response, sales operations departments are refocusing support investments, and aligning social media strategy with their sales organizations. This presentation features SMA's recent research initiative on Social Media and the Sales Organization. It captures current...Read more
Conference Archives
Managing Sales Territories for Maximum Sales Force Productivity
25 October 2012
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Well designed territories impact the productivity and efficiency of your sales resources. Effective territory management allows you to quickly respond to changing go-to-market priorities, support the increasing diversity of coverage models and is a critical linchpin of your sales compensation program. This workshop, facilitated by Varicent, an IBM Company and...Read more
Conference Archives
Coaching Implementation Best Practices
25 October 2012
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There’s been a coaching gold rush of sorts over the past few years. Discouraged by traditional training’s meager returns, and attracted by coaching’s promise of performance improvement, hundreds of sales forces have initiated coaching projects. Coaching’s early appeal has worn thin for firms whose coaching programs haven’t yielded productivity gains,...Read more
Conference Archives
Retooling Sales Management to Drive Sales Force Change
25 October 2012
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Sales organizations confront large-scale change initiatives on a regular basis. First-line sales managers are essential to implementing meaningful, sustainable change, particularly in large organizations. This panel discussion explores how firms are implementing sales force-wide change through a focus on transforming the front line sales manager role. Topics include: Sales management's...Read more
Conference Archives
Keynote: Neil Rackham on Sales Management’s New Frontier
24 October 2012
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Neil Rackham leads a thought-provoking discussion about five recent developments redefining selling and sales management as we know it.
Conference Archives
Transforming the Sales Force: How Organizations Are Restructuring, Refocusing, and Reinvesting in the Sales Function
24 October 2012
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All sales organizations focus on incremental improvement; yet for even the most successful, incremental improvement is not always enough. Large-scale, transformational change initiatives that fundamentally realign sales capabilities may be warranted in response to shifts in buyer preferences, competitive pressures, product evolution, or lagging performance. Sales force transformation is a...Read more
Conference Archives
Emerging Management Competencies for Sales Leaders
24 October 2012
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Just as quickly as sales organizations are evolving, so too are the leadership roles guiding them. Sales leaders now need skills different than those of their predecessors, skills essential for guiding organizations through realignments, disruptive market shifts, and technology-enabled productivity increases. Along the way they are expected to assemble high-powered...Read more
Conference Archives
Business Intelligence for the Mobile Sales Manager
24 October 2012
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Mobility and analytics represent two technology trends of supreme importance to sales organizations. Adoption of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, is exploding, while innovations in web technology are delivering critical data in near real-time speed. Sales operations departments now enjoy a range of options for deploying mobile...Read more
Conference Archives
Elevating Sales Leadership and Coaching through Whole Brain Thinking
24 October 2012
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Despite performing at the highest level, professional athletes still depend on coaches for continuous improvement. Similarly, salespeople ? even great salespeople ? can elevate their skills and performance through coaching. Effective sales coaches must critically observe performance, identify development opportunities, and communicate feedback in a meaningful way. But a one-size-fits-all...Read more
Conference Archives
Developing a Change-Ready Sales Culture
24 October 2012
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Sales organizations are change-intensive environments. Continually challenged to be more productive, sales forces must also adapt to quick-moving customer, competitor, and market changes. Many sales leaders attempt to manage change from a reactive posture: playing catch-up with market demands, or defending their organizations from internal competition for resources. Managing change...Read more
Conference Archives
Leveraging Marketing Investments in Sales Performance Management
24 October 2012
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Marketing and sales costs are among most organization's largest expenses, yet most firms believe marketing and sales efforts could be better integrated. This workshop focuses on how two vital sales and marketing processes -- sales territory management and lead generation -- can be aligned to substantially impact sales productivity. Presented...Read more
Conference Archives
Leading the High Growth Sales Organization
24 October 2012
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Leading sales teams in a high-growth environment requires a unique combination of skills and an adaptable, flexible management style. In this panel discussion we explore critical management issues confronting leaders at different levels in high growth sales organizations.
Conference Archives
Building a Winning Sales Management Team
24 October 2012
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While top performing salespeople are key for any successful sales organization, great sales managers can be worth even more. First-line sales managers are the critical link between front-line salespeople, customers, and the company, making them pivotal in sales force success. Sales managers are truly the force behind the force. Yet...Read more
Using emerging mobile technology and a focus on improving sales meeting effectiveness, two firms recently launched pilot programs to test the effectiveness of virtual sales coaching. This session features their experiences and presents compelling insights into the future of technology-enabled virtual coaching for sales organizations. Presenters will focus on technology...Read more
Conference Archives
Case Study: Implementing a Certified Sales Coach Program
24 October 2012
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Organizations committed to coaching excellence must invest in developing managers? coaching capabilities.This workshop profiles Schlumberger's efforts to develop and implement a high-impact sales coaching capability within the firm's sales management corps. Topics include program design, implementation challenges, and best practices for developing a meaningful coaching certification for sales leaders. Also...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Leadership’s Performance Management Tightrope: Balancing Short-Term Targets and Long-Term Goals
24 October 2012
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Sales leaders face extraordinary pressure to balance two competing demands: short-term volume and profit expectations, and the long-term challenge of supporting sustainable growth. Balancing these usually involves some form of smoothing? results ? moderating the highest peaks, and lowest valleys, of unpredictable results. This session details sales leaders' efforts to...Read more
Conference Archives
Jump Starting New Sales Manager Performance: Case Study and Best Practices
24 October 2012
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An effective and fully staffed sales management corps is vital to sales organization productivity, but few organizations adequately prepare leaders for the sales manager role. Without a reliable source of field-ready sales managers, organizations must delay staffing in order to find capable managers, or risk promoting unprepared new managers. Mistakes...Read more
Conference Archives
(Re)making The Case for Sales Coaching
24 October 2012
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That sales managers ought to “coach” their salespeople is a powerful – and popular – notion. Research, including SMA’s, shows that real performance benefits accrue to organizations that coach salespeople, and pundits and professional services firms endlessly promote sales coaching’s important contribution to sales effectiveness. The problem is, most sales...Read more
Conference Archives
Improving Sales Force Productivity – Research Findings From Top Sales Organizations
24 October 2012
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Selling has never been more challenging. Simpler days of pushing products to semi-informed buyers have given way to complex, customer-focused solutions that require in-depth knowledge, collaborative teamwork and flawless execution. Simultaneously, faced with pressures to reduce cost, sales leaders must aggressively pursue increased sales force productivity. Rising to meet the...Read more
The rapid adoption of mobile devices has sales and marketing leaders reinventing how they go-to-market. Tablets, in particular, have demonstrated the potential to drive new revenue growth, differentiate the buying experience, and solve some very big sales productivity problems. These early adopters are building customized mobile sales enablement solutions that...Read more
SMA's 2012 Sales Force Productivity Conference is this week! Attendees, click below to build your agenda, sign up for Speed Networking, or download our mobile conference application.
The “SMART” goal setting methodology is well known (“SMART” goals are “Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-related”). In a recent webcast Iconixx Software’s Bruce Jackson and Carolyn Jenkins described how SMART goal setting should apply to KPI (“Key Performance Indicator”) development. KPIs are often used as a kind of short-hand...Read more
Remember that crummy conference bag you didn’t get at last year’s Sales Force Productivity conference? You’re not getting one at this year’s conference either. Do you need another crummy conference bag? One you schlepp around for three days, full of stuff you aren’t even sure you want? An ugly, logo-slathered...Read more
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 It’s a question he asked the general session...Read more
Research
Revolution in Sales: The Impact of Social Media and Related Technology on the Selling Environment
30 September 2012
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Greg W. Marshall, William C. Moncrief, John M. Rudd, and Nick Lee Republished from The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management Over the years several articles have tracked the impact of technology on various aspects of the sales domain. However, the advent of social media and technologies...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
Sales organizations can’t develop a coaching culture without essential coaching support programs and investments. In this Sales Management Association webcast, we examine the critical elements required for effective sales coaching programs, review how technology can enable organizational coaching effectiveness, and detail best practices in coaching program development. Topics Defining coaching’s...Read more
Webcast
Research Update: Sales Effectiveness in the New Sales Paradigm
26 September 2012
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Earlier this year, Forrester’s Scott Santucci presented new research that detailed how companies across all industries are rethinking their selling systems. It detailed how sales forces are responding to disruptive changes in business-to-business selling. Empowered, digitally-armed and connected buyers are exerting greater control over buyer/seller conversations, and they’re engaging less...Read more
Webcast
Mobile With Impact: Enable Sellers to Inspire Customers
16 September 2012
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Buyers are more connected and empowered than ever before. Sirius Decisions states that “70% of selling occurs before a customer ever makes contact with a sales rep.” How do you enable your sellers to take control of the conversation and execute a successful sales cycle in this dynamic environment Enter,...Read more
Webcast
Is Your Sales Operations Team Ready for 2013?
16 September 2012
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Sales Operations teams face a unique set of challenges. Dealing with sales coverage model changes, aligning resources with territories, and communicating these plans to the field succinctly can be difficult. Many ask, “Are we prepared to handle the changes demanded by our business users?” “Do we really know the impact...Read more
Webcast
Leveraging Your Whole Brain to Improve Sales Coaching
14 September 2012
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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
Webcast
Analyzing Sales Productivity: Using Workload, Opportunity, and Performance Metrics For Sales Territory Intelligence
8 September 2012
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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
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
Webcast
Sales Manager Coach Thyself: The Development Strategy That Dooms Sales Forces to Fail
20 August 2012
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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
Coaching As you read the word ‘coaching’ 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 haven’t 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
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
Webcast
A Blueprint for Productive One on One Sales Coaching
25 July 2012
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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
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
Webcast
The Importance of Key Performance Indicators in Sales Performance Management
24 July 2012
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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
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
iPad adoption hasn’t yet peaked in sales organizations, The Sales Management Association’s recent research shows. Only about one-third of salespeople currently use a tablet, whether it’s their own or a company-furnished device. But there is impressive momentum gathering behind company-sponsored tablet initiatives impacting the sales force. Most sales forces are...Read more
Webcast
Operating Priorities of High Growth Sales Organizations
13 July 2012
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Miller Heiman’s annual study of sales organizations measures what separates “World Class” sales organizations from others. In this Sales Management Association webcast, Miller Heiman’s Joe Galvin details 12 best practice initiatives that characterize World Class sales organizations’ operating priorities. Each initiative is examined from sales operations’ perspective, with emphasis on...Read more
Two-thirds (or more) of sales organization's total spend goes to compensate sales personnel, but how much do sales organizations really focus on the human resources they invest in? In fact, many sales organizations have a fragmented approach to people related processes, unlinked to a comprehensive program, leading to poor performance...Read more
Research
Research Brief: Motivating the Sales Force [Spring 2012 Chapter Focus]
9 July 2012
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This spring's Sales Management Association chapter meetings in Chicago and Atlanta included panel discussions on "Motivating the Sales Force." [Our spring meetings were the first featuring a common topic, something we'll continue as we add new chapters (including Houston and Twin Cities in the fall).] In support of these sessions,...Read more
This spring’s Sales Management Association chapter meetings in Chicago and Atlanta included panel discussions on “Motivating the Sales Force.” [Our spring meetings were the first featuring a common topic, something we’ll continue as we add new chapters (including Houston and Twin Cities in the fall).]. In support of these sessions,...Read more
According to recent Sales Management Association research, sales organizations are poised for a tidal wave of tablet PC adoption. Though only 40% of salespeople are currently equipped with tablets, 70% of executives in sales organizations using tablets are already realizing ROI, and more than 90% of sales organizations plan to...Read more
Sales organizations competing in increasingly commoditized markets seek ways to elevate the sales conversation, sell higher in the organization, and participate earlier in the buying cycle. In short, they seek entirely new ways of engaging prospects. Similarly, buyers are looking for new ways to interact with partners. More than 230...Read more
Webcast
Five Moneyball Metrics Sales Executives Can’t Ignore
14 June 2012
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We're all familiar with the Moneyball story: Billy Beane, General Manager of the struggling Oakland A’s baseball team, bypassed traditional decision-making methods and used data to make smart decisions. Today, many sales executives are overlooking some key Moneyball metrics and still doing business the old-fashioned way. Just as Billy Beane...Read more
Research
Breaking the Sales Force Incentive Addiction: A Balanced Approach to Sales Force Effectiveness
12 June 2012
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Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer Dating back more than a century, companies have used incentives such as commissions and bonuses to motivate anddirect the activities of salespeople. Today, sales force incentives comprise a large portion of sales force pay (approximately 40 percent on average for U.S....Read more
Do you know what the future of sales looks like? Demographics are shifting, the pace of change is accelerating, buyers are more informed, and the threshold for success has never been higher. Effective selling in a B2B world is a function of the salesperson's aptitude and attitude, but also is...Read more
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...Read more
Webcast
Making the Most of Sales Compensation: A Guide for Sales Managers
29 May 2012
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Sales compensation is supposed to be key tool for motivating your team to exceed their sales goals. Too often though, it's a source of complaints and distractions, as the sales organization struggles to make sense of quotas, crediting policies, and confusing plan rules. Learn the role you can play in...Read more
Blog Post
Harvard Business School’s Thought Leadership on the Sales Profession Conference
25 May 2012
Last year I wrote about the state of sales education in business school (“Who’s Focusing on Sales Education Since Top Business Schools Aren’t?”). In it, I assert that top B-schools focus too little on sales research and education, given the sales function’s importance. For good measure, I threw in some...Read more
Social media has changed the way customers buy, and redrawn relationships between buyers and sellers. In response, sales operations departments are refocusing support investments, and aligning social media strategy with their sales organizations. In this Sales Management Association webcast we provide preliminary results from The Sales Management Association's recent research...Read more
Joe Galvin is Miller Heiman’s new Chief Research Officer and EVP. Joe brings to Miller-Heiman a significant following in the sales operations community. Attendees of last year’s Sales Productivity and Performance Management Conference will remember Joe – he moderated several panels and delivered a well-received workshop himself. We’re looking forward...Read more
Implementing new sales organization-wide initiatives, such as a new software platform, is a change management challenge that is easy to underestimate. Key to a successful user adoption campaign is careful planning, proactive training, support tools, and effective communication. In this Sales Management Association webcast OpenSymmetry details how to ease the...Read more
Webcast
People, Process, Performance – Sales Enablement’s Essential Ingredients
17 May 2012
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The concept of “sales enablement” appeals to everyone staked to the sales organization’s success. For salespeople and their managers, it promises shorter learning curves and quicker access to essential information; for IT, sales enablement often involves applying truly innovative technology; and for sales leadership, sales enablement promises a more productive,...Read more
New research shows that few companies are focusing on sales territory optimization. Yet intelligent territory design yields substantial productivity improvements - as much as 10% in a single year - to those firms who embrace it. Optimizing account assignments, territory design, and sales resource deployment might be the single highest-return...Read more
Take a moment to answer this question: How healthy is your sales pipeline at this very moment What was the first idea that popped into your head? That’s right… The size of your pipeline. And your next step was probably to compare it to your overall quota. Three times quota?...Read more
"Sales transformation" initiatives often fail. They aim to increase revenue and margins - and involve investment in new selling programs, processes and methodologies - but too frequently see inadequate results. Why For many, it's because analytics are poorly applied to change initiatives. This Sales Management Association webcast addresses the role...Read more
iPads are portable, compelling, and cost-effective, and they are having no small impact on the sales organization. More powerful than smart phones, and more mobile than laptops, iPads have an additional benefit uniquely suited to sales: they are consummately social devices. That is, they offer an easily share-able user experience....Read more
Webcast
DePaul Center for Sales Leadership Research Update: What Drives Superior Sales Performance?
13 April 2012
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Dave Hoffmeister, Executive in Residence at the DePaul Center for Sales Leadership, provides a research briefing on the important characteristics of high performance sales organizations recently identified in the Center's biennial Sales Effectiveness Survey. Conducted over a six-month period among over 3,000 firms in the US, the results of this...Read more
Increased competition is among the toughest challenges facing sales organizations today. As pricing pressure mounts and customer budgets shrink, sales leaders must bring a new level of innovation to their efforts to beat the competition. In this webinar, AchieveGlobal’s Greg McDonald and Colleen O’Sullivan illustrate how best-in-class companies practice a...Read more
Research
Conquering the Competition: New Strategies for an Age-Old Problem
3 April 2012
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Competition remains one of the most pressing challenges facing sales organizations. And perhaps more concerning, competition is increasing versus years past. In fact, 85 percent of global executives surveyed by McKinsey & Company describe their business environment as more competitive than it was five years ago, largely because of the...Read more
Research
The Perfect Pipeline: How To Measure and Manage a Productive Sales Pipeline
29 March 2012
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There are many different types of interactions that take place between sellers and managers, but there is one particular meeting that stands out as near-universal among business-to-business sales forces: the sales pipeline review meeting. During this discussion, the rep and manager go through individual opportunities in varying degrees of detail...Read more
Research
Challenges of CRM Implementation in Business-to-Business Markets: A Contingency Perspective
23 March 2012
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In this paper, the authors discuss the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in complex and simple selling settings and examine how CRM is implemented in both contexts. Specifically, they suggest that CRM strategies can be implemented from the top-down, originating from top management decisions, or from the bottom-up, stemming from the...Read more
Webcast
Fifth Third Bancorp: How to Execute a Customer Focused Sales Strategy
22 March 2012
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Is your sales team prepared to execute on your 2012 strategy? Strategy execution across a large sales organization requires tight alignment across six dimensions, including: Strategy: Linking sales strategy to business strategy, and Talent: Equipping sales leaders and professionals with strategy specific selling skills Strategy and Talent, while important, are...Read more
Research
Modern Selling: Managing by Exception, Enabled by Analytics
8 March 2012
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Trying to recover ground lost during the recession, many sales organizations are pursuing traditional tactics to increase revenues. They are putting more “feet on the street” and raising quotas or even doing both. They’re hoping that more quota or “demand” will result in more revenue or “supply” but that’s a big risk if...Read more
Executives and senior managers leading transformation initiatives in sales operations need a way to assess the current state of their organizations. The concept of operations maturity constitutes a useful framework for this. The leaders of consulting firm Sales Economics, Inc. explain the meaning of maturity and capability in practice, the pros and cons of...Read more
The Price Waterfall is a great tool for understanding the effect of pricing and discounting – but it’s only a starting point. It is of limited value if it is not preceded and accompanied by efforts directed at the other influences on the pricing operation. Properly linking the Price Waterfall to them is...Read more
Webcast
Building Sales Playbooks: Practitioner Case Study and Best Practices
1 March 2012
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Sports teams use playbooks to organize the complex set of activities needed to execute a game plan, providing a practical instruction guide for coaches and players alike. Now sales managers are adopting the “playbook” concept for constructing sales process guides. They’re finding that sales playbooks provide a helpful framework for...Read more
Managing sales territories and administering sales crediting rules are increasingly complex propositions for sales operations departments. Tracking sales by segment, channel, product, and sales job frequently means assigning credit for one sale to multiple sellers – sometimes a dozen or more in firms with large, overlay sales organizations. Along with...Read more
We're addressing this sales management effectiveness topic in upcoming chapter meetings. Learn more about SMA’s Local Chapters by signing up to attend a meeting (or consider helping us start a chapter!). What makes a motivated sales force? What role do sales leaders play in creating, or enabling (or at least...Read more
Your pipeline is big – really big. So big, you seem to mention it every chance you get: sales meetings, board meetings, customer presentations, cocktail parties, plant tours. In fact, you have a hard time shutting up about your big pipeline. And who can blame you? If given a choice,...Read more
Sales forces often stumble in providing proposals to customers. Offerings are increasingly complicated, and customers more apt to demand customized solutions; as a result, getting approved, accurate proposals in customers’ hands represents a real challenge to many firms. Many are addressing this challenge by investing in cloud-based CPQ solutions, which...Read more
Blog Post
Shotgun! Getting the Most Out of Riding with Your Salespeople. (Actual shotgun not advised)
2 February 2012
Salesperson/manager ride-alongs are common practice; we’d guess almost everyone reading this has participated in one, either from the driver’s seat, or as a shotgun-riding manager. We wondered: how do sales organizations get the most out of these interactions? We asked Catalytic Advisors’ Everett Hill to present a webcast on this...Read more
Webcast
Management By Riding Around: Conducting Ride-Alongs with Salespeople
27 January 2012
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What’s the first thing a sales effectiveness consultant (worth their salt) will build into a proposal? Ride-alongs with your sales organization. The reason is simple: direct observation can tell you almost everything you need to know about a salesperson’s effectiveness. Ride shotgun enough, and you’ll also gain understanding of bigger...Read more
Companies across all industries are rethinking their selling systems. Under continued pressure to improve productivity without raising selling expense, sales forces must now respond to disruptive changes in how customers buy. Empowered, digitally-armed and connected buyers are exerting greater control over buyer/seller conversations, and they’re engaging less with salespeople. Who...Read more
Webcast
Measure What Matters: Evaluating the Success of Sales Transformation
17 January 2012
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Transforming a sales force involves substantial investments of time, people and money. How do firms measure the impact of their sales transformation initiatives, and calculate return on the investments required? This Sales Management Association webcast explores ideas for measuring and maximizing sales transformation investment return. Topics include: Understanding prevailing approaches...Read more
Webcast
Sales Effectiveness Research Findings: 92 Signposts on the Road to 2012 Sales Success
11 January 2012
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In this Sales Management Association webcast, Wendy Reed, EVP Marketing of The TAS Group presents the results of TAS's global Dealmaker Index study, including implications for companies and individuals focused in improving sales performance. Based on an analysis of 92 sales performance factors, mapped against proven successful approaches, the Dealmaker Index...Read more
The most recent update to our annual Sales Operations Issues study includes input from sales operations professionals from 125 firms, with median annual revenue of US$400 million. Highlights include analysis of sales operations departments' accountabilities, roles, and most important issues, respondents' assessment of their current performance in key functional areas,...Read more
We've published a new Research Brief from the smart folks at Sales Economics in the Sales Management Association's Resource Library. The paper poses the question, "Why do companies invest more in engineering how they buy stuff (i.e. their supply chains) than in engineering how they sell stuff?" The article then...Read more
Research
Supply Chain Has an Operations Plan. Does Your Sales Force?
21 December 2011
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Companies typically apply operations strategy to the supply chain, establishing clear principles and processes for operating, directed at specific goals such as reducing costs and speeding up delivery times. The leaders of consulting firm Sales Economics, Inc., explain that applying the same kind of strategy to the sales organization can...Read more
Social media has changed the way customers buy, and redrawn relationships between buyers and sellers. In response, sales operations departments are refocusing support investments, and aligning social media strategy with their sales organizations. In this Sales Management Association webcast, we’ll review how sales forces are harnessing social media to find,...Read more
Research
Management Practices in Solution Sales–a Multilevel and Cross-Functional Framework
15 December 2011
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Business-to-business sales has changed from being an isolated function with little cross-functional influence to becoming an integrated part of long-term customer management and from an operational practice to a strategically focused part of business strategy. This suggests a need to change the unit of analysis from the activities and attributes...Read more
Ever tried to benchmark your sales organization’s performance? It’s not an easy or inexpensive proposition. Finding objective, credible data has usually meant commissioning research, or settling for an apples-to-oranges affair with poorly-matched data. Now Sales Management Association underwriter The TAS Group aims to change that with its new “Dealmaker Index,”...Read more
I recently had occasion to pick up an old copy of Spin Selling, still one of my favorites – which I’d recommend to Sales Management and Sales reps alike. Something caught my attention that I didn’t see the first time around — fast sales cycles are not always the goal....Read more
Sales managers can have an outsized impact on the sales organization’s performance. Why then, do so many companies invest so little in sales manager training? Firms that skimp on sales manager training forgo a critical opportunity to impact overall sales force effectiveness. In this Sales Management Association webcast we outline...Read more
As we meet with potential clients to discuss their businesses, we frequently hear one or another variation of the following lament: "we've signed up a bunch of channel partners but they haven't sold a damn thing!" Unfortunately, this "sign them up and they will sell" mindset is the channel sales...Read more
Sales organizations are constantly innovating. In this webcast, we review three recent practices generating attention from leading sales organizations and solutions providers. These include sales playbooks, portals, and sales enablement platforms. Presented by Callidus/iCentera’s Craig Nelson, Vice President of Sales Enablement, this webcast provides specific examples, documents best practices, advises...Read more
Webcast
Quota Setting Best Practices for Sales Operations
19 October 2011
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Effective quota-setting programs are essential for growth planning, strategy, enabling productivity, and measuring results. Drawing from Better Sales Comp Consultants' recently-concluded research on sales operations’ quota-setting practices, this webcast features insights on what’s working for sales operations practitioners. Presenters include BSCC's Ted Briggs and Clinton Gott, and Fred Sass, Director of Product Marketing at Varicent Software....Read more
Conference Archives
Predictive Analytics for Sales Leaders: What You Need to Know
19 October 2011
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Companies today are awash in data and metrics, creating information overload for sales leaders and sales people. Most sales reporting dissects what happened yesterday ? what we have already sold. What is important is what will likely happen tomorrow ? what we will sell - and then taking action to...Read more
Conference Archives
The Science of Sales Force Deployment
19 October 2011
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Management's impact on sales productivity begins before the first sales call is made, when the sales deployment model is established. Sales deployment decisions define the who, what, when, where, and how of customer coverage - addressing how many and what type of salespeople will contact which customers with what frequency....Read more
Conference Archives
The Truth About Sales Transformation
19 October 2011
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Sales transformation is a catch phrase on the lips of sales leadership. The current environment is testing traditional selling models as never before, through shifts in buying behavior, new technologies, demand volatility, and increased competition. In response, many sales leaders acknowledge that only substantial, transformative change will properly re-orient their...Read more
In the 2003 best seller and now major motion picture "Moneyball," we learn how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane used data-driven management to reshape a laggard major league baseball team into a world-class winner. Instead of focusing on traditional metrics, Beane discovered that winning baseball games was more strongly...Read more
Conference Archives
Investing in Front-Line Sales Management- Two Case Studies
19 October 2011
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Too often, front-line sales managers are poorly supported and inadequately trained. That's changing as firms acknowledge sales management's pivotal importance in driving sales performance. How are leading firms investing in the sales management position, and what returns do these investments yield? In this session Microsoft's and Baker-Hughes' sales management development...Read more
Conference Archives
Increasing Revenue Performance Through Intelligent Sales Forecasting
19 October 2011
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How can you increase win rates and accelerate revenue? With all the attention our organizations focus on the sales forecast, you would think we d have better techniques and technology by now! In this interactive workshop, Cloud9 Analytics' Tracey Kaufman leads discussionon how
Conference Archives
The Critical Role of Coaching in Sales Performance Management
19 October 2011
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Analytics matter very much in managing sales organizations. But focusing on analytics alone can not assure results. Afterall, sales numbers won't change by looking at them. What does change performance? It's useful to consider how every other performance-based profession has answered this question. In doing so you'll arrive at one...Read more
Conference Archives
Measuring Return on Sales Performance Management
19 October 2011
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Sales Performance Management (SPM) software solutions promise to enable and automate crucial aspects of sales management; and interest in these solutions is surging. How are practitioners using SPM, and are they realizing value from SPM investments? In this panel discussion, we'll examine the impact of SPM from the perspective of...Read more
Conference Archives
Analytics for Measuring Sales Force Effectiveness
19 October 2011
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How do sales leaders know if their sales teams are effective? What measures provide the most accurate insight? Common measures of effectiveness? include the sales force's ability to achieve goals set by management; their production of sales revenue, profit, or volume; or their sustained impact on assigned customers? growth. Yet...Read more
Conference Archives
Enabling Sales Coaching: Implementing Structured Coaching Interactions and Supporting Them With Tools.
19 October 2011
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Sales coaching interactions are effective when they are focused on specific behaviors, structured in a consistent format, and enabled with useful tools. This workshop suggests how to organize coaching interactions, and illustrates one firm's approach to coaching tool creation and use. Using sales processes based on basic selling activities, Schlumberger...Read more
Conference Archives
Sales Management: The Force Behind the Force
18 October 2011
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Great salespeople are worth their weight in gold, but great managers of salespeople are worth even more. First-line sales managers have the biggest impact on sales productivity because they play an outsized role in determining who sells, how and where they sell, how (and how quickly) they improve, whether the...Read more
Conference Archives
Adapting the Sales Force For Success: A Leadership Call to Action
18 October 2011
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Across the globe, sales organizations are adapting to new sales and marketing rules. Buyers have more information at their fingertips than ever bef