Sales leaders are adapting to an unprecedented amount of uncertainty, disruption, and change. Consider just the past five years – a period which saw sales forces roiled by the abrupt onset of a global pandemic, and then an uncertain recovery with accompanying swings in demand, supply shortages, and financial markets. Compounding these challenges: an uncertain...
Without capable planning, sales forces find it difficult to allocate resources, manage performance, and implement change. Yet few sales organizations plan effectively, and planning competency is too frequently a skill deficit for many sales managers. This session considers the planning disciplines needed in sales management, and profiles sales organizations that plan effectively. These organizations are...
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 to assemble high-powered sales teams,...
Sales organizations in many sectors are suddenly finding salesperson hiring and retention more difficult. This seems to be due in part to one of the pandemic’s enduring impacts: redrawn expectations of employers from many workers. These changing expectations are amplified by the workforce’s younger-skewing demographics, and its shrinking supply. In a sellers’ labor market, sales...
Few sales leaders could have predicted the talent management challenges facing sales organizations in 2022. As unfilled job openings soar, managers now find it necessary to rethink decades old approaches to salesperson hiring and retention. For firms attempting to upgrade the sales force’s capabilities, these challenges are especially daunting. This session explores how sales organizations...
Sales organizations can sometimes have distinct cultures – unique combinations of values, traits, and characteristics that define their salespeople and approach to selling. Recent SMA research identifies strong correlation between firms with distinctive sales culture and firm sales productivity. In this session, we explore the origins and influences on sales culture, its impact on sales...
Technology has profoundly changed the sales function over the past four decades, but many observers believe the most substantial technology-driven impact is currently on our doorstep, in the form of generative AI. Experience has shown that sales organizations are more likely to integrate technology into adapted sales roles, rather than replace sales workers wholesale with...
An emergent function of the subscription economy, Revenue Operations (RevOps) departments are integrating approaches to three often siloed, customer facing functions: demand generation, customer acquisition, and customer adoption and retention (or “customer success”). RevOps has two earmarks of a management fad: a rebadging of old concepts, and a commercial class of evangelical boosters, each with...
Advances in commercial software continue to impact sales organizations, who now evaluate, implement, and integrate applications in a semi-constant state of “sales stack” optimization. For salespeople, the result may be a dog’s breakfast of poorly coordinated tools. It’s likely that many organizations see disappointing returns in their sales stack technology investments; SMA’s research shows a...
Watch in horror as four overly argumentative sales thought leaders publicly engage in a moderated, Oxford-style audience debate. Their topic: Over the next 10 years, investments in technology will yield greater productivity gains for sales organizations than will investments in talent development. Paired teams will prepare in advance both an affirmative and negative case. Then,...
Few functions within the firm confront as much change as sales organizations. In the past five years, they’ve adapted to a global pandemic, then an uneven return to normalcy; they’ve been whipsawed by sudden spikes in demand and product supply, uncertain labor markets and worker shortages, and the introduction of new generative AI tools, technology...
Salespeople now work in less predictable operating environments, adapting and improvising to a greater degree than last generationâs sales force. In response, leading sales organizations are dismantling the aging conventions that have defined sales training over the past five decades. Theyâre moving away from classroom-centered and in-person, instructor-led training and toward learning delivery that is...
Almost all sales organizations operate in change-intensive environments, forced to respond to shifts in competition, demand, labor markets, and buyer preferences. Firms are increasingly likely to embark on large-scale sales transformation initiatives; SMA’s research shows an average interval of just three years between such comprehensive change initiatives in large organizations. As a result, senior sales...
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 to assemble high-powered sales teams,...
Few sales leaders could have predicted the talent management challenges facing sales organizations in 2022. As unfilled job openings soar, managers now find it necessary to rethink decades old approaches to salesperson hiring and retention. For firms attempting to upgrade the sales force’s capabilities, these challenges are especially daunting. This session explores how sales organizations...
An emergent function of the subscription economy, Revenue Operations (RevOps) departments are integrating approaches to three often siloed, customer facing functions: demand generation, customer acquisition, and customer adoption and retention (or “customer success”). RevOps has two earmarks of a management fad: a rebadging of old concepts, and a commercial class of evangelical boosters, each with...
Salespeople now work in less predictable operating environments, adapting and improvising to a greater degree than last generationâs sales force. In response, leading sales organizations are dismantling the aging conventions that have defined sales training over the past five decades. Theyâre moving away from classroom-centered and in-person, instructor-led training and toward learning delivery that is...
Sales leaders are adapting to an unprecedented amount of uncertainty, disruption, and change. Consider just the past five years – a period which saw sales forces roiled by the abrupt onset of a global pandemic, and then an uncertain recovery with accompanying swings in demand, supply shortages, and financial markets. Compounding these challenges: an uncertain...
Without capable planning, sales forces find it difficult to allocate resources, manage performance, and implement change. Yet few sales organizations plan effectively, and planning competency is too frequently a skill deficit for many sales managers. This session considers the planning disciplines needed in sales management, and profiles sales organizations that plan effectively. These organizations are...
Sales organizations in many sectors are suddenly finding salesperson hiring and retention more difficult. This seems to be due in part to one of the pandemic’s enduring impacts: redrawn expectations of employers from many workers. These changing expectations are amplified by the workforce’s younger-skewing demographics, and its shrinking supply. In a sellers’ labor market, sales...
Sales organizations can sometimes have distinct cultures – unique combinations of values, traits, and characteristics that define their salespeople and approach to selling. Recent SMA research identifies strong correlation between firms with distinctive sales culture and firm sales productivity. In this session, we explore the origins and influences on sales culture, its impact on sales...
Technology has profoundly changed the sales function over the past four decades, but many observers believe the most substantial technology-driven impact is currently on our doorstep, in the form of generative AI. Experience has shown that sales organizations are more likely to integrate technology into adapted sales roles, rather than replace sales workers wholesale with...
Advances in commercial software continue to impact sales organizations, who now evaluate, implement, and integrate applications in a semi-constant state of “sales stack” optimization. For salespeople, the result may be a dog’s breakfast of poorly coordinated tools. It’s likely that many organizations see disappointing returns in their sales stack technology investments; SMA’s research shows a...
Watch in horror as four overly argumentative sales thought leaders publicly engage in a moderated, Oxford-style audience debate. Their topic: Over the next 10 years, investments in technology will yield greater productivity gains for sales organizations than will investments in talent development. Paired teams will prepare in advance both an affirmative and negative case. Then,...
Few functions within the firm confront as much change as sales organizations. In the past five years, they’ve adapted to a global pandemic, then an uneven return to normalcy; they’ve been whipsawed by sudden spikes in demand and product supply, uncertain labor markets and worker shortages, and the introduction of new generative AI tools, technology...
Almost all sales organizations operate in change-intensive environments, forced to respond to shifts in competition, demand, labor markets, and buyer preferences. Firms are increasingly likely to embark on large-scale sales transformation initiatives; SMA’s research shows an average interval of just three years between such comprehensive change initiatives in large organizations. As a result, senior sales...