When hiring a sales manager ideally you want someone who is wired to coach and grow your team.
Many sales people are wired to compete and win, not to be nurturers and coaches. When interviewing for sales managers, I’ve found this one question is a tell all.
The fact is, I’ve had only a small handful of candidates answer this question really well.
What if 10 years ago I told you that the average adult in 2018 would spend 11 hours a day interacting with media? Would you have believed me?
It goes without saying that in sales those who have advanced communication skills are more likely to be able to sell more complex deals, write more business, and convert a higher percentage of that business.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll paint a picture by sharing two examples with you:
Plan a joint sales call with each of your representatives Ask each of them to prepare a pre-call plan for the meeting that includes:
So why would a leader discourage curiosity in a business or a sales force, when both employees and leaders know it is so important?
Are you curious to know why?
Shocking as it is, leaders discourage curiosity in a business or a sales force, when both employees and leaders know it is important
Turns out according to research by Francesca Gina, a professor at Harvard Business School (HBR Journal September-October
Landing great questions takes some practice
Anyone in a role where influencing matters most of the time or some of the time can drastically improve their communication effectiveness through improved question asking skills
Being in the business of sales and sales development, my role over the years has required that I wear many hats During a typical week I often wear the hat of sales leader, salesperson, trainer, coach,
No matter what your organic growth strategy is, having well-trained talent to support that strategy is a key ingredient.
Recently, I read a Harvard Article, How We Made our Sales Training More Effective by Making it Harder by Jeff Winters, it made me chuckle. So many companies view training as simply a box they need to check. It looks good if I give my team some training, or I’m expected to give them training, etc. Consequently, companies typically chose training that is easy for everyone involved.
Protecting margin is one of the key aspects of “perform” for a sales force.
Recently we were gaining insight into one of our customer’s sales goals. To do this we explored the current Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) they used to measure sales success. We then asked them to share how top performers were doing against the KPI’s.
What we heard was not as uncommon as you might think. The senior team shared that they were having challenges around defining their top performers. Why? There are several reasons top performers are mislabeled. In this case, it was one of the most common mistakes.
Do you find your focus on current accounts at the cost of acquiring new ones?
On one hand, it’s good business to focus on customer retention. Studies cite that the cost of acquiring a new customer ranges from 5 to 25 times the cost of retaining a current customer.
How important is sales coaching to your team’s success?
Our results show that when the sales manager is actively involved in Momentium and reinforces what is learned, sales lift is increased and into the double digits
As it turns out, 74% of top performing companies say that sales coaching is the most important factor in sales enablement and readiness
And perhaps most importantly, 46% of sales representatives
