The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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"BECOME THE PERSON WHO WOULD ATTRACT THE RESULTS YOU SEEK."

-JIM CATHCART

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How to Get the Most Out of Time Spent Coaching Your Sales Team — LinkedIn

I recently attended a session at a conference that centered around incorporating authenticity into account-based marketing, also known as ABM. If you are not familiar with ABM, it’s simply a strategic approach to focus an organization's B2B sales and marketing efforts on a defined group of high-potential targets instead of everyone, in an effort to create more personalized messaging and content to increase engagement. 

As we approach the end of another year, many people are planning for 2019. Today, I'm challenging you to consider how you are going to change the way you are doing business to improve your sales performance.

Over the years I’ve written posts about my favorite NFL team, the Cleveland Browns. Most of my previous posts reflected on their losing ways and focused on “what not to do” as a manager.

This post is different. This post sheds a positive light on the Browns related to activating talent and tells a nice story about how a new leader transformed the same players from losers to winners by changing five things. 

Imagine that: The same players being coached (managed) differently producing significantly different results!

- MOTIVATION -

"WELL DONE IS BETTER THAN WELL SAID."

-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

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Strengthen Your Sales Management Techniques for 2019 — LinkedIn

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on Salesandmarketing.com.

If you’re a sales manager, you know this to be true: Having that tough conversation with a salesperson who isn’t meeting goals is never fun. Telling people they’re not meeting expectations and inspiring them to turn things around isn’t easy. In fact, most of the time, it’s downright uncomfortable. Alas, it is absolutely essential.

What does it take to transform this dreaded responsibility into a positive, fulfilling part of your day? It’s all about dialing down “telling” and ramping up “showing.”

Which of the following will generate the highest return?

• More customers
• Keeping customers longer
• More revenue per customer

Any one of these can grow revenue. But one has been shown to consistently bring in a higher return on your investment. Most businesses say they are focused on these in the order of the list: adding more customers, than keeping them longer, and finally getting more revenue per customer.

The problem is that the research shows that a focus on more customers is the wrong path to maximize your return. And that it leads you to build the wrong solutions.

Well, you wouldn’t be alone — I hear this from sales managers all the time. Here are the reasons I see that salespeople too often select the wrong companies to pursue:

• They are opportunistic and therefore look for low-hanging fruit where getting access to decision makers is relatively easy. Sometimes that works out, but too often it translates into prospects that do not have the resources to be a key customer in your organization.
  
  
• They let their own preferences dictate who they pursue. There might be particular categories they are comfortable with, or types of individuals they like to deal with that prejudice their thinking about who they should pursue as a prospect.

The advertising game for traditional media is changing and evolving. In this case, change is not a good thing. It’s time for a revolution on your sales team. Are you ready? 

This sounds kind of dramatic, perhaps over-dramatic, but it is true. Some type of revolution needs to take place on your sales team in order for traditional media companies to stay in the game. 

Need proof? Here are some samples of reality: