Many books have been written on leadership and many workshops given for leaders on how to build sales teams and influence positive change in cultures. Some observations:
Loretta Lage, on December 29, 2015
Many books have been written on leadership and many workshops given for leaders on how to build sales teams and influence positive change in cultures. Some observations:
Jim Thompson, on December 28, 2015
The most important job of managers is to coach, develop, and maximize the talents of their direct reports—sales managers developing salespeople and general managers developing sales managers. When people are maximizing the talents they have, sales and productivity will follow.
Here are my top 6 recommendations to improve sales culture and make sure management is getting the most from the talents of the team.
LeadG2, on December 24, 2015
Merry Christmas to each of you! We hope you all have a very happy holiday, however you are celebrating! While you're kicking back and enjoying the time away from work, you can track Santa's progress!
Mindy Murphy, on December 21, 2015
When you pay attention, a holiday party can tell you a lot about your team’s talents. And what you learn about each person could change the way you coach them, and make them more successful.
Recently, I talked with a sales manager who took his team on a bowling outing to celebrate the holiday season. It was a fun team building activity, and it also taught him a lot about each person’s strengths.
The organized, fun salesperson on his team planned the entire outing down to the bowling teams and the gift exchange. Everything was perfect, and everyone had a great time.
The relationship seller got everyone to participate in a hilarious game where you eat disgusting flavored jelly beans. Everyone did what she asked and completely trusted her when she said, “it’s really not that bad.”
LeadG2, on December 18, 2015
Here we are at the end of another week, and the weekend before the holiday! In this post, we'll look at how to make sure you don't come back to an overflowing inbox and how you can use the downtime to plan to make 2016 your most successful sales year yet!
We love the start of a new year because it's a great opportunity to set new goals and get a fresh start. This post from Salesforce suggests 5 excellent goals for the new year that will boost your company's sales.
Brian Hasenbauer, on December 16, 2015
“Co-branding, also called brand partnership, is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy.”
Who wants to be average? If you knew that the average webinar according to Clickmeeting.com had only 28 participants, wouldn’t you want to beat that average? (28 participants does not necessarily indicate only 28 people registered—this means that 28 people attended the webinar at the scheduled time. Many more probably registered, but those whose schedules don't allow live attendance will only watch the webinar recording.)
If getting 28 people to attend your webinar seems like a lot for the size of your company, or if you want to exceed that average number, you might want to consider some alternative methods to getting more registrants. One alternative to the common promotion techniques of social, email and advertising is to use some form of co-branding.
Matt Sunshine, on December 15, 2015
The holidays are the perfect time to show your team how much you appreciate them. But sometimes it's hard to think of meaningful gift ideas. We've got you covered this year! We collected ideas from our sales consulting staff here at The Center for Sales Strategy (each of whom was once a salesperson and a sales manager) to share with you. Here are 12 gift ideas you can't go wrong with.
Matt Sunshine, on December 14, 2015
More and more, I am hearing from our clients that the single toughest thing for salespeople to do these days is to secure quality appointments. Just so we are all on the same page, a quality appointment meets the following criteria:
Having salespeople cold call for hours upon hours is not efficient—it's expensive and it's very 1990’s.
LeadG2, on December 11, 2015
Hope you all have had a wonderful week! It's Friday, and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.
We've all been in those meetings: the kind that are a complete waste of time and that bore us to tears. But meetings don't have to be useless. This infographic offers nine ways to make them more effective.
Brian Hasenbauer, on December 9, 2015
Like many of you reading this, I would much rather read an email or visit a website to learn about a product or service than talk directly to a salesperson. And forget about meeting a sales representative in person.
Nothing against salespeople—I was one myself at one time. We will truly never be able to replace salespeople in the sales process, but we need to adapt to the reality that most buyers aren't ready to talk with salespeople early in the buying journey. Yet we need to be present at the early stages of the buying journey. We need to give our marketing a real voice in order to build trust and deepen relationships that will lead to an in-person sales discussion.
It's often been said that people do business with people they know, like and trust, and I wholeheartedly agree. The challenge we have as marketers is how best to get people to know and like us and our company's products and services—and more importantly, how to trust us.
Some of the most popular methods of communication that marketers use to help us get to know, like and trust a a company are videos, podcasts and webinars.
Let's look at a few distinctions between videos, podcasts and webinars to see why webinars are becoming so popular.
LeadG2, on December 4, 2015
We've come to the end of the week, so it's Friday and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.
One of the main purposes of the Marketing team is to set the Sales team up for success. This post digs into how to streamline marketing operations for efficiency and effectiveness.
John Henley, on December 1, 2015
Today’s sales leaders have to be much better at managing change than at any time in the recent past. It’s part of the job now. But just because change is more common and comes faster, doesn’t mean that people are suddenly much better at handling it. It still takes a gifted leader to help salespeople respond well.
I help a lot of companies manage change and I suggest 8 action steps leaders should take to help their team embrace change. Before I get to those, some thoughts on change:
There are several “change models” out there, but one that is familiar to most is:
