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The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Deborah Fulghum

Deborah Fulghum

As a Senior Talent Analyst for The Center for Sales Strategy, Deborah helps companies identify top talent, develop natural strengths, and coach teams to utilize their talents for success. As someone addicted to positive cultures, she is also on the Up Your Culture team, where she coaches managers to improve employee engagement and elevate company culture.

Recent Posts by Deborah Fulghum:

The Impact of Leadership on Sales Talent Retention

The Impact of Leadership on Sales Talent Retention

The role you play as a leader in the retention of your salespeople has a huge impact on your business. The more you develop yourself as a leader, the greater influence you have on keeping the team you built in place.

This is important because when your salespeople stay, your organization has the ability to retain customers and maintain a loyal customer base, which leads to your success.

When you have effective leadership practices in place, you can create an environment that fosters a positive work environment, building strong relationships and helping to develop a customer-minded approach. With this attitude, your people will be more willing to stay and give their best every day.

Topics: sales talent employee retention

Top 5 Ways to Develop Sales Leaders

Top 5 Ways to Develop Sales Leaders

The influence a manager has on your culture and the engagement of those they manage is enormous. According to a Gallup study, 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.

Knowing this, the time and investment you make in your management team is important to your company’s success. Having a plan for their development (or yours) needs to be a priority.

According to the Engage 2023 Report, nearly half (49%) of survey respondents shared that their company is only somewhat focused or not focused at all on employee development. It is time to change that dynamic so your company flourishes.

It takes commitment and dedication from their leadership to help set the tone and expectations for managers. Don’t assume that only new managers need attention. Even with years of management experience, there are still many opportunities for growth for everyone who leads a team.

Finding new ways to develop effective leaders can be challenging, and you may need a few ideas to add to your portfolio. Here are a few to get you started.

Topics: 360 coaching

How to Build Trust Virtually

How to Build Trust Virtually

Trust is fundamental in any highly engaged, high-performing team. Without trust and integrity, people question why they want to work for a company or manager who doesn’t have convictions. When asked, highly engaged employees describe their companies and leaders as “authentic” or “genuine.”

Building trust takes time. Whether in person or virtually, it can take months or years to build a solid base of trust, but it takes just minutes to lose it. Trust is ever-evolving and something you need to be mindful of every day.

Topics: company culture build trust

31 Books We Read in 2022 For Personal Development

2022 Books

At our company, our employees crave growth and development. One way we add to this focus is through our quarterly book club. Our business book club is different from most, as we all read a book we are interested in, not one we all read together.

Having a book club where we all read different business books exposes us to a huge library to explore that we may not have thought of before. It also allows us to grow in areas that appeal to us.

Reading is one of the major habits successful people have in common. For instance, Bill Gates reads 50 books per year, Warrant Buffett reads 500 pages every day, and Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours a day.

Topics: developing strengths company culture

How to Improve Business Acumen

How to Improve Business Acumen

The most successful leaders understand business and are conceptual thinkers.

They naturally see the bigger picture of what is ahead and consider the cause and effect of their actions. Their natural curiosity leads them to be forward-thinking, taking chances to adapt to what is needed for future success.

With this ability, their analytical thinking affords them to make sound decisions and learn from mistakes made along the way.

Topics: business acumen

Invest in Your Top Sales Talent

Invest in Your Top Sales Talent

As a sales manager, your time is valuable, and managing your sales team tops the list of priorities. How much time and with whom you spend your time is critical to achieving sales goals.

But where to start? Most of us spend time with those we think need the most attention, those not meeting goals. Our instincts are to “fix” people. But take a minute to consider if this is a good use of your time.

What if you spent time with your top performers instead? Focusing on people development is a key to employee engagement and retention, which leads to bottom-line growth.

Topics: Sales

21 Books on Our Shelves for Personal and Professional Development

21 Books on Our Shelves for Personal and Professional Development

Creating an environment where employees can develop is important to both their personal and career growth.

When you create a work environment that fosters a culture of learning for you and your employees, you will reap many positive returns.

Topics: developing strengths company culture

Team Development Through Reading—Books We Read in 2020

Team Development Through Reading

At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we are a team of extremely high achievers. We’re always looking for ideas for self-improvement. So much so, that in our annual Employee Engagement survey each year, learning and development are always at the top of the list of what our team craves.

Knowing this, we add learning opportunities in multiple ways. One important development opportunity comes through the CSS Quarterly Book Club.

Topics: professional development books learning development

6 Creative Recruiting Ideas to Help Keep Your Talent Bank Full

6 Creative Recruiting Ideas to Help Keep Your Talent Bank Full

Managers often reach out to us looking for creative ways to recruit top-talent to their companies.

Unfortunately, most wait until they're in need, when in reality, consistent searching and recruiting to keep their talent banks full would not only prepare them for the future, but also save them money and time when the time comes to fill a position on their team.

Topics: recruitment talent bank sales talent

Virtual Onboarding: Examples, Advice, and a Checklist

Virtual Onboarding Examples, Advice, Checklists

Creating a culture of engagement is more important than ever as we work in a virtual world.

Showing that you care and are invested in the growth of your people matters. And it’s important to remember that the relationships you develop with your people will directly impact productivity and profit. One fact found in the 2020 Talent Magazine states, “Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.”

When should your relationship with people start? Before they walk in the door for their first day on the job.

However, if you’ve transitioned to a remote workforce and never conducted virtual onboarding, you may find yourself challenged on how to develop these relationships and help new hires get started off on the right foot.

Topics: sales performance onboarding company culture