The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

- MOTIVATION -

"Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.”

- Siva Devaki

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Have you ever come back to your office after a solid Needs Analysis meeting and shared the exciting news with your manager?

As you sit down to recap, your manager starts to ask you questions about the prospect, and you realize you can’t answer them.

Critical information that you need was never even discussed. The assignment that you uncovered and thought was strong is actually vague, and you begin to understand clearly that you're missing key pieces of information.

You start to deflate as you realize this meeting wasn’t as good as you thought after all.

To set your organization up for long-term success, you need more than just a goal. You need a strategic plan, and that’s where target drives come in.

How do you do a target drive? Why do you need help with them? And a question many sales leaders want to know, what does "good" look like?

In this episode, Alina McComas, VP / Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy, discusses how sales leaders can make an impact on their sales planning through Target Drives. Plus, she gives brand-new data related to top-performers!

Tune in now or keep reading for a brief overview.

It's obvious why sales performance is a crucial part of any organization. Good sales performance leads to increased sales and greater profits. These results become a motivating factor for your sales force.

A motivated sales team will perform well. This creates a cycle of continued success. However, it's often hard to achieve. 

Poor sales performance results in lost time and increased costs. Sales managers end up spending 90% of their time trying to manage poor sales performance. Your organization can avoid this by implementing an effective sales performance strategy.

This will facilitate the productive use of your sales managers' time and a motivated sales force that helps improve your company's bottom line. Read on to learn more about sales performance and how you can improve it with a comprehensive strategy.

Companies with highly-engaged employees grow revenue 2.5x as much as those who don't, and engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization. Creating and building a company culture of engagement is vital to a healthy company and business growth.

- MOTIVATION -

"Change your thinking, change your life.”

- Ernest Holmes

- AROUND THE WEB -

<< If you only read one thing >>

We’re all guilty of throwing around the terms “thought leader” and “thought leadership.”  These days the terms are so often used that we forget what they actually mean.

In fact, Inc Magazine states that the term "thought leader" is one of the most misunderstood titles in business. Tied for first is the term "influencer." 

Is sharing content on social media considered thought leadership? Do you need 10K LinkedIn followers to reach the status of a “thought leader?”

The short answer is no. We all have the ability and opportunity to be thought leaders just by educating, improving, and adding value to our industry as a whole.

To establish the foundation for sustainable business growth, a solid sales structure must be built layer by layer. People, resources, and processes must align and work together to produce the best results for your organization.

Is your current sales structure designed for the results you want?

In Episode 26, Mike Paterson, President / General Manager at Mid-West Family Illinois, discusses how sales leaders can make an impact on their sales process through sales structure.

Tune in now to hear the Live broadcast or keep reading for a brief overview.

Recently, I sat on a panel about sales and marketing, and during the presentation, another fellow panelist said, 'Email is dead! Social media is where to reach your people!' Well... I laughed (internally, of course)... but was he right?

Surely not. 

A bucket list is an ultimate list of things you would love to have happen, or be able to do, at least once in your lifetime.

While many of us use bucket lists for personal achievements, we couldn't help but wonder what's the ultimate bucket list for a sales manager look like? Improving sales performance in your organization is critical. But how will you get there?

We invited several of our team members to help compile this list, which is certainly not a complete list, so we invite you to add to it in the comment box below.