The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The Pareto principle has been applied to everything from farming and land ownership to productivity and employee performance since the Italian economist Vincent Pareto first coined it in 1896.

This post was originally published on Business.com.

Top sales managers don't just look for candidates when they need them — they keep in contact with potential team members to build an internal pipeline of interested and engaged salespeople.

The best products and services in the world don't hold up a company if no one buys them.

Most companies depend on salespeople to bridge the gap between production and purchase. When high-performing sellers leave, sales managers scramble to fill their roles. In the ensuing chaos, they usually hire the first competent person to walk through the door.

Every relationship has ups and downs, and that includes relationships between coworkers.

The members of your sales team might be going through problems at home that can cause problems at work.

There might be conflicts with other members of the sales team.

When problems exist in other areas of life, it can affect the accountability of the whole sales team or individual team members. Either way, it's possible to remedy the situation and make accountability a priority for your team.

As a sales manager, it’s important that you continually take new courses of action to help your team generate more sales.

Here are six practical methods you should consider.

In 2022, we're challenging you to reconsider the way you're doing business to improve your sales performance.

The sales process is constantly changing and it's changing more rapidly than ever, yet there's a generation of salespeople still selling like it was any year before 2009.

Also in the mix are sales managers not adept to the evolving sales world, and therefore, might struggle to lead their team to good sales results.

Approximately 1.2 million employees were laid off or discharged in December 2021. As businesses recover from the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying redundancies is essential for growth.

But what is redundancy?

In this article, we explain how overlooking signs of redundancy is affecting your business and how you can start strategizing for redundancy.

SCENARIO: For the first time in a long time, you have sales positions open, but the most talented salespeople likely are already employed elsewhere. 

Even the most successful sales managers can find themselves in this situation if they aren't intentional with their management practices and focused on retention.

Recruiting and filling your talent bank is important. Even so, don't lose focus on the effort it takes to retain top talent. There’s always a strain on your resources when you try to scramble to fill a vacant sales position, but it’s a double-whammy when the vacancy is left by your superstar performer.

Inquiry is a powerful motivator. We use it to fuel conversations, problem-solve, and, ultimately, improve sales performance.

High-value questions are a driving force to much-needed mental shifts — especially in today’s environment. When your mindset changes, so does your behavior. As sales leaders, we can’t control market conditions, but we can influence a few things — like choices.

Below are five questions we challenge sales leaders to ask their salespeople every week if they want to improve sales performance, fill their funnel full of new prospects, and increase customer loyalty.

This episode of Improving Sales Performance takes an interesting twist where host Matt Sunshine interviews a big competitor of The Center for Sales Strategy. And while we are competitors, there is one thing we absolutely agree on, and that is creating impact for clients. 

Tune in as Jim Doyle and Matt Sunshine discuss servant leadership, selling with a servant heart, and lessons to help sales leaders coach, lead, and manage servant heart sellers.

Technology has disrupted the traditional techniques we have used to approach prospects. Today, the most successful developers of new business have a smart and focused prospecting strategy.  They concentrate their efforts on a disciplined strategy that provides more appointments and more revenue. 

The shotgun approach of yesteryear is dead. Before technology disrupted our approach, we could sit down, call 100 prospects, and get ten appointments. Any mention of not having enough appointments was met by your sales manager with, “This is a numbers game! Sit down with the phone, and don’t quit calling until you get ten appointments.” 

Today that strategy is total folly.