Many sales organizations miss revenue goals because they are understaffed and have open sales positions. This silent killer of productivity is a problem for many reasons:
Kurt Sima, on February 7, 2017
Many sales organizations miss revenue goals because they are understaffed and have open sales positions. This silent killer of productivity is a problem for many reasons:
Beth Sunshine, on February 6, 2017
It’s not that annual reviews are bad… it’s just that they’re not enough! Whether the person you are managing is doing a great job, a terrible job, or performing somewhere in-between, waiting twelve months to let them know that information is damaging to them and to your company.
Beth Sunshine, on September 28, 2016
After spending over a decade helping sales organizations select highly talented employees and coaching those salespeople and sales managers to turn talent into performance, I have discovered what I believe are two undisputable truths:
The latest numbers from Gallup tell us that 70% of our employees are disengaged in their jobs and a recent study by SAP and Oxford Economics revealed that one in five of our top performers are likely to leave their jobs in the next six months!
This means it’s not enough to hire highly talented people into your organization and it’s not even enough to put them in the right positions so they can effectively use their talents (although both of these things are critical!).
Once hired, these talented people need much more from their manager in order to consistently feel engaged and fully realize their potential.
So what can you do to increase employee retention and maximize the performance of your people?
LeadG2, on August 16, 2016
Every sales manager has, at some point, come to realize that sales talent isn't enough to reach revenue goals. The key is to hire talented salespeople and then help them optimize their performance.
These 3 resources will help you, as a manger, turn sales talent into performance.
Kim Alexandre, on July 21, 2016
One of my colleagues at The Center For Sales Strategy described a conversation she had with her three young boys about relationships. They asked what a relationship was, and she responded, “There are friendships, business relationships, and…,” before she could get another word out her 6 year old blurted out “and there are pirate ships, and potato ships. . . .”
Stephanie Downs, on May 16, 2016
Weaknesses. We all have them. But we all have strengths as well. Which do you focus on?
Human nature leads us to naturally focus on our weaknesses, but it is a proven fact that we can be significantly more effective when we do the exact opposite!
In sales coaching, you can get a 10x lift from a salesperson if you focus on their strengths. This is the most highly effective use of your coaching time when you consider that you will only be able to improve people in an area of weakness by about 10%.
Yes, easier said than done at times, so here are some suggestions on how to accomplish that.
Kim Alexandre, on May 12, 2016
After a workshop recently, the sales managers and I strategized the best way to help reinforce the learning and training with their sales team. This is something I often do because a workshop is not a training event that stands on its own—it's just the start to what should be continuous learning.
Beth Sunshine, on April 27, 2016
We’ve been talking about the Millennial generation for years now. Discussing their behaviors, styles, and attitudes, we have debated how this group will likely affect our business moving forward and how we can best develop them to succeed.
This understanding is vital since they will soon fill half of our entire labor force, and Pew Research reports that 58% of them expect to leave their jobs in three years or less. That kind of turnover can be a killer to a sales organization, so we need to figure them out and connect with them in a meaningful way.
But how? It may not be as hard as you thought!
John Henley, on March 1, 2016
Which is more likely to drive strong sales performance: a focus on the numbers or great attention to the sales process?
I recently heard two people talking about the key to sales performance. One person started by saying that the key is to focus on sales process. Then a few minutes later, the other person described hearing a CEO of a very successful company saying he has learned that the key to driving top sales performance is to focus on the numbers.
At first, this sounded like a conflict to me. But the more I listened, it turns out they were saying the same thing. It’s not either/or. The lesson is to focus on the numbers that are tied to the sales process.
John Henley, on January 5, 2016
Here’s a new year’s resolution I have: I am going to try to be more demanding in 2016! Demanding about the right stuff, that is.
We can all fall into the trap of being ok with good performance (from ourselves and others)—instead of demanding great performance. An example of this for our company is in the area of insights. Many of our clients count on us for insights related to specific categories of business or overall consumer trends that impact numerous business categories. Over the last few years, we've tried to do too much. As a result, we had a lot of average content in our business category insights. This year, we are going to narrow our scope and improve our content (and design). I am going to demand it from all of us.
