The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Sales leaders, like teachers and other influencers, have the power to develop or destroy, to mentor or marginalize, to coach or to crush.

That’s a significant impact on a business and the drivers of that business's success, its people. That power can be used to foster positivity or negativity.

Sales Leaders Can Make Or Break Their Organizations

Many sales leaders who have direct reports, such as a sales department, may be in their positions not based on their talents for coaching or developing and contributing to the bottom line, but rather because of relationships and quid pro quos. Or the hiring manager may have succumbed to the “Halo Effect” during the interview. The Neilson Norman Group describes this in this way: The Halo Effect is when one trait of a person or thing is used make an overall judgment of that person or thing. It supports rapid decisions. It’s based on subjectivity vs. objectivity. It’s a decision that can wreak havoc once that hire enters the building. If you have regrets over hiring the wrong person for a sales leader role please read on.

Today we have a guest post from Allison Delagrange. Allison is is a General Sales Manager for Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She’s a 2005 Taylor University graduate, coach to a team of top-notch sellers on 97.3 WMEE, mom to a little princess and twin boys, and wife to one handsome dude. Allison loves to help others succeed and share insights she’s learned over the course of her 10-year career in sales.

Sometimes great insights come from the most unlikely places. Just in time for Halloween, I’d like to share with you what a little green monster taught me about sales talent.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. The 5 Biggest Ways Technology Has Transformed Sales — HubSpot

Modern salespeople have new tools, new techniques, and new resources at their disposal. And of course, they face new challenges. These changes require salespeople to adapt if they want to survive. This article explores the five biggest ways technology has transformed sales.

Today we have a guest post from Sherrie Roberts. Sherrie has been crushing sales goals and breaking records for over 20 years from local broadcast to national networks and rep firms. Serving in roles as salesperson, sales manager, General Manager and Founder.

It’s tempting to approach all prospects with the same strategies and tactics—it’s much easier and quicker to use a “one-size-fits-all” approach. But no two prospects are the same, especially the big ones. 

I’ve had several opportunities to earn the business of “whales.” Two of those were company record breakers, and a few were against all odds. These experiences had three common traits that stood apart from the rest. 

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. 7 Ways Salespeople Can Improve Their Business Acumen— HubSpot

Many salespeople fail to create or win new opportunities because they don’t know enough about business. They mistakenly believe it’s enough to know their product or service and how to overcome objections. But successful salespeople understand business and offer valued insight to their clients. This article shows you how to improve your business acumen.

Nonprofit Development Officers are busy people who are often pulled in many different directions. How they spend their time is very important and is linked to the decisions they make.

Making a not-so-good decision leads to wasting time. Making great decisions leads to revenue development and a great ROI on task-to-time spent on a project.

We hope you've had a great week! It's Friday, and today we're sharing what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.

1. The Key to Adaptable Companies Is Relentlessly Developing People — Harvard Business Review

Relentless focus on people, on developing everyone in the organization, leads to an organizational culture designed for adaptive change. This article explains.

In working with companies large and small and in cities large and small, the number one thing I hear most often from managers is how hard it is to recruit. There is no doubt that it can be challenging, especially if there isn’t a clear strategy in place to tackle it. Most managers don’t make recruiting a priority until when? Yep, you guessed it: when there is an open position. That is exactly the wrong time to do it (or to start doing it).

Campaign recaps are the norm when it comes to digital marketing. In an integrated marketing campaign, those results are usually separated out even though we design the campaign to work together. All too often, the digital portion of a campaign recap is simply a beautified spreadsheet or PowerPoint that includes creative images and a handful of metrics like impressions delivered, clicks, click-through rates, and sometimes view-throughs. These types of reports do very little to show how the campaign is actually achieving the goals of the client—and when that is the case, they can result in a cancellation or non-renewal.

The goal of a campaign recap is to sell the results back to your client so that you can retain and grow that piece of business. You want to make it clear that you are driving results—making the connection between the numbers and the emotions of your client. So how do we move beyond the simple delivery of numbers, to effectively sell the results of our integrated campaigns?

Here are three easy steps to get you there:

Our research shows that the very best salespeople out there are highly competitive, focused, passionate, and good at solving problems. So it would make sense that these same people would be excited about the opportunity to experience a virtual version of what it’s like to work for a company while scoring badges, earning points, and competing to win. It also stands to reason that highly competitive organizations would want to set themselves apart from the competition by turning to unique forms of recruitment to attract the most high-potential hires.