Brian Hasenbauer, on January 6, 2016
As a parent of two small children, I've coached my share of soccer teams over the years. I like to think that my teams learned something from my coaching and leadership, but I am starting to think that I learned more from them.
Many of the lessons I have learned can be applied to sales and specifically sales management: the team that keeps score does best, practice like you intend to play, and you are only as strong as your weakest player.
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.
LeadG2, on January 1, 2016
Happy New Year! We've collected our favorite posts and articles that we've read this week, and we're sharing them here with you. Get ready for a great 2016!
Streamline your sales tasks with technology. This post from Salesforce explains how implementing three tips will help you be more productive in 2016.
Jim Thompson, on December 28, 2015
The most important job of managers is to coach, develop, and maximize the talents of their direct reports—sales managers developing salespeople and general managers developing sales managers. When people are maximizing the talents they have, sales and productivity will follow.
Here are my top 6 recommendations to improve sales culture and make sure management is getting the most from the talents of the team.
Mindy Murphy, on December 21, 2015
When you pay attention, a holiday party can tell you a lot about your team’s talents. And what you learn about each person could change the way you coach them, and make them more successful.
Recently, I talked with a sales manager who took his team on a bowling outing to celebrate the holiday season. It was a fun team building activity, and it also taught him a lot about each person’s strengths.
The organized, fun salesperson on his team planned the entire outing down to the bowling teams and the gift exchange. Everything was perfect, and everyone had a great time.
The relationship seller got everyone to participate in a hilarious game where you eat disgusting flavored jelly beans. Everyone did what she asked and completely trusted her when she said, “it’s really not that bad.”
LeadG2, on December 18, 2015
Here we are at the end of another week, and the weekend before the holiday! In this post, we'll look at how to make sure you don't come back to an overflowing inbox and how you can use the downtime to plan to make 2016 your most successful sales year yet!
We love the start of a new year because it's a great opportunity to set new goals and get a fresh start. This post from Salesforce suggests 5 excellent goals for the new year that will boost your company's sales.
LeadG2, on December 11, 2015
Hope you all have had a wonderful week! It's Friday, and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week. Here are our "best" from around the web.
We've all been in those meetings: the kind that are a complete waste of time and that bore us to tears. But meetings don't have to be useless. This infographic offers nine ways to make them more effective.
LeadG2, on December 4, 2015
We've come to the end of the week, so it's Friday and time for us to share what we've been reading online this week! Here are our "best" from around the web.
One of the main purposes of the Marketing team is to set the Sales team up for success. This post digs into how to streamline marketing operations for efficiency and effectiveness.
John Henley, on December 1, 2015
Today’s sales leaders have to be much better at managing change than at any time in the recent past. It’s part of the job now. But just because change is more common and comes faster, doesn’t mean that people are suddenly much better at handling it. It still takes a gifted leader to help salespeople respond well.
I help a lot of companies manage change and I suggest 8 action steps leaders should take to help their team embrace change. Before I get to those, some thoughts on change:
There are several “change models” out there, but one that is familiar to most is:
Janie Worch, on November 30, 2015
One of the biggest issues salespeople have is time management. We all feel busy, but busy doesn’t always equate to success. Salespeople often have the best intentions of working smarter, not harder. They talk about wanting to spend more time prospecting, setting up new Client Needs Analyses (CNAs) updating CNAs with Key Accounts, pre-selling Key Agencies, and building relationships with important contacts. These are the best use of their time.
Unfortunately, these things often get pushed to the back burner because a client needs something NOW, a mistake needs to be fixed, a manager needs a report, a collection call needs to be made, or a co-worker stops by his or her cubicle to shoot the breeze. Next thing you know, a whole day has gone by without any IMPORTANT work getting done.
