Work your sales activity year to achieve your financial year target

By / / Education in Sales, Prospecting

Everyone has a sales cycle – this is defined as the average time it takes you to identify and ignite a viable sales opportunity through to closing the sale. Taking immediate transactional sales out of the equation –like buying something on the spot– a sales cycle can vary from industry to industry and can be as short as 1-7 days or span 12 months to 2 years, or even longer if we are talking really major sales.

However, industries withstanding, for most B2B salespeople an average sales cycle is more likely 1-3 months. So as we …

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Gauging our clients’ appetite for change

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Tips

Do you find that some clients are open to change, they embrace change while others see change as disruptive and possibly threatening? And then you find there are those clients who don’t see they need to change at all, they seem ambivalent or oblivious to the need to change.

Whoever is in charge of the buying decisions in an organisation (or family, or partnership) can severely affect, for good or bad, the perception of change across the whole culture. For instance, you may introduce to your clients a new way of doing something that offers increased efficiencies, improved effectiveness, and lowers …

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Sales Trend 5 – The move to Micro Sales Segmentation

By / / Education in Sales, Marketing, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Since 2009 we have been publishing our Annual 12 Sales Trends reports. It has been very interesting to see the speed at which these trends are taking hold and becoming the new normal in business. Here is the fifth Sales Trend for 2014 – The Move to Micro Sales Segmentation.

In 2014 sales teams are dealing with specific complexities (down markets, knowledgeable buyer, buyers with the pressure to cut costs, buyers that are ill-informed, etc). The approach that Marketing has to segmentation doesn’t completely deal with these …

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What we cannot control in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Competition, Resilience, Sales Research, Sales Strategy

Last week we talked about what we can control and influence in sales, especially in uncertain times.  This week is looking at what we cannot control in sales and how to learn to live with it.

What (and who) we cannot control

Let’s face it, we operate in a complex world where many things are outside our direct control and influence, yet these very things can influence and affect ourselves, our clients, markets, and communities. There are some very interesting frameworks that can help us separate out a range of factors that affect our market places, communities, and countries.

  • [1]PEST analysis (‘Political, Economic, …

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How can we control our sales destiny in uncertain times?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Self Development, Wellbeing

Salespeople deal with market ups and downs, political influence, people’s (customers, influencers, internal stakeholders, bosses, etc.) changing mindset and goals, etc. on a daily basis. Sales can be like herding cats on the best of days.

These factors and others can cause even the best of salespeople to be concerned because they are mostly outside the salesperson’s direct control yet we still have to meet our sales targets. So it’s not easy being a salesperson, especially in tougher markets. However, highly effective salespeople will tell you that while tough markets can be a real challenge, …

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How to avoid the 7 deadly sins of selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Success

The first objective of effective sales training and coaching is to help us, salespeople, become aware of any bad habits we may have developed over time. The next objective is to admit that these bad sales habits are deterrents to our success. By breaking these bad habits down and see them for what they are we can begin to rebuild our sales skills by putting in place healthy sales habits that lead to success.

However, even if you do not have the opportunity to attend good sales training or have access to …

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7 things you can do to immediately improve your sales operations

By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Training, Success

Sales operations are complex systems with many moving parts. It is a constant juggling act for many sales leaders and business heads. What with:

Designing an effective sales strategy , right sizing sales teams , picking the right sales segments to sell to, delivering the right level of sales training, coaching their sales team, dealing with under-performers, key accounts management, managing and reporting on sales financials, liaising and linking with other departments across the value chain, boosting team morale, and so on.

It’s a very complex role. So where to start?

Here are 7 things you can do …

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Sales Trend 4 – Sales Training Methodologies are changing

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Essentials, Sales Training, Sales Trends

The fourth Sales Trend for 2014 is Sales Training Methodologies are going to change.

Sales training as we know it is not going to disappear. As the market becomes more complex and competition more virulent salespeople will need more, not less training. But they will also have less time to be trained. These two forces – increased competition with the need to up skill salespeople and less time for training – will make identifying different and effective training methods key to success.

Amongst the more evident challenges facing companies …

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Coming full circle & the ripple effect of doing good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration

Have you ever wondered what the ripple effect of your actions has on other people, things and systems way down the line or beyond your immediate world?

Often in sales we are very focused on the person in front of us; the immediate client, the immediate transaction or result. In business we often focus on the bottom line, the markets, the ROI (return on investment).  All important of course for success in business and sales; however, I would like to focus our attention on what happens when we do good things whether they be for profit …

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Sales Trend 3: Sales Excellence Managers to find their true role

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Training, Sales Trends

The third Sales Trend for 2014 is Sales Excellence Managers will find their real role. Historically, organisations employed sales training managers with the mandate of sourcing the best sales training and development materials, or alternatively developing sales training programmes for their organisations. However, the plethora of sales training and the confusion of training methods all being touted as ‘best practice’, coupled with the lack of training for sales managers led many sales training managers to expand their role, taking over much more than sales training and expanding it into part of the traditional …

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