Why hiring or keeping the 600lb sales gorilla is a mistake

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Teamwork

For many years the legend of the 600lb sales gorilla or Alpha sales superstar has been strutting the hallways and boardrooms of businesses. Often revered for achieving top of the league ladder sales results, yet feared by many for their aggressive, manipulative, ego centric, demanding, intimidating antics, countless CEO’s and sales managers have allowed these sales prima donnas to remain in their sales teams but at what cost to their sales team and their business?

Too scared to confront them about their behaviours or sales tactics for fear of losing their sales contribution, many sales managers and their sales team have …

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How much training should I give my sales team?

By / / Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Planning, Sales Training

Highly effective sales people and teams do not happen by chance. A study by Aberdeen Group (2009) of 8,500 top performing companies with a turnover in excess of $50 million, showed that the highest performing of these in each of their industries provided their sales teams with no less than 8 days of focussed sales training per year, and this did not include product training.

Another Aberdeen Group Productivity report (2008) showed that top-performing sales organisations were 24% more likely than all other companies to either have in place, or have short-term plans to implement, …

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Planning for 2011

By / / Marketing, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Sales Training

Budgeting and developing strategy for 2011 should be near the top of your ‘to-do’ list right now or be bedded down already. People complain about being too busy and never having enough time, however if you do not make time for regular planning you will let everyone down.

Make time to work on:

  • Forecasting
  • Evaluating staff hiring and implementing staff development plans
  • Ensuring that your marketing calendar is planned through to June 2011 at a minimum

Right now we are working with several clients on their sales plans for 2011 as well as planning out their 2011 sales training schedule.

Here are …

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How can we learn from our best sales performers?

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Talent, Sales Training

How do we get the rest of our sales team learning from our top performers? Should we get our top sales performer in front of our sales team to teach them how to be more effective?

Well that all depends

  • How well does that top sales performer understand how and why they sell well?
  • Can they articulate what they do in a step by step process?
  • Can they teach to the others in a simple and meaningful way?
  • Do they want to teach others?

The reality is that most top sales performers are unaware of what makes them ‘good’ which in turn makes it really hard …

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Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

By / / Ethics & Values, Procurement, Sales Skills, Value Proposition & Value Add

I recently had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the 6th CIPS Australasia Annual Conference for the procurement profession. It was my third invitation to speak at a CIPSA event in my capacity as a professional representing the sales profession. The theme for this conference was ‘Managing Volatility’. A key message I gleaned from the conference was Value Management rather than the narrow band width of Cost Management.

Don’t get me wrong, the Procurement Profession is still interested in cost, however, there was a distinct awareness about ‘

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Are you ready for Sustainable Selling?

By / / Ethics & Values, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

Sustainable Selling was voted by you as the number 10 Sales Trend for 2010. With the green agenda comes Sustainable Selling. More and more questions are being asked by many about how we can best manage this relationship now and for future generations?

I recently attended and spoke at the 6th ourS Australasia Annual Conference (peak industry body for the Procurement Profession) where Sustainability was well and truly on the agenda. The conference theme, ‘Managing Volatility’, had a range of national and international speakers presenting on how we manage and guarantee supply in an ever …

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The real $ value of role playing

By / / Sales Skills, Sales Training

Tell almost any sales person they are going to participate in role plays as part of their sales training and you will hear a collective groan. In short most sales people hate role playing. It is often seen as a form of potential embarrassment, or something stilted and false. Many people feel self conscious and don’t want to look ‘bad’ in front of their peers. It doesn’t help either that over 90% of all sales people follow no logical processes when selling, so when it comes to role playing they don’t know what to work on.

When …

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When should we appoint a Sales Manager?

By / / Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Strategy

For many start ups and small businesses having a full time sales manager in place is not a viable option. Firstly, there is usually no one to lead and manage in the sales function however, the function of sales management should be on your ‘To Do List’ as a business owner/manager even if you are sales managing yourself. Paying attention to your sales activities and results, developing your sales strategy and plan, knowing who to target and how to target viable prospects, mapping your metrics (lead/prospect/sales conversion ratios, etc.), success rate, development of product knowledge, reporting, proactive review, and keeping …

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Are your listening skills costing you or making you money?

By / / Communication, Sales Skills

Who is really listening? Genuinely, sincerely and honestly listening? I’m noticing a lot more telling and a lot less listening lately. You only have to watch the ABC program ‘Q&A’ to see the number of politicians who have great trouble listening – to anything except themselves. They interrupt others giving answers to questions that were never asked. No wonder we are a bit jaded and cynical.

If we reflect on our own approach to communication I suspect many of us would shudder if others described us in a similar fashion to those politicians. I am sure it is not how …

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How well are you Weathering the Storm?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence

‘Weathering the Storm’ was voted by you as the number 9 Sales Trend for 2010. While there have been ups and downs in the business world, over the last 20+ years for the most part, many of us in the western world have been able to ride on the back of posterity and market growth. Up until the GFC, many fortunate sales people and business people found making sales straightforward and easy, however these tougher, contracting markets have left many wanting in the sales stakes. The current breed of 20-40 year old sales people …

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