Do you have difficult clients or are they just different?

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills

Style adaptability is where a person can read another person’s preferred communication style and adjusts their own communication style to that of the other person, thus making shared communication and understanding easier. It is imperative to the principle of exchange and critical to any sales role, yet it is often one of the most poorly executed skills.

Time after time we come across teams of sales people who have no conscious idea about how to adapt their style to that of another. Instead when they come across differences, communication usually breaks down and they will speak about the …

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What’s the right incentive scheme for my sales team?

By / / Performance Management, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Talent

Of all questions, this is the one that remains on the minds of sales leaders and executive teams. It is often the cause of more debate and angst than any other question in a business.

People search for the golden answer, however their quest will not deliver a definitive one because it all depends on what you want to achieve.

The current wisdom is that while there are ‘best practice’ frameworks for creating the ideal sales compensation or incentive scheme, it is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

While Remuneration Surveys can provide some pointers, they are not a reliable or accurate …

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Should I fire my bad clients?

By / / Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

Run a mental checklist over your client base right now. Who fits into the ‘good’ client list and who falls into the ‘bad’ client list?

It all really depends on what you define as good and bad.

As we know not all clients are good for your business. Some clients are a wrong fit for your business but could be a good fit for someone else; therefore in of themselves they are not necessarily ‘bad’.

However, others are just downright bad for your business.

It is important to consider how much your ‘bad’ clients are costing you in terms of …

Should I fire my bad clients? Read Post »

Sales is a team effort

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Skills, Teamwork

Sales numbers and sales processes should be understood and owned by everybody in your organisation. In today’s world if you are not directly in sales you are supporting someone who is. This is why sales really is a team effort.

Rather than being just about a feel good factor and great staff alignment, this has practical applications as well. For instance with the ability for customers (or anyone) to find and connect with anyone in your organisation through many difference channels (i.e. social networks, Google, etc.) the whole business needs to be sales fit.

With anyone being able to contact anyone …

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Creating an effective sales performance management system

By / / Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Talent, Success

Following on from last week’s article about managing and measuring the right things in sales, I thought it would be worth looking at some of the key principles for effective sales performance management systems.

The first place to start is to align your sales performance management system and subsequent key measures to your organisation’s strategy and goals. It’s then the job of the CEO and the Sales Leader to ensure the organisation (that means everyone else who supports the sales effort) is aligned to the sales performance management system. When this dimension is in place …

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Measuring and managing the right things in sales

By / / Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Self Development

Who wants to work with accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people? Of course we all want these types of sales people in every sales team. Yet, most businesses do not support this by setting up their sales team to clearly measure and manage their sales performance.

Sales performance management begins with accurate role descriptions and perception, data collection, and measurement in line with set goals and strategy, however many organisations measure only one variable, sale results (outputs measures).

This type of approach leaves businesses and sales teams in the dark about how they arrived at their sales …

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Getting back to sales basics

By / / CRM, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Social Media, Social Sales

It’s time to get back to basics.

I don’t know about you but recently I have found myself getting more and more distracted by the latest trend and fads, especially the social media phenomena. My reason for this is that I have been trying to get my head around social media and specifically, the impact on the sales profession.

As you may have gathered, I like to keep on top of what is current, what is emerging, and what is still an idea. This is why I make time each week to do research as it helps me navigate my way around …

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Why Sales Coaching Really Matters

By / / Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Training

You may recall that I recently wrote about an international study which reported that if Sales Managers were more frequently and better trained and coached, their sales teams achieved higher performance and results. In no other type of sales training was a more positive correlation found between frequency of training and sales performance. This article is dedicated to the importance of sales coaching and what you need to do to be an effective sales coach.

Despite popular opinion, the sales profession is very skillful with many technical and interpersonal skills that need …

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What are the benefits of a CRM system in your business?

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Consulting, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Strategy, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

First of all what does CRM stand for? CRM = Customer Relationship Management.

The concept of CRM has been around for a long time. The original form of CRM was a manual card system kept by a sales person that usually sat on the sales person’s desk or alongside them in the car. These client cards sets were very valuable to the sales person as this is where they kept important customer information such customer contact details, key contacts in the company, a running commentary on their activities, personal and product preferences, buying patterns, business connections and so forth. Each card …

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The coming together of sales leaders in Australia

By / / Business Acumen, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Networking, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Strategy

I recently had the opportunity to attend the inaugural Optimising the Sales Force Conference (osf2009, site not exist anymore), along with over 120 high level sales leaders across Australia. I was privileged to be part of the panel of international and local experts presenting on sales effectiveness where we explored the latest research on sales strategy, leadership, learning and development, sales management, sales people, and current market trends.

This was the first time in Australia we have had the opportunity to come together as a profession and share ideas and discuss important matters moving forward. There have, of course, been industry …

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