Sales Cheerleader or Genuine Sales Coach?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership

Admit it, we all like a bit of encouragement every now and then. Yes, there are those who want it on a more frequent basis than others but whatever our frequency it’s nice when we have someone cheering us on, someone in our camp who wants to see us succeed.

I remember many years ago, in 1993, running my first ever half marathon at the Melbourne Marathon and how important encouragement became as I neared the end of the run. For me to run a half marathon was a new and daunting task as my main sport is swimming. I had …

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Sales Trend 5 – The New Accountability in Holistic (sales) Learning

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Sales Trends, Self Development

Sales Trend 5 of our Sales Trends Report for 2015 is about the new accountability is holistic learning. Learning and Development (L&D) across the board, and especially in sales, has slowly but continuously been changing over the past few years. There are a variety of factors influencing this recent development. The ongoing challenge through these changes has been that it is not a single “trend” that has determined the necessary adjustments to be made to keep up with developments in the area, but a number of aggregated trends and factors that have simultaneously been responsible for supplying …

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Salespeople In The Deep End (Again)

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Skills, Sales Training

Last week I received a call from a woman (let’s call her Tracy for the purpose of this article) desperately seeking help on how to sell.  Tracy had been in her role for 5 months and all that time had not received any guidance, advice, coaching or support from her managers on how to sell her products or who to sell them to. She had never been in a sales role before and did not work in the vicinity of the head office.  She was out there on her own …

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It’s HOW you think, not WHAT you think

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Coaching

What type of salespeople do you want on your team? What type of salesperson do you want to be?

Do you want salespeople who do as they are told or salespeople who think for themselves about possibility, finding new opportunities, looking at different ways to address problems that are still effective, if not more profitable than the current ways, etc.?

We cannot deny that we live in a complex world where outputs are often unpredictable. I hear sales leaders crying out for ‘smart intelligent’ salespeople.  And I know customers want to engage with …

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Hidden sales coaching moments

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Uncategorized

The value of sales coaching cannot be ignored. Various studies across the last 30+ years have demonstrated that regular coaching improves recall and retention of learning from sales classroom training at between 80-95%, as compared to 13% with no follow up coaching.  Coaching helps improve sales performance by around 20% when compared to a non coaching environment. Yet, many sales managers maintain they don’t have the time to perform coaching, the most important of all sales leadership tasks.  Go figure! One …

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Never forget Selling is a Doing job – a quality Doing job

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Self Development

Every week we can learn something new about ourselves, our business, our clients and markets even if we have been in sales for many years.  However, we can only learn something new if we take the risk and put ourselves out into the market place on a regular and consistent basis and we pay attention to the details.  And the amount of details salespeople need to pay attention to is extraordinary.  Paying attention to what we do and how we do it is how we continue to evolve in an ever changing world – it is how we create success. …

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Mastering the Sales Management Essentials

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Forecasting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management

What are the Sales Management Essentials and how do we master them?  Well firstly Sales management and leadership is not about selling!

In fact when one examines the role of the modern sales leader it quickly becomes evident that there just isn’t time to sell. Equipping sales leaders to perform the tasks for which they are responsible, and sustaining the momentum of the sales force in its drive for incremental value and volume, at the same time as continuously improving the customer experience, is a challenge that demands a high degree of maturity, dedication, …

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Hot bath turned cold – ditch the Rah Rah

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training

Have you ever heard the expression “Hot bath turned cold’? Perhaps not, however if you have been involved in the sales training industry or sales management it is a term that is synonymous with the quick, sheep dip, Rah Rah motivational sessions that business leaders and sales managers run for their sales people in the hope that they will sell more.   Sadly the opposite is true.  At the very best these ‘hot bath’ motivation techniques can provide entertainment value, however at worst they can do more harm than …

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How do your clients really perceive you?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Communication, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Role Clarity, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Relationships

Perception is reality. So what do your clients really think of you? Would you be happy with how they perceive you? Are they thinking any of the following when they think about you and your company?:

  • ‘I’m so glad I’ve met you; my life/business is better off for knowing you.’
    or
  • ‘Oh that guy (gal), yeh they’re pretty good’
    or
  • ‘They’re nice but I don’t always have the time to chat with them’
    or
  • ‘That arrogant so and so’
    or
  • ‘Aghhh, I don’t trust them, get them out of my office now’
    or
  • ‘Who?’

    • Good relationships take time and effort to build and create something really valuable …

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    Stop Throwing our Salespeople and Sales Managers into the Deep End

    By / / Education in Sales, Role Clarity, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Success

    Isn’t it about time we stop throwing our sales people and sales managers in the deep end and expecting them to swim – or sell and lead with no support or training in this case? Isn’t it about time that we had frank conversations with our potential recruits about what sales and sales manager roles really entail and make sure our recruits really do have the skills, mindset and knowledge to take on the …

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