B2B Field sales force to halve

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Pioneer, Sales Tips, Sales Training

What will sales teams look like over the next 5-10 years? How will we sell to and service our clients? Will our businesses actually require field sales representatives as all?

With ‘Field Sales Force Numbers To Halve’ voted the sixth most important sales trend for 2012 from The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 by our readers, these are critical questions business and sales leaders need to ask themselves if they want to have an effective sales effort.

WHY? With access to so much information available and a plethora of …

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Industry Experience and Product Knowledge aren’t enough

By / / Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

As much as people want Sales to be considered a science the reality is that Sales has always combined a collection of facts with human judgments (or estimates). What this means is that there is no analytic approach that can single-handedly guarantee sales success. Result – Sales is likely to always be a mixture of art and science. So how do you sure up your success to gain that competitive edge? For the last few decades when transactional, product-pushing sales was all that mattered, most

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Know Thy Customer – Buyers in the Driver’s Seat

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Communication, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Relationships, Sales Tips

Robyn Creed our Head of Coaching hales originally from country NSW and recently spent a relaxing weekend mustering cattle on her sisters’ 11,000 acre property north of Jerilderie, in NSW. Here is her account of the cattle industry and how buyers are truly in the driver’s seat when it comes to customer buying preferences. “Over the course of the weekend we discussed many interesting facts in relation to producing quality cattle and I realised that like the Apples’ and Samsungs’ of this world cattle producers breed cattle based on the specific needs of what their …

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How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results

The United States has been responsible for many great innovations but not all have turned out the way the inventors, architects or innovators intended. One such miscalculation was the introduction of ‘commissioned-only’ salespeople.

This initiative spawned negative effect on the reputation and results of salespeople worldwide and its stigma has remained ever since, commissioned or not.

Have you ever wondered how ‘commission only’ selling was born and why it harbours such negative sentiment? To understand the driving forces behind the commission only sales force, one must travel back to the US in …

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Do you have the sales force your strategy needs in 2010?

By / / Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Strategy

The other week I ran a webinar for SmartCompany.com.au on “How to clearly manage and measure your sales team”. During the webinar I was asked many questions, one of which came from a senior sales leader, “With some time to reflect over the Christmas break, what is the one thing I should focus on getting right for my business?”

Given that business as usual is not ‘usual’ anymore, I suggested the following:

1. Review your business and sales strategy

  • Do you have the right strategy in place?
  • What has changed over the last 12 months
  • How has your client mix changed? i.e. …

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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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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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Who’s delivering your sales training?

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Sales Training

You cannot fake real sales experience and sales wisdom. It is one of the professions that is the hardest to teach and train because without real life sales experience you are at risk of being seen as inauthentic.

To help you make the best choice when it comes to selecting the right sales trainer let’s consider the following:

  • What capabilities do you need to be a good sales trainer?
  • What attitudes and mindsets can makes sales people and sales results worse?

To sell or not to sell

Without real life sales experience, you will are likely to lack empathy and real insight for the …

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Why developing your Sales Managers is the key to your sales success

By / / Business Acumen, Coaching, Competition, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

It may surprise you to discover that many Sales Managers learn how to be a Manager on their own.

According to the latest international study on Sales Training and Sales Force Effectiveness, many Sales Managers are given very little or no support when it comes to being a competent, effective Sales Manager. In fact, many Sales Managers reported that they were given no formal training in Sales Management practices, either before or during their tenure as a Sales Manager.

The study reported that Sales Management training is the category of sales training …

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