I’m really frustrated because we could all achieve magnificent sales results if only…

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Essentials, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Training

I am, by nature, a realist optimist who looks at what we can do, how we can make things better and so on. But I don’t do things on a whim, my team and I study what is best practice and look to design, build and weave the various ingredients together to create cost effective, human-centred, strategy and process driven transformation frameworks and journeys that deliver magnificent results and highly capable people when it to comes to selling better.

So effective – cost wise and results wise – that it becomes a no-brainer.

Yet, too many business and sales leaders opt for …

I’m really frustrated because we could all achieve magnificent sales results if only… Read Post »

Sales Trend 9 – Learning Agility

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Sales Trends

Sales trend 9 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2017 explores how salespeople can navigate the difficult situation of being in a complex sales environment and the need to simplify things for their clients.

Salespeople traditionally find themselves in conflicting spaces. A classic situation is the challenge to bring the diverging interests of clients (e.g. lower prices, discounts) and the organisations these salespeople are representing (higher prices, better margins) together. In that capacity, they have to be skilled as mediators, translators, and problem solvers.

Currently, a very different polarity is demanding attention from salespeople as well as sales managers …

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‘How to manage and help salesmen’ – valuable lessons from 1960

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Uncategorized

You might be taken aback by the sexist nature of the title of this article ‘How to manage and help salesmen’.

However, if you take into account that this title comes from a book written in 1960 by Charles B. Roth you might be a bit more forgiving.

I was given this book by my late father a couple of years before he died in 2014. Given my profession and his career as a business owner and chief sales leader of his company he thought I would like to read it and see how much had changed or not …

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2017 Sales Trend 6 – Where are All the High Performance Sales Coaches?

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 6 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about sales coaching.

This sales trend focuses on how sales coaching is still lagging behind business coaching as a standard business discipline, but how the best sales leaders are using coaching to transform their sales teams and sales performances to maximise success. So what’s going on with sales coaching?

A lot has been written about coaching, specifically business coaching, over the years and the proof is that coaching, like anything if applied effectively, does work. For instance, the International Coach Federation (ICF) conducted a worldwide survey …

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The power of Sales Process Maps to deliver best sales practice

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Talent

Most new salespeople are thrown in the deep end when it comes to sales induction.

“Here go out with Josephine, our best sales person and be like her.”

Most salespeople, in general, are given no articulated sales process which means there’s nothing specific to be coached or trained to or to follow.

In sales teams we often have the blind leading the blind when it comes to achieving sales best practice.

Why? Because most businesses do not have an articulated sales process map(s) for their salespeople to follow. They treat selling as an action not as a profession with clearly defined …

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Sales Trend 1 – New Metrics

By / / Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 1 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about sales metrics.

What do we measure now?

When we talk about sales metrics we usually think units, volumes, quota, members signed, calls made. Generally speaking, these metrics would have been put in place in an organisation at the time that the sales team was established, and (maybe) changed from time to time, usually from quota to number of calls or units, and so on.

The current state of flux of markets and most industries is quite different from the time when the use of these metrics was best practice. …

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2016 Sales Trend 11 – The Renaissance Sales Manager

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 11 for our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is The Renaissance Sales Manager.

The logic follows that senior executives determine the Grand Strategy for the entire business, divisional executives determine what strategy they need for the segments they service so as to make the grand strategy work, and then sales managers need to deploy, direct and control the sales resources to make the strategy(ies) happen. Sales managers should play a pivotal role in making strategy happen and delivering results.

Yet, for some time now where big data has been, and still is, a big focus …

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The new ABC of Sales – Always Be Coaching

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

Many of us may recall the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross that depicts two days in the lives of four real estate salesmen and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a trainer, Blake, to “motivate” them by announcing that, in one week, all except the top two salesmen will be fired.

Blake, played by Alec Baldwin unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse on the men as his form of training and one of his most infamous lines is ‘ABC – always be closing’.  This infamous line has become synonymous with some sales motivational speakers and some industries as …

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The power of language and intent in Sales & Coaching

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Coaching, Communication, Neuroscience, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Psychology

For the last 5 weeks I have been working around Australia helping a major client get their sales leadership team ready to roll out their new Sales Strategy and Sales Process, their version of ‘the way we sell around here’. It’s been pretty exciting and extremely well received. Why? The language we are using is clear, simple, strong and positive. Our intent is purposeful and inspiring. There is a compelling reason to want to be a part of this new era. People can see a clear pathway forward.

Part of this sales strategy and sales process roll out …

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The vital life (& sales) skill of Reflection

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Life Skills, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Self Development, Time Management, Wellbeing

As I sit at my desk writing this article I am reflecting on the past 4-5 weeks where sitting at my desk and taking time to think, ponder, and reflect on ideas, my team, my work, our strategy, our wellbeing and so on has been few and far between. On one hand I am grateful that we are fully engaged (our work word for ‘busy’) and active with our work and clients, on the other hand I am mourning the lack of those small time outs when I can create the space to look into both the details and vast …

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