Sales Coaching Sales Management

Five Important Questions for New Sales Leaders

For those of us who’ve been promoted or newly hired to lead a sales organization or part of one, there are some common and weighty questions we all find we need to address. By my count, there are at least five important questions for new sales leaders to address if[...]

10
May
sales training

Sales Enablement Insights Sales Management Sales Training Uncategorized

It’s Time to Transform Sales Training

The sales training industry is way overdue for transformation.  How we know?  First, we’re veterans of the sales training industry, and we’ve both spent time on the inside of multiple sales training vendors. And we’ve found the vast majority of client engagements last two years or less. Second, most companies[...]

03
Apr

Sales Development System Sales Enablement Insights Sales Training

Getting More From Sales Training: Three Strategies and A Bobsled Analogy

Companies spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money on sales training, only to find the vast majority of the effort wasted.  If you’ve ever been to sales training where the manager or facilitator exhorts sellers to take “one good idea” from an entire day (or two) of training,[...]

22
Feb
specialized sales development

Sales Development System Sales Enablement Insights

What is Specialized Sales Development?

How’s this for a Mission Statement?  Specialized Sales Systems exists to help companies build their own specialized sales systems that drive revenue growth. Breakthroughs in technology and process make this process better and cheaper than traditional sales training. It sounds clear to us, but as Matt McDarby and I began[...]

08
Feb

Industry Insights Sales Development System Sales Enablement Insights Sales Process Sales Tools

What is a Sales Development System?

What is a Sales Development System? If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Sales Development System,” it may be because the sales training discipline historically suffers from a lack of systems thinking!  Now is the time to familiarize yourself. Systems thinking is required if you need your sales force to take[...]

16
Jan
cut off the talking heads

sales meetings Sales Training

Sales Meeting Reengineering: Cut Off The Talking Heads!

Today we’re talking about talking heads, and how to manage a traditional – and limiting – staple of the sales meeting. In my last article, we looked at the unique value of sales meetings – the chance for sellers to: Interact with the company Learn from each other Practice their[...]

07
Dec

Industry Insights Sales Process

Pivot, Drive, and Accelerate Your Sales Process

Pivot, Drive, and Accelerate Sales With a Better Sales Process Not too long ago, I offered a comment on a post, “The Death of a (Traditional) Salesman” by Tony Rodoni from Salesforce. Rodoni’s post was well-written, and it presented a common view that I see in the sales blogosphere. Essentially,[...]

30
Nov
BYO Sales Training

Sales Enablement Insights Sales Training

BYO Sales Training: Hockey Edition

What do BYO sales training and hockey have in common?  This video highlights a couple of key areas where the lessons of the hockey rink apply to sales training development. In particular, pay attention to these elements: Are you giving your sellers enough time on the “practice ice”?  BYO Sales[...]

17
Nov

sales meetings Sales Training

Make Your Sales Meetings Less Boring!

If you’ve planned sales meetings, you know this situation:  Putting together the agenda, you notice a couple of things.  First, there are a lot of “required” presentations by various talking heads in the company, and they’re BORING.  Second, your breakout sessions largely consist of other people from the company (products,[...]

07
Nov

Industry Insights

The Elephant In the Sales Training Room

There is an elephant in the sales training room. Someone just called it out…again. A few weeks ago, I weighed in on a LinkedIn post from a contact of mine, Jay Jensen. You can see the whole discussion here, but I will net it out. Jay argued that the very[...]

02
Nov