Sales Coaching Sales Management

The Best Managers are Unequal but Fair

In my second job after college, I worked as a salesperson for a small professional services company.  One day, our best salesperson (not me, unfortunately) told us he was leaving. I didn’t understand it – Brad was killing it, and under our commission-heavy comp plan, he was making stratospheric money.[...]

Read More

Sales Coaching Sales Management Sales Training

Coach Like You Want Them To Sell

Coaches, here’s the number one reason it pays to employ a consultative coaching method:  Coaching is modeling.  What do I mean by this? Coaching = Modeling When you Engage reps and start with their needs, you’re modeling the consultative sequence you want reps to follow – start with the Real[...]

Read More

Sales Development System Sales Management Sales Training Uncategorized

How to Develop Millennials Into World-Class Sales Leaders

A new generation of sellers and value creators is on the job today, and we have a golden opportunity to develop millennials into world-class sales leaders. Based on my birth year, I am a member of Generation X, but I consider myself a generation-straddler because my siblings were born between[...]

Read More

Industry Insights Sales Enablement Insights Sales Training

You Need Flipped Sales Training – Here’s How to Do It

The flipped classroom is a hot topic in education today, to the point you would think it’s a new phenomenon.  While credit for the origin of today’s flipped classroom goes back to a couple of high school teachers in 2007, technology has been transforming and upending the learning process since[...]

Read More

Sales Development System Sales Enablement Insights Sales Training

Smarter Sales Training Starts with Smarter Learning Objectives

Once upon a time, a private company in the aviation industry approached us because the VP of sales wanted “closing skills training.”  His evidence:  CRM data showing abnormally long sales cycles for their industry, plus personal experience in the field with sales reps following up but not closing. We came[...]

Read More

Industry Insights Sales Coaching Sales Management

The #1 Differentiator In B2B Sales

Strong sales management capability is the most important piece when assembling an industry-leading sales force, and it may be the #1 differentiator in all of B2B sales. Stay with me for a moment while I explain why and what you should be doing about it. Why is it that some[...]

Read More

Sales Coaching Sales Enablement Insights Sales Training

The Best Sales Training is SMART

Acronyms are useful devices for visualizing and remembering information.  And I’ve made a career out of helping clients turn complex data sets into easily retrievable nuggets.  And frankly, at times that’s involved some Procrustean hacking as I attempted to make the data fit the acronym. In this case, it’s the[...]

Read More

Sales Coaching Sales Enablement Insights Sales Management Sales Tools

How to Develop Sales Talent In the Age of AI

We talk with heads of sales and sales enablement leaders daily, and they are universally concerned about what it will take to develop sales talent in the age of AI for sales and the hyper-empowered buyer. Some of the questions that sales leaders are asking right now include: How much[...]

Read More

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[...]

Read More

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[...]

Read More

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,[...]

Read More

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[...]

Read More