Ever since Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman was first published in 1949, pundits have been using this overworked phrase to forecast the demise of practitioners of our profession. Reports of our death are apparently premature. Rather than dying off, there are probably more salespeople per capita than any other occupation. Mind you, someContinue Reading
Sales managers or sales leaders do joint calls with sales people pretty often (or at least, they should be). What we find however is that sales managers or leaders rarely coach the sales person, but rather they mentor them, or they enter the this-is-what-you-did-wrong mode and let-me-tell-you mode. Here’s what it looks like: Sales Manager: So whatContinue Reading
If you’ve ever taken a golf lesson, you know the drill. Before providing any instruction, the golf pro will always ask you to take a few practice swings first. Why? Well, it should be obvious. He/she wants to see your swing first, before deciding what is wrong, and what parts of your swing need correction. TheContinue Reading
It struck me the other day how so few people recognize the depth and complexity of Salesforce.com. I suppose its partially because Salesforce does a pretty good job at marketing themselves as somewhat easy to install and use. Don’t get us wrong. Salesforce is a fantastic CRM and can dramatically improve your organization’s results, ifContinue Reading
As a sales training company, we get called upon often to help sales teams sell more. Before any training “solution” is implemented however, we like to perform an assessment on the sales team, in essence, to see what we’ve got to work with. While it’s true, most sales teams will benefit from some additional softContinue Reading
Are you doing the same thing again, and again, again? Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, who wakes repeatedly to the harmonies of Sonny & Cher on the radio, only to have to face the same agonizing day over and over and over again, many sales leaders submit themselves and their teams to the same formContinue Reading
Thinking of training the sales team? Wonderful. However, before you engage the services of an outside firm, or even an internal training department, make sure that these four scenarios are put to bed first. 1. Training is done in the midst of turmoil. Many times I have talked with senior sales managers who say somethingContinue Reading
Any marketing person will tell you that sex sells. Well, we’re here to tell you that sex doesn’t sell; sex simply gets your attention. After your attention has been aroused, it’s one of the other two primary motivators, or dominant buying motives, that drives you to buy. Those two dominant buying motives are desire forContinue Reading
Once in awhile, we see an organization’s open invite to salesforce training firms to submit their proposals for a salesforce training assignment, with a list of all of the required criteria. The fallacy of such an exercise continues to amaze us. RFPs and the Consultative Sales Approach Think about this. True consultative selling, the practiceContinue Reading
Something a little different for this post. Life (and blogs) shouldn’t always be about serious topics, like performance improvement, right? We need to take a break once on awhile. Hence, we give you, the SalesForce Training Top 10 Greatest Sales Movies…Ever!! And no, none of these won the Oscar for Best Picture. First, a confession. This is not ourContinue Reading
Latest Blog Posts