How to Use the Math of Success to Boost Your Team’s Sales Results

How to Use the Math of Success to Boost Your Team’s Sales Results

A friend and colleague pointed out to me that I frequently refer to the Math of Success in sales when I write, but I don’t have one article dedicated to the topic. Well here you go, an entire article dedicated to the magical Math of Success. You can download a worksheet template to use with your sales team and put this into practice immediately. This is the Sales Manager’s remedy for having to nag salespeople to do more, get more appointments, send more proposals, and close more business.

You have probably heard the phrase “sales is a numbers game.” Well that […]

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How Your Sales Team Can Identify Their 4 Buyers on LinkedIn

How Your Sales Team Can Identify Their 4 Buyers on LinkedIn

Editor’s Note: We haven’t often used guest posts on our blog, but this is one I thought our readers would find particularly helpful. This post comes courtesy of Celina Guerrero of SocialtoSales.com. It is a modified version of a post that was originally published on the SocialtoSales Blog. This version is designed specifically to help sales managers guide their sales teams towards more effective social selling methods. Let us know in the comments if you find it helpful!  

How Your Sales Team Can Identify Their 4 Buyers on LinkedIn

Gallup recently published an article entitled, B2B Companies: Do You Know Who Your […]

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4 Easy Steps to Help Your Salespeople Become Independent Thinkers

4 Easy Steps to Help Your Salespeople Become Independent Thinkers

I just re-read a very good article by Janice Mars of SalesLatitude and thought it was worth sharing.

The point of the article is that sales managers are inundated with salespeople and their questions and frequently get in a rut. They accept the role of reacting to salespeople and their questions all day long. They become the bottleneck, as Janice states. It is a dysfunctional dynamic.

I submit that there is a more dangerous problem that erupts. The sales manager’s favorite salespeople are the ones that don’t need much interaction ─ because they make it easy on the sales manager.

Beware, sales managers! […]

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Top 5 Mistakes Made by CEOs Managing Sales (and How to Fix Them)

Top 5 Mistakes Made by CEOs Managing Sales (and How to Fix Them)

I had a meeting yesterday with the CEO of a small business that currently has six people on their sales team. He is stuck in an awkward place because they are now big enough that they need to have a sales team, but they still don’t think they are quite big enough yet to have a dedicated sales manager. This is a tough spot that tons of business owners find themselves in. He needs to build sales to propel the business to the next level (so he can justify hiring a rock star sales manager). But until then, it means […]

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How to Use Momentum Effectively in Sales and Sports

How to Use Momentum Effectively in Sales and Sports

If you have read many of my articles you realize that from time to time I like to use sports analogies. I was at yet another college lacrosse game several days ago, and sadly my team lost to end their season. We were tied at the half but then had gone down by three goals in the second half. Our team was struggling a little bit to get something going and seemed riddled with turnovers.

There are some tough players on the team and one particular player just seemed to kick it into high gear and by sheer will scored a […]

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Hiring for Sales: Round Pegs Do Not Fit in Square Holes

Hiring for Sales: Round Pegs Do Not Fit in Square Holes

I was with a group of seven friends from college last weekend to help out a friend in need.  We have all been friends for over 30 years and we get together once a year.  What has been so fun to realize over the years is that we each have different talents.  And we each have different weaknesses.  This is not an earth-shattering revelation.  But, now we have the maturity to realize that different people’s talents can and should be used appropriately, rather than trying to get everyone to operate the same way.  We no longer attempt to put round […]

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How to Use LinkedIn and Reachable for Referrals

How to Use LinkedIn and Reachable for Referrals

In my last article I spoke about the importance of asking for referrals and introductions. I described how one can accomplish this either the old-fashioned way, through asking, or by using LinkedIn or Reachable. I have been asked to explore these online applications a little bit further. So here goes.

We will start with the premise that receiving a referral or introduction far exceeds any cold calling one can do in terms of return on investment. Additionally, we will assume that your sales teams are already involved in seeking referrals the old-fashioned way.

Here is a simple primer on using LinkedIn for […]

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Referral Gathering for Sales: Go Old School or Go On Social?

Referral Gathering for Sales: Go Old School or Go On Social?

I was at a conference in sunny La Jolla, CA last week presenting to a group of very successful business owners in the security industry. Most have owned their companies for decades and have already built thriving recurring revenue businesses. Still, every single one of them has a keen interest in sales expansion. Each of them wants to better understand how to keep moving their sales teams forward on the path to increased selling efficiency.

A conversation was had about whether their sales reps need to understand the ins and outs of social media, and how to use services like LinkedIn […]

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You Hired A Salesperson Who Has What it Takes to Succeed. Now What?

You Hired A Salesperson Who Has What it Takes to Succeed. Now What?

We work with many companies and help them dramatically improve their sales hiring effectiveness. Unfortunately, companies tend to ignore what happens after the interviewing, assessing and hiring are done. All too often, companies ignore the importance of having a systematic sales onboarding program in place.

The Sales Management Association recently released a research brief about salesperson onboarding. Two items that really jumped out at me from the brief are:

1. Those companies that have a very structured onboarding process and follow it consistently had the most positive results.

2. Consistently following a structured onboarding program shortened the time to productivity by 37%.

While these two […]

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How to Get Your Sales Hiring Right

How to Get Your Sales Hiring Right

Sales hiring is not like any other type of hiring. For one thing, salespeople are the most difficult hires to get right.

Unfortunately, the cost of making a hiring mistake is high.

Statistics indicate that the cost of making a bad hire is between three and five times that individual’s annual compensation. That means if the base salary for a new sales rep is $36,000 per year and the company is superior at cutting ineffective salespeople free quickly (say, after three months) then the cost of one bad hire is $27,000 at a minimum. That is a very conservative estimate.

If they were making $75,000 […]

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