Is Your Pipeline a Pipe Dream? How to Tame Your Sales Pipeline

Is Your Pipeline a Pipe Dream? How to Tame Your Sales Pipeline

I facilitated a Sales Swap Meet™ this week with a collection of business owners.* If you aren’t familiar with a Sales Swap Meet, it is where business owners and CEOs bring their questions, concerns, and problems regarding their sales organization and swap them for ideas, suggestions and answers.

The topic we spent the most time on was what to measure and how to measure it. I thought I would recap for you what we discussed since it is of high importance for any business. What I heard was that the majority of the folks keep track of a pipeline and some […]

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How to Know if A Manager is Sabotaging Your Sales Transformation

How to Know if A Manager is Sabotaging Your Sales Transformation

Written by Frédéric Lucas. This was originally posted by our OMG Partner affiliate in Canada, Prima Ressource and has been translated from French with minor adaptation.

When business leaders implement a sales force transformation program, they inevitably meet resistance within their organization.

A certain resistance to change on the part of company executives is common. On the other hand, if it is followed by closed business and increased accountability, this resistance should disappear within a few weeks.

What is problematic is when resistance to change comes from managers and sales directors of the company. Some of them might even want to derail the transformation program or discredit […]

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Tough Questions Get You the Sale When Adorable Won’t

Tough Questions Get You the Sale When Adorable Won’t

One sunny weekday afternoon in July, I decided to duck out of the office for a brief walk to enjoy the fresh air. A walking trail through a heavy grove of trees led me to a residential street where I heard music. There I saw two sisters operating what appeared to be a lemonade stand. Big sister, about six years old, earnestly waved her arms in the air to get my attention while little sister, about three years old, excitedly jumped up and down on her tippy toes.

Since I was across the street and completely void of money, I yelled […]

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Sales Digest: Scary Useful Reads for Sales This Halloween

Sales Digest: Scary Useful Reads for Sales This Halloween

Looking for scary useful reads for sales? From “scary good” advice to “scariest sales blunders,” we’ve rounded up the best in Halloween-themed content for your sales team.

 

Scary Good Idea to Connect with Decision Makers:

If you act RIGHT NOW, you can still take advantage of Lori Richardson’s “Skeleton Strategy” to reach your prospects via snail mail with a memorable Halloween twist. Here’s why it’s worth your time: a 79% response rate in the past three years that she has tracked her results with this strategy. It works best with buyers you have reached at least once previously. Read more about it on […]

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Why Your Hot New Sales Tips Will Fail to Deliver

Why Your Hot New Sales Tips Will Fail to Deliver

I recently responded to a reporter’s query about the best new tips and tricks for sales coaches to help their sales teams increase annual revenue by a factor of ten. Reflecting on where the most powerful opportunities lie, I concluded the best path to exponentially boost revenue for most companies is not through “hot new sales tips and tricks.” Rather, it will be found by going back to the basics. Only organizations that already have a functional sales foundation in place are well-poised to benefit from new strategies and techniques. Sustainable performance can’t be achieved via shortcuts. What follows is […]

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Sales Coaching: 4 Strategies for More Questions

Sales Coaching: 4 Strategies for More Questions

Written by Frédéric Lucas. This was originally posted by our OMG Partner affiliate in Canada, Prima Ressource and has been translated from French with minor adaptation.

Effective implementation of a consultative sales approach means asking lots of questions. The art of query is a skill that sales managers should also develop to be more effective at coaching their sales team.

Asking lots of questions is rarely a natural ability in people, even among journalists! It’s a skill that is developed through practice and learning.

Your role as manager should lead you to coach your team and ask questions. Here are four strategies to help you.

Strategy # […]

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Sales, Business and Life Lessons from the Head Ball Coach

Sales, Business and Life Lessons from the Head Ball Coach

Those of you that know me well know that I am a Florida Gator. You also may know that my husband had the pleasure of coaching for Steve Spurrier, and that my son is a quarterback at the University of South Carolina, where he has had the privilege of being directly coached by Coach Spurrier. So I am selfishly saddened by Coach Spurrier’s decision to resign. But I also feel blessed to know him and to have felt his impact on so many parts of my life. I even have a special picture of him holding my daughter when she […]

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Is Legacy Exposing You to a Devastating Black Swan Event?

Is Legacy Exposing You to a Devastating Black Swan Event?

Written by Gary Delbridge. This was originally posted on The Sales Professor Blog by our OMG Partner affiliate in Australia, Objective Assessment and is reposted here with minor modifications.

I spend much of my time talking to CEOs about the importance of their organization having a powerful sales process and building sales capabilities within their teams. The problem is, the more time I spend looking into sales issues within organizations, the more apparent it is that the bigger problem is . . .

Legacy — the way we’ve always done things!

Whether we acknowledge it or not, our behaviors in life are directly influenced by our past experiences; hence […]

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25 of the Best All-Time Sales Quotes

25 of the Best All-Time Sales Quotes

Looking for a quick shot of sales expertise? We’ve compiled 25 easy-to-digest, practical and motivational sales quotes from leading sales experts. It’s a blend of oldies but goodies with a sprinkle of new quotes that you probably haven’t read anywhere else.

Here’s one of mine:

“The only two reasons why salespeople fail are: 1. They don’t do enough of the right activities; and  2. They aren’t good at doing the activities when they do them.”

– Gretchen Gordon

Quotes from the Women Sales Pros Network

“High-level buyers want to talk to people who know more than they do. They hunger not for information […]

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How to Turn a Good Salesperson Bad: A Cautionary Tale

How to Turn a Good Salesperson Bad: A Cautionary Tale

Written by Gary Delbridge. This was originally posted on The Sales Professor Blog by our OMG Partner affiliate in Australia, Objective Assessment and is reposted here with minor modifications.

More than 20 years ago, while working in the area of corporate transformation, I came across a fascinating explanation of the nature of culture within companies. I, like many people, saw the culture of a company as something “inherent” in any organization. But until that time, I failed to understand how it came into being and underestimated the enormous impact it had on the performance of those within a company.

While studying “Total Quality Management” […]

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