Sales Development Archives - Braveheart Sales Performance

Sales and The Need to Purge

When was the last time you did some purging in your professional life, or personal life for that matter? There’s a reason I wonder. Recently, I helped both my mother and mother-in-law move. Each had accumulated over the years both great personal treasures and a lot of junk. Faced with helping them get rid of what they no longer needed (or perhaps ever needed), I reflected deeply both about the value of things, and eliminating things. And while I carried boxes, packed treasures and discarded junk, I realized that the process was completely applicable to the world of sales and […]

Why Your “Hot” Leads Aren’t Buying

Marsue Sams is a Sales Growth Specialist with Braveheart. She is a passionate sales strategist and coach with over 20 years of award-winning corporate sales and sales leadership experience. Marsue has written multiple sales guides and motivational sales programs for a wide variety of organizations during her time in corporate America and has spoken at national and regional user-group meetings.

I have seen many sales people fall into the habit of believing that anyone who requests information about your product or service is ready to buy. This is a dangerous mindset and a huge time and resource waster. Learning how to properly […]

6 Destructive Excuses Sales Managers Make That Hurt Sales Growth

Sales managers can’t control the CEO’s appetite for excuses, but they can still choose whether they are going to accept excuses from their sales team […]

Is it Consultative or Just Insultative Selling?

Anyone who seeks knowledge about selling has likely heard the term “Consultative Sales” or “Consultative Selling.” I don’t know what the technical definition of the word consultative is, but in essence it means to operate like a consultant. Unfortunately the term gets bantered around a lot and I fear can become a gimmick or a tactic rather than a mindset.

When pretending to be consultative, ineffective salespeople sound scripted, trite and risk being insulting to prospects and clients. To use my newly-coined term, it’s insultative.

Sales managers, if you have a salesperson who you are coaching to be more consultative in their […]

Teflon® Man Improves Success in Sales

Have you ever had a sales rep who was emotionally volatile? Okay maybe you are saying, “Is there any other kind?” We find it to be a problem that is not necessarily acknowledged or respected. Instead we tend to accept volatile behavior from salespeople as part of the territory. If you do, you are doing your reps a disservice and you are allowing them to miss out on sales that they otherwise might make.

I get it. We expect our salespeople to be animated, charismatic, even emotional. The reality is that if they are emotionally volatile, then they are likely missing […]

Systematic On-boarding Programs Predict Success

As part of our work with clients, we sometimes help them improve their hiring effectiveness and efficiency by introducing an assessment into their hiring process. I have found that hiring managers occasionally get lulled to sleep believing that because the candidate was recommended by the assessment, and HR screened them that they will just step into the position and be a superstar. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t. As I discussed in this recent article there are six steps to successful sales talent hiring, and on-boarding is one of those steps.

Even the best, most precise process to select […]

The Six Steps to Effective Sales Talent Hiring

One of the services we provide our clients is training to improve their sales talent hiring effectiveness. The facts are stark. Without a good process most companies have excessively high turnover rates, and the cost of that turnover is great. National statistics indicate that it costs the employer between 3x and 5x the salesperson’s total annual compensation for each bad hire. Fortunately there is a repeatable process that if the hiring managers will follow, will produce predictably great results. Here are the steps.

Determine whether you want to be proactive or passive in your approach.

What I mean is this. Passive is […]

Sales Managers Aren’t Spending Enough Time Holding Salespeople Accountable

Last time I talked about the area of accountability and what causes sales managers to be ineffective in holding salespeople accountable. In case you missed the list of traits that competent sales managers possess I list it here.

Doesn’t accept mediocrity
No need for approval from salespeople
Takes responsibility
Manages behavior
Asks questions
Manages the pipeline
Personal beliefs support accountability

As I mentioned last time, frequently we see sales managers who have a hard time holding salespeople accountable because they have an oversized need for approval themselves.

While that is a common trait that is lacking and can be time-consuming to improve, we also see a significant number of […]

Can Your Salespeople Provide a Disney Experience?

I had the privilege of hearing Doug Lipp present at a recent conference where I was also a speaker. He is the former Disney University trainer for Disney. While his message was mostly about customer experience and satisfaction, he made a specific point that resonated with me and applies to sales.

He explained that at Disney World they would train their staff to look at the park from the child’s eye. They would physically get down on their knees and experience the park the way a child would experience it. Most companies I work with care about how the customer perceives […]

Does Your Sales Team Have the Elements of a World Class Sales Organization?

In a recent article, “The Sales Leadership Challenges to Having a World Class Sales Force” published by Dave Kurlan
of Objective Management Group, he described the elements of a world-class sales organization. I agree with the list he compiled. He listed the following points:

Sales Leadership
Sales Architecture
Sales Infrastructure
Sales Talent Management
Sales Enablement
Sales Human Capital

Many CEOs aspire to have or build a “world-class” sales organization. Many believe they already have one. So how does your organization measure up? Do you have effective Sales Leadership in place? Notice I said EFFECTIVE? Be honest. Effective Sales Leadership is not that easy to come by. Are the […]