"Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king." — Alan Miltz That quote set the tone for our most recent Peak Alliance session, and it did exactly what I hoped it would. It made a room full of experienced sales leaders stop and think. This month, I had the privilege of handing the […]

"I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe That quote opened our most recent Peak Alliance session on performance management, and it landed exactly the way I intended. Too often, performance management gets reduced to […]

Practical Ways Sales Leaders Are Pulling Ahead of the Competition AI is quickly moving from experimentation to competitive advantage. While some companies are using AI for basic tasks like drafting emails or proposals, others are applying it across lead generation, prospect qualification, account research, and opportunity strategy. The difference in execution is creating a measurable […]

Picture a basketball coach sitting in his office during a game, waiting for someone to slide the stats under the door when it's over. He sees the shooting percentage. The turnovers. Who picked up their fourth foul in the third quarter. But he never watched the game. He didn't see the bad shot selection, the […]

At Pivotal Advisors, we believe the best learning often comes from the people in the room. The Peak Member Spotlight is a monthly feature that highlights leaders in the Peak Alliance community who are doing meaningful work inside their organizations while continuing to grow as leaders. Our goal is simple. Share the stories of leaders […]

One of the things I say often in Peak is that a spreadsheet is not a forecast. The spreadsheet holds the numbers. The forecast is the story you tell about those numbers and whether the business can actually count on them. This came up quickly in our recent Peak Alliance discussion. Forecasting is something sales […]

What do you do when a salesperson comes to you and says, “I want your job. I want to be the sales leader.” That’s an interesting problem, isn’t it? In this series on sales leadership coaching, we’ve talked about several different types of coaching leaders should be doing with their teams. We’ve covered deal coaching, […]

How much more would your team sell if they were simply better at selling? Better at prospecting.Better at asking discovery questions.Better at presenting value.Better at closing or negotiating. Most sales leaders would agree that improving those skills would have a huge impact on results. In this series on sales leadership coaching, we’ve talked about different […]

In our previous articles, we introduced the four types of coaching strong sales leaders use: Today, we’re focusing on performance coaching. It’s one of the simplest forms of coaching a leader can implement. It’s also one of the most overlooked. In many organizations, these conversations either never happen, or they happen in a way that […]

In our previous article, we introduced the four types of sales coaching strong leaders use: deal coaching, skills coaching, performance coaching, and career coaching. Today we’re focusing on the first one: deal coaching. This is the kind of coaching most sales leaders already do. A salesperson brings you an opportunity, asks for help, and you […]

I’ve asked that question to hundreds of sales leaders over the years. “Are you a good coach?” Almost everyone says yes. Before you answer that question too quickly, let me give you a little context. Because there isn’t just one type of coaching that sales leaders should be doing. There are actually four. And most […]

In our last post, we focused on the interview process and why sales interviews need to scout for performance rather than reward polished conversation. In this final installment of the Hiring the Right Salesperson series, I want to leave you with a practical framework for asking better questions. The goal is simple. Ask questions that […]