I once sat with a group of sales managers all within the same company.  They were skeptical that “the consultant” was brought in to talk to them.  (We often get called “the Bobs” for all you Office Space fans out there.)   I described for them what we see as the typical sales leader.  Sales leaders […]

“This opportunity could be really huge,” says at least one salesperson on every Sales Leader’s team at some point in time.  We see it almost every month.  Sales people are always looking for that big win that could score them a huge commission.  But often times that big opportunity is what we would call “outside the […]

Sales and Marketing are two departments that are supposed to go hand in hand, right?  They should work together to define strategy, identify any target potential clients and execute on plans together.  Well that is not always the case in businesses.  We find that many times, sales and marketing (if marketing exists in the company) […]

There is a very large quantity of CEOs, business owners and sales leaders that have all approached us with the same issue – “I just can’t find good sales people.  They all sound great in the interview process, but after I hire them I find that the best sale they ever made was getting the […]

Years ago I thought I was really smart.  I found out who the top sales person was for my biggest competitor and I hired that person away from them.  They had been successful, knew my industry and had contacts that could help me.   They should be able to ramp up quickly and be productive, right?  […]

The Pivotal Peak Alliance, our peer group of sales leaders, recently delved into the importance of strategic thinking. We threw them into a simple exercise where they had to craft a growth strategy for launching and managing a lemonade stand. Let me tell you, this bunch was beyond awesome! Talk about thinking outside the box! […]

CEOs often express to us that they would like their sales leaders “to be more strategic” and bring them ideas on how to grow the business rather than just run the day to day sales operations.  This seems like a reasonable expectation, but when we talk to sales leaders, many are just not wired that […]

Do you ever come across people that just don’t think the same way you do?  Some people are over analytical while others totally fly by the seat of their pants.  Some are super detail-oriented while others are way too general.  Some just care about business results while others are more interested in how people are […]

Picture yourself as a sales person that just got hired to sell for a new company.   You go in on your first day and meet people, get a tour of the facilities, fill out your paper work and maybe sit in a team meeting.  So far so good.  Then comes the onslaught of information that […]

Every sales leader has been in this situation.  You are on a call with your sales person and you see them making mistakes.  Some are minor (gave a wrong spec or misquoted something about a feature) and some are major (completely wrong on what you can deliver or wrong pricing).   Or, there are sales process […]

Whenever we talk to sales people about CRMs, we get various different reactions: I would say the majority of sales reps fall into one of the first two buckets.  But there are a growing number of reps that have figured out how to make this more of a sales tool and resource and not just […]

There have been multiple studies done to answer that question.  Time and time again, the results come back similarly.  The best sales people outsell their peers by about 5x.  Here are a few areas where they are distinctively different: They plan more – rather than just getting in the office and making calls, they spend […]