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Choose Not to Participate
Success is a choice, you can choose what you read, what you listen to, who you hang around with, and how hard you work. Zig Ziglar says "You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you will have, be and do in the tomorrows of your life." It is choice, not chance, that determines your destiny. Are you participating or are you choosing not to participate?

Tracking & Diagnosing Sales Performance

One of my clients was recently wrestling with a common business challenge - a contracted professional salesperson who was not delivering results. She was uncertain about the correctness of insisting on a report of his activities because her initial request had been met with, "I don't have time for that. I'm busy getting out there seeing people. What do you want: Sales or reports?" Like most "half truths" this one caused her some angst: She did want sales; activities were not what she was paying for - but the arrangement wasn't working, and she could not see why.

Is Your Sales Force a Ferrari or a Chevy?
Fine-tune your selling machine. Five step tune-up program to help you achieve that Ferrari-like performance and drive more revenue in 2010:

Are you winning too much?
Winning too much is one of the most common issues we see in successful people, from the executive suite to the top salespeople. The suggestion that this might be a detriment is usually followed by an incredulous look from the recipient. After all, shouldn’t everyone want to win all the time? Actually, this one behavioral problem belies many others.

5 Strategies towards Smashing your Sales Targets in 2010
If you are still a salesperson in 2010, firstly congratulations - here are 5 recommended strategies you can employ towards getting on top of your target this year.

What Sales Leaders Don't Know about Ego and Empathy
Empathy and Ego are both a lot like food - you can't have too much of it or it will make you sick. And if you don't have enough of it you'll be weak. They are really best plotted on bell curves, not bar graphs!

Is internal competition eating away at your sales results?

Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look at one case study and see why.

Twelve Steps to Business or Sales Team Health

They read your watch and tell you the time. Consultants certainly do this. It is a valuable service because we get too bound up in our own operations and lose the ability to read our own watch! In the next several paragraphs I will share the parameters we examine to answer the question, ‘Is this sales and marketing operation in good order?’ You may be responsible for an entire business, a division, department, or only your own sales territory. You can still make use of this list to read your own watch.

Performance Management
A relatively new management buzz phrase, performance management, has been gaining popularity recently. Management, particularly sales management, has always been about getting results so clearly whatever sales managers have been doing prior to the emergence of this new concept should also be known as performance management. The article explains the tasks required to maximize performance.

Why we should put the Trainer back into Sales Management

Up until 20 years ago, a key function of a sales manager’s role was the regular training of their sales people. What did this look like? Well, something like this: weekly 1 hour power training sessions for the sales team focusing on honing key skills, bi-monthly half day or 1 day sessions drilling down on account planning, strategy, market and product knowledge, and formal class room training usually employing external, expert training providers on a once or twice yearly basis to boost their teams to the next level. This was all supplemented by sales meetings and one-on-one coaching. Many sales managers of yesteryear were good trainers. However, through my observations across many businesses, the training component has been replaced by compliance.

3 Action Plans for Championship Sales
There are three powerful components of the mindset of a champion. Put them into action today and watch your sales performance skyrocket!

Sales Performance Management-How to Get More Sales with Fewer People
Many organization have just been through draconian cuts of both budget and staff. Now executives are searching for way to add to revenues but faced with fewer people to do it. Here are five easy steps that with positively impact sales in more way than simply increasing them.

Performance Management-How Your Sales Team Can Benefit
No one can benefit more from performance management than your sales team. Take this 3 pronged approach and achieve improved sales results immediately.

What are Reasonable Sales Management Expectations?
I am often asked which of the various services we provide to companies can be done in-house, by the executive team. Fair question. Answer: All of them. So why would companies use us or others with our expertise? Answer: Because when they try to do it in-house they aren't able to get most of it right:

Baseball's General Managers versus Business' Sales Managers
You have one huge advantage over baseball General Managers though. Forward looking indicators. Except for observation, all of the statistics they use in baseball are lagging indicators.

Insights from being in business for 13 years

Happy New Year to you all. I wonder if you took time off over the Christmas-New Year break and, like me, had a bit of trouble letting go initially and then found yourself easing into enjoying a little time off from work commitments. It’s when I slow down that I find some of my thoughts drifting to why I got into business for myself in the first place. There is a good reason for this. You see on the 9 January 2008 my business will be 13 years old.

Thinking of promoting your best sales performer to sales manager? Think again!
Many businesses have made the mistake of promoting their best performing sales person into the role of sales manager. Their logic – well they are great at selling, they’ll be great at sales management. Sadly most of these situations end in disaster.

Daring to be Different (part 1)
Here is the first of two articles about recruiting top performing sales people and daring to do so from outside of your industry. When it comes to assessing sales and sales leadership capabilities in your business do the lines blur between the cultural morays, views and perceptions, gossip and politics and the real capabilities needed to be assessed against your actual sales strategy?

Daring to be Different (part 2)

Here is the second of two articles about recruiting top performing sales people and daring to do so from outside of your industry. Even though I have not worked as a traditional recruitment consultant for more than 14 years many of my long standing clients still talk about those ‘out of the box’ placements we made. Was it just the recruitment approach that made the difference. Well NO. What these savvy mangers is did was make sure the culture and the business could accommodate these ‘new’ types of people. They took their current team along on the journey to the new as well. Sure it wasn’t all smooth sailing but they knew what they needed to do. As we know when we bring in difference we can often cause the current people to feel uncomfortable and if not addressed they can kill off the ‘new’ way.

Creating an effective sales performance management system

Following on from last week’s article about managing and measuring the right things in sales, I thought it would be worth looking at some of the key principles for effective sales performance management systems. The first place to start is to align your sales performance management system and subsequent key measures to your organisation’s strategy and goals. It’s then the job of the CEO and the Sales Leader to ensure the organisation (that means everyone else who supports the sales effort) is aligned to the sales performance management system. When this dimension is in place the organisation is best placed to sustain high sales performance.

Long Live Profit Sellling
Successful enterprises will focus on their bottom line through a combination of profit selling and cost cutting while relentlessly driving extraordinary value to selected customers.

Why Sales Coaching Really Matters
Without systematic, on-the-job coaching post a sales training program 87% of skills that were covered in the sales training program are lost within 30 days With systematic, on-the-job coaching post a sales training program the return on the sales training program is four fold. Lesson: Sales training without coaching is a cost liability rather than an investment.

Why developing your Sales Managers is the key to your sales success

It may surprise you to discover that many Sales Managers learn how to be a Manager on their own. According to the latest international study on Sales Training and Sales Force Effectiveness, many Sales Managers are given very little or no support when it comes to being a competent, effective Sales Manager. In fact, many Sales Managers reported that they were given no formal training in Sales Management practices, either before or during their tenure as a Sales Manager. The study reported that Sales Management training is the category of sales training that is addressed with the least frequency, in fact it is less than annually or not at all.

Timeless Tom
How to Be a Sales Champion at Any Age!

3 Reason’s to Invest In Sales Management Training
If you want to thrive in difficult times here are 3 reasons why you should invest in sales management training. Your sales force is your company’s most expensive promotional resource. Yet too many sales organizations operate well below their potential. Your front line sales managers are the people who can unlock the potential in your sales organization

How to Beat a Sales Slump

Have you ever experienced the dreaded downward curve or slump in your sales? Most of us certainly have. If you’ve been through it, you probably have a clear recollection of that lump in your throat, adrenaline-pumping moment when you realize that you need to scramble if you’re going to make your sales goal or quota. The feeling can be overwhelming and can set even the most seasoned salesperson into panic mode.

Recession Proofing Your Sales Force
As the leader of your organization, the next 6 months will prove to be more pressure-filled then you may have experienced in years. With decreasing prospects and the cost of doing business increasing, a squeeze on profits is inevitable.

The 5 Biggest Sales Management Coaching Blunders
Transforming your sales managers from good to great coaches can have a dramatic impact on sales. In fact, sales coaching is the management No. 1 activity that drives sales performance. The only problem is that managers have not been taught how to effectively coach. Coaching is a skill that takes time to perfect and unless effectively coached or trained managers make all types of mistakes.

What do clients want?
Clients don't expect to be coerced, bullied, tricked or intimidated into buying. They don't expect to be treated like an idiot by sales people who just talk at them and flash brochures or product sheets. Relationships do not work effectively if they are forced!

Influencing vs Negotiating
It has often been said that very strong negotiation skills are critical to being a high performing sales person. However, findings from our "sales force fitness" profiling work, where we profile critical qualities for successful sales performance in many businesses, large and small, is telling a very different story.

What is good selling?
Like many people, I have always been curious about what makes "great sales performance". This is a perplexing question that has been asked and attempted to be answered by many people over the years. Also, are great sales people born? (most people believe this to be true - but it's not). What does it take to be an elite sales performer, and can anyone learn how to sell well?

You can’t improve salespeople without improving sales management first
I am constantly appalled at the lack of effective sales management in companies these days. Not a week goes by in which I don't see a company make the mistake of focusing exclusively on salespeople in trying to improve sales performance. Experience has shown that sales managers are even more critical than sales people for creating durable performance change

The cost of poor sales selection
Have you ever done the math on how much sales recruitment costs you, especially when you get it wrong? If you are like most managers then chances are you haven't. So let's consider the costs, overt and covert, involved in sales recruitment. If you don't know it already, sales recruitment is one of the toughest assignments around.

Why you can’t have a one-type-of-sales-person-does-it-all approach

There is a large body of research that shows there are many types of sales people for different types of clients, products, and markets. Just because a sales person may be excellent in one market may not mean they are well suited for another. In today's world we are well equipped to define the type of sales role our business needs and define the salesperson's selling style to match that role. So let move away from limiting sales stereotypes and open ourselves to diversity.

Sales Simplified - The First Step in Selling
Call Reluctance Strikes Everyone... men and women, young and old, new and experienced - reps in every selling field. It's as common as the common cold, but can be a lot more deadly - even killing sales careers.

How by Being Captain Focus It Instead of CaptainWing It Will Increase Sales Even When Cold Calling
Today, it happened again, another cold call disaster by a Captain Wing It who called me attempting to sell me his services. Then after his poor sales performance, he had the audacity to ask for me to make some referrals. Has this ever happened to you?

Developing a Structured Approach to Sales Pipelines - The Issues

For many businesses, managing sales performance, is simply nonexistent which leaves them hopelessly exposed when business hits a downturn. They have no idea what shape they're in or, more importantly, be able to quantify what sales they need to get back on an even keel, how much activity needs to take place to generate the requisite sales, or the length of time it takes to get from first contact to order. This lack of knowledge is a major contributor to why many smaller businesses fail.

Are You Selling Your L-Factor
This is my article from the new Summer eBook from Top Sales Experts International.Itfs 147 pages and includes articles from some of the foremost sales experts in the world. People like Dan Adams, Keith Rosen, Wendy Weiss , Nancy D. Solomon, Joanne Black, Jonthan Farrington, Paul McCord , Cindy King and Kelly Robertson to name but a few.

Run And Hide
You have choices during these tough times. You can run and hide or be bold, brazen and brave - it's up to you!

Sell More Stuff - It's Important!

In my last article, I referred to an excellent booklet called “Selling in a Down Economy” by Robert Miller of Miller Heiman, as US Sales performance consultancy with a strong pedigree. If you missed it, the article can be found on my website. This time, I’d like to dig deeper into the sales activity I touched on and that Robert discussed in his article and I’ll give some specific guidance on things you should be doing.

High-Level Decision Makers
HLDM. What is it? A new drug to counteract high cholesterol? The latest high definition, plasma TV technology? Not at all. HLDM stands for High-Level Decision Makers. And contacting HLDMs can improve sales performance probably more than any another selling tactic.

Top 7 Sales Force Compensation Secrets
What's the relationship between sales assessment performance and income. Specifically if someone tests well, but doesn't report ever having a high level of income is there an underlying reason?

Sales Management Process: How to Improve Your Sales Team’s Effectiveness in a "Reset" Economy
In an global economy that’s being “reset”, changes in staff are unavoidable, and it seems reasonable to make those changes across the board.

Sales Management Process: Detect Symptoms, Then apply Cure for Common Excuse-Making
I work with excuse-making - blaming anything and everything for lack of results.

Recruiting Top Sales Pros is now HARDER, not easier
Businesses need to take a step back and consider all the factors before embarking on a course of action. What might seem obvious at first rarely is. Top 5% sales performers can deliver huge ROI. A little investment in one now could be one of the very best ways of combating the downturn

Sales Motivation Tools to Help Improve Your Sales Team’s Performance
What makes your salespeople get out of bed and come to work each morning? Is it the chance to realize your goals? Is it the opportunity to make your dreams come true?

Sales Training for Senior Manager Performance Improvement
Sales training courses for senior managers can train, educate and motivate senior sales managers to get their sales force to surpass the sales goals of the company. Advanced sales training for senior sales managers can turn a great senior sales manager into an excellent sales team leader.

Sales Training for the Entrepreneur Struggling to Succeed
Sales training is an entrepreneurial necessity. If your business is struggling to succeed, sales training can provide you with the skills you need to sell. And sales are what makes your business an economic success.

Franchise offers business opportunities in recession
As the recession bites, many large chain businesses are focussing a fresh at business format franchising. Franchise ownership offers large chain corporate businesses many potential advantages. In this article Nick Strong looks at some recent activity in the market place.

Unemployment and franchising
Nick Strong investigates how the franchise community is managing to deal with an economy that is forcing unemployment and reducing access to business development liquidity.

Exposed - Personality Tests Disguised as Sales Assessments
Yesterday, I met with a long-time client who, in his previous company, used OMG's Assessments to identify what needed to change in order to double revenue from $30 million to $60 million. In his new company, which is already about 12x that size, he wants to double revenue again. He said, "I just wasted two years with the _____ Assessment.

Who’s Your Competition?

Competition is the reason your salespeople and many of your company’s other employees have work to do. If it weren’t for competition, businesses would lack the strongest incentives for change – new products, new processes, new markets, new strategies, new organizations, etc. Competition also encourages companies to introduce innovations that benefit their customers. And changes often mean new work and new opportunities for employees.

IN YOUR FACE—FOR BIG RESULTS
Revealing the Single Biggest Factor in Lackluster Sales Results and 3 Things You Can Do To Avoid Failure.

Over Achievers on the Sales Force - We Have it All Wrong

Believe it or not, our six-year-old son is an over achiever. He has spelling tests each week and his teacher gives the class bonus words for extra points. He loves the bonus words and extra points so much that he has duplicated the process on his math tests. The teacher gives the class 20 math questions each week but (right now they are working on problems like 7 + 4) no bonus questions on the math. Our son takes it upon himself to add 4 bonus questions (he includes bonus questions like 800 +600) because he feels he can do more. This begs the question, how do you measure your over achievers?

Sell the Problem, Not the Solution
How do you get your message out to the right customers? What does it take to brand your company effectively? How can you speak the customer's language if every customer's problem is just a little bit different? If you can answer these questions, you will improve sales performance, manage sales productivity, and even control the cost of sales. Here's how: Sell the Problem and NOT the Solution!

Sales Training – What Happens When Salespeople Start Their Day Off Like a Pop Tart?
What does selling have to do with Pop Tarts? Here are five metaphorical comparisons between the successful toasting of a Pop Tart and successful sales results.

Sales Performance: Choosing the Right Tools

What really helps a sales team to improve its performance? Out of the many disciplines, practices, processes and automated reporting tools, which ones should sales managers emphasize? Which tools are best? Which ones contribute most to desirable outcomes? As it turns out, the sales leaders we interviewed say it has less to do with the tools themselves, and more to do with the way those tools are selected, designed and implemented.

Salespeople and the Momentum Factor
Momentum seems to be a force when it comes to sales performance. When Bob gets on a roll, new opportunities fill the pipeline, move along fairly quickly and close at the first opportunity...until the momentum changes. When Bob goes on vacation, gets distracted, becomes busy with deliverables or gets sick, it's a whole different Bob.

Improve Sales Performance with More Effective Pipeline Management
I have written extensively about the sales pipeline. Here are a few examples:

Hiring Salespeople is Like Baseball Expansion
Hiring salespeople is scalable until you get to a dilution point - very similar to the expansion that took place in baseball...

Professional Sales Management - Key to Sales Success

In an environment where customer demands predominate, because competition is both relentless and increasingly international, the world of selling must accommodate a dramatically changed world of buying. Critically, sales management must catch up to this new world of selling. All too often, many sales forces are populated by dispirited, burned out salespeople and managed by short-term-oriented and narrowly focused sales managers. Indeed many sales forces are managed as if it were 30 years ago and the sales managers themselves were salespeople doing the work, instead of orchestrating the action.

Go From Good to Great: Five Ways to Boost Your Sales Career
There is a chasm between good and great sales performance. Here are five ways to boost your sales career quickly.

Sales Managers - Are you an "Autocrat" or a "Motivator"?
After working for some 30 odd years now with thousands of Sales Managers, I’ve noticed that all the successful managers I’ve met have developed a management style which makes them popular with their people and allows them to get the best out of their people.

Sales Incentive Plans Drive Sales Behaviours
The behaviours of successful salespeople are considerably influenced by their incentive plans. This is reality and any salesperson claiming that they are not materially motivated is suspect. A salesperson with no desire for additional material gain is extremely unlikely to perform for your business.

Forecasting Fiction or Reality?
Why do so many sales forecasts bear a closer resemblance to great works of fiction than to reality? Why do “top opportunities” slip and slide from month to month and all too often disappear altogether?

Effective Sales Techniques and a Consultative Selling Approach for Today's Marketplace

A few impressive sales techniques and staying motivated is no longer enough! It used to be true that if a sales person had a great sales technique and was highly motivated they would be great at selling. Well, that’s no longer true in the world of B2B selling. If you want to be successful in today's marketplace, you have to have a whole armoury of selling techniques that form an effective and integrated selling system.

Breaking the sales barrier
Sales with ethics and values is the key to two critical aspects when building and maintaining a strong and productive sales team. To these values add inspirational leadership and a clear and precise product knowledge and simple sales skills and watch the sales grow.

Increase Sales By 25 Percent
All sales people need to have a monthly sales goal for themselves. They also need to know how they arrived at that specific goal. Many times, these goals are based upon their past sales performance, but past results may not be indicative of performance.

The Sales Pipeline
Maintaining a healthy sales pipeline is the key to consistent and predictable sales performance. Everybody feels better when there are enough qualified opportunities "in the works" to forecast strong sales in the future. The best way to ensure an increase in future revenue is to focus on building your sales pipeline today.

Learning from Experience: Implementing After Action Reviews in Your Sales Force

The problem with many sales organizations is not laziness, lack of selling skills or the myriad of other issues CEOs point to when sales are down. The problem with most sales organizations is the inability to learn from experience.er Action Reviews are now used by many companies in a number of ways. When conducted properly, the AAR serves as a post-event debrief that generates specific actionable recommendations (SARs) for immediate use. It also creates an environment in which sales people can identify real mistakes, learn from them, and make immediate adjustments, rather than get bogged down in blaming the market, the prospect, or the competition.

Driving to Sales Greatness
Get on the road to success and learn in the fast lane Do you love to drive to your appointment listening to your favourite songs, singing at the top of your voice, sounding fantastic, feeling cool, giving people the look when you get the chance. Yes, we have all been there, well, most days. It's time that you changed your daily habit. It's time to THINK and DRIVE.

How to Encourage Higher Sales Performance
Excellence in a sales organization means different things to different individuals and sales managers. Todays, sales manager must ensure that all individuals meet organizational criteria. This includes adhering to policies while also meeting and exceeding sales goals. The only way to ensure that people create excellence is by creating excellence in people.

The Power is in the Question
Does sales management seem to be lost in the wilderness at your company? Was your sales manager your top rated sales person that you promoted based on sales performance? Did your sales manager ever receive any formal sales management training? Do you think your sales force needs to be more aggressive? Are you following best practice principles?

Peer 2 Peer Mentoring
While many companies look to outsource their soft skills training a few have taken the idea that excellence is closer than they first thought. Taking the lead from some of the most innovative thinkers peer 2 peer mentoring is not only cost effective but has hidden psychological advantages in-built. Take a closer look at what you may be missing right before your eyes.

How to Be a Sales Coach

My belief is that all sales representatives should be coached on an ongoing basis. It is a form of mentoring that enables ongoing dialogue between the manager and the subordinate so that feedback on performance doesn't occur only when there is a problem. Nor should it occur and only one time of the year-the performance review. Moreover it allows for excellent sales work and customer service to be recognized, supported, exploited and then finally conveyed to others.

Sales Tip Whats The Best Day Of The Week
Learn how to maximize your selling results on the best day of the week.

How Sales Managers can reinvigorate poor sales performers
How Sales Managers can reinvigorate poor sales performers

The Changing Face of Sales

Over the past few years the sales environment has changed in a number of ways. The reasons are vast but typically relate to the changes in our society, economy, business models, technology and more. When it comes right down to the actual selling environment, there are a few distinct attributes that stand out today that didn’t seem to be as noticeable, or even a factor, just five or six years ago. The key for all sales organizations and individual sales professionals alike is to understand and adapt to these changes. Few organizations today still live through the experience of the ‘90s where prospects would actually call them and buy something without having to work hard at finding and acquiring these leads. Back then, even poor sales performance was rewarded with revenue and quota achievement, in spite of a lack of skills and hard work.

Thoughts For Incentives

Incentives are one of the greatest challenges most sales organizations face. While many start with the age old adage that "incentives drive behavior," they still find it difficult achieving a plan that drives business. One of the core challenges is that many organizations do not clearly define the behavior that they are truly trying to drive. While it is easy enough to say you want your incentive plan to drive sales, sales are not a behavior, they are an outcome.

Coaching Training Part 2: The Sale Performance Equation to Excellence

When managing a sales department, the role of a true sale coach comprises all the skills, traits, tools, and processes necessary to drive greater team performance. Sales coaching is not just an activity, but rather a strategic role the manager must evolve to in order to realize his/her full potential. EcSELL Institute introduces the new Sales Performance Equation(TM), which defines these elements.

Coaching Training Part 3: The 3 Elements of Sales Coaching

To perform at the highest level, a sales manager cannot merely be great manager who drives processes, but never captures the hearts of employees. Likewise, even the best leaders who can effectively collaborate with those on their teams, but never pushes them into the high growth mode of complexity, will not be able to maximize results. It is only when sales coaches are able to effectively manage processes, lead collaboratively, and coach their teams into complexity that they will truly be able to enter the high performance zone.

Field Sales Training Accompaniment
The purpose of the field sales visit is to review and analyse performance of the sales person – to observe performance, to catch them doing something right and to correct and retrain where needed.

Empowering Sales Beliefs
The sales results you create are based on your performance. Performance has many components for example, our activities and abilities that are typically where many organisations focus on. Yet beneath the surface, our beliefs about ourselves, our customers, our job, can either help or hinder our performance.

How To Evaluate The Performance Of Your Top Sales Executive
This article present the performance appraisal factors that should be used to assess the performance of a top sales executive. Also, it provides the format of a monthly sales call report that should be used to record the sales call activity of sales reps.

Don’t Make This Sales Management Mistake
You need to set the tone and set out a vision of where you want the team to head, over-performance from a sales performance standpoint. As far as leading and motivating, it comes down to individual tactics and techniques that you need to use with each one of your sales people because they are all motivated by different forces.

The Importance of Sales Management Motivation
The difference between sales performance above expectation and sales performance below expectation is largely determined by small things that a sales manager can do every day to keep his sales team at the top of their game and highly motivated.

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