Sales leaders don’t have enough time in the day and it’s costing them. They are busy developing strategies and implementing tactics to drive their companies to the next level, and sometimes the necessary minutiae of managing their team can come in second. But there is help, and it is close by in your company’s human resources
Sales Managers are supposed to be kingmakers—their job is to inspire and guide sales superstars towards glory – and effective sales managers unlock the potential of their sales team, especially when rewards and retribution alone aren’t driving sales results. They boost their team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit
Salespeople sell. Sometimes they sell themselves best of all. Resumes are not the only way to measure the value of a salesperson and arguably not even the best way. However, given the volume of resumes recruiters typically receive for a posted sales job, recruiters and HR departments need to understand how to read between the
Over the years I have been exposed to many sales management theories and strategies, some of them conventional and some of them less so. I have also seen many unconventional ideas evolve into mainstream practices as the times change, with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, challenging conventional wisdom is a smart move, if it results
It is commonly accepted that the best sales people are successful wherever and that they go don’t move jobs very often. This is certainly true, but rarely does someone have a perfect career track record in sales. There are a lot of internal and external factors that can get in the way of consistently achieving
Recently I wrapped up a consulting assignment for the VP of one the country’s leading enterprise software companies. During that time, I was around the elite level sales people on his team and I got to thinking about the differences between sales forces that consistently perform at a high level and those that are consistently
When a hiring manager meets what appears to be a perennial top producing sales person, there can be an overwhelming temptation to go into full sales mode to get this person hired – especially if this person is working somewhere else which is almost always the case with top performing sales people (we call these
Often prospective employers will call us seeking to hire a candidate that has a “solid book of business”, or a list of former and/or current clients in which the candidate has key contacts. As the thinking goes, this will allow the rep to quickly generate considerable sales upon joining the new employer. I like the
It is well known that you have to pay at, or more likely a bit above market levels in order to attract the best sales talent in the business. There are numerous surveys that indicate what sales reps are getting paid and there is always anecdotal feedback that comes to an employer either via its
We don’t use IQ tests to evaluate sales people (we are more interested in predicting how they will behave and produce in certain situations), but we know that being smart usually is not a liability if a sales person has good sales DNA. I was curious to see who is using IQ tests in sales
