July 2012
1 post
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“Write a blog every day, not to sell, but to teach.”
– Seth Godin, entrepreneur, founder of Squidoo, author, and public speaker
May 2012
10 posts
4 tags
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Fundamentals of Coaching - Part III
All right, Matt G. is confident he’ll be able to leverage his four key coaching skills and has decided on the type of coaching that Joe mostly needs. But his pre-work for tomorrow’s coaching session isn’t over yet. These kinds of conversation may get tense at times, so Matt wants to tune his engine to be able to sell Joe the benefits of what he’s trying to achieve. During...
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Introducing Sarah W.
Sarah W. (not her real name) is Matt G.’s boss at Best Microchip and the company’s National Sales Director. She joined Best Microchip a couple of years ago. Having grown in the semiconductor sector by holding positions of increasing responsibility in sales and marketing, Sarah’s understanding of the market dynamics and the competitive landscape is unparalleled.
[[MORE]]Sarah...
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“Web-based training metamediaries are likely to be the portals for large amounts...”
– A. A. Zoltners, P. Sinha, and S. E. Lorimer, authors of the book “Building a Winning Sales Force: Powerful Strategies for Driving High Performance”, Amacom, March 2009
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Fundamentals of Coaching - Part II
Fundamentals of Coaching Part I focused on the key skills that a manager must hone to coach effectively. But there’s another important activity that needs to happen prior to coaching any individual.
Can you remember Matt G.? After direct observation of his team at work, Matt decides that Joe definitely needs some coaching and plans to spend 3-5 hours/month co-travelling with him in the...
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Introducing Matt G.
To illustrate the typical challenges of today’s sales managers, we’ll introduce you to Matt G. (not his real name).
Matt G. is a newly hired District Sales Manager at Best Microchip, a medium sized semiconductor enterprise located in San Jose, California. Reporting to Sarah W., the company’s National Sales Director, Matt has been assigned to a sales team that includes Anton,...
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“The biggest competitive advantage that a company can have is creating an...”
– Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO, General Electric
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What's Salesophy About?
We’re often asked to explain what Salesophy is about.
Well, here’s our pitch:
At Salesophy, we write about sales management topics with the learning and development needs of the world’s sales leaders in mind - from first line sales managers up to VP of Sales.
By focusing on creating cutting-edge and rigorous content and finding new, technology-driven ways to deliver and share...
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Fundamentals of Coaching - Part I
Many companies still wrestle with how to get their coaching programs right (and make coaching a bit more than a buzz-word aired in the corridors), but at least they’ve generally come to realize that, in today’s complex selling environments, the impact of good sales manager coaching can be swift and dramatic.
A recent study by the Sales Executive Council shows that it can increase...
April 2012
10 posts
3 tags
The 3 Key Elements of Commercial Insight →
Commercial teaching, that is, the ability to teach customers something new about their business, is a cornerstone of the “Challenger Selling Model”. Yet for sellers is often difficult to differentiate reasonable but foregone business observations from impactful insights that can call a customer to action.
Credible, relevant, disruptive, and linked to you unique strenghts - any...
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Why Becoming a Sales Management Ninja?
Why becoming a sales management ninja? Because, we believe, that’s what it takes today. Many factors - both internal and external to companies - are making the sales management profession more complicated and challenging than ever. Companies expect of their sales leaders to “do more with less”. In this scenario, sales execs won’t be able to stay ahead of the game by simply...
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A Few Words of Wisdom on Sales Strategy Execution
In principle, carrying out the sales strategy process should be a straightforward task: once your revenue and margin targets are set, you define the sales strategy (i.e. how you’re going to attain your goals) and take care of effective sales strategy execution.
But this is easier said than done.
[[MORE]]There are several barriers to strategy execution that companies need to take into...
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7 Ways to Design Better Sales Training Programs
When we ask sales executives to talk about their Sales Force Learning & Development (L&D) programs, the lost faces that we normally see say more than a thousand words.
The fact is, when it comes to sales training, sales leaders show mixed feelings. On the one hand, they understand that engaged and capable salespeople drive good sales strategy execution. On the other, they know that more...
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Are Your Sales Managers Good Sales Managers? 7...
In this post, we talked about the importance of first-line sales managers in virtually any sales organization.
Here we want to get this important message across: you should be constantly evaluating the quality of your sales management team. [[MORE]] Particularly when one of your sales teams doesn’t perform up to expectations, set out to ask yourself these questions about the team’s...
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3 Ways to Get Your Coverage Strategy Right →
Modern sales organizations should regularly wonder: “Which accounts should we focus on?” “Are our sales resources deployed in the most efficient way?” “Are our back-office and support resources aligned effectively to our sales effort?”
This Sales Challenger blog post explains 3 effective ways to address these and similar questions.
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Do You Know How To Team-Sell?
Albeit important, the skill level of your key account managers, alone, is unlikely to guarantee that your KAM program will succeed. There’s another, frequently neglected success factor that you should take good care of: the quality of support that your KAM team gets from their organization in their efforts to serve the account.
[[MORE]]Otherwise said, yours may be the best key account...
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Nurture Your Sales Talent Pipeline Through Better...
Training, compensation, and CRM are vital to any modern sales organization. Not surprisingly, sales executives rank them as their top selling excellence drivers. What often comes undervalued is recruiting for sales force success. Yet for many companies recruiting is the most important sales force effectiveness driver and at the same time the most difficult to do well.
[[MORE]]Bad recruiting can...
March 2012
2 posts
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Are You The Hassle-Free Supplier That Your...
Should B2B companies worry about how difficult it is for their customers to purchase their products and services? Well, it turns out that they should. In fact, when it comes to the sales experience, being easy to buy from is one of the top drivers of decision-makers’ loyalty.
[[MORE]]Yet there’s a number of factors that risk to make a customer’s purchase from a supplier more...
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Trends in Sales Organizational Structures
Typically, sales leaders don’t assess the appropriateness of their sales organizational structure as frequently as they should. Yet this should be regularly done to ensure that customers’ needs are better met, internal efficiencies are driven, and competitiveness in the market is preserved.
[[MORE]]In a study that crossed industries and geographies, the Sales Executive Council identified...
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Sales Process: A General Model
The sales process is an important way for companies to deliver value to their customers. The specific activities involved in a sales process depend on a variety of factors - including customer requirements, product and market characteristics, industry and business environment, company strategy and culture - but from 30.000 feet sales processes look a lot similar and are commonly organized in four...
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Carryover Sales Explained
A territory’s revenue is unlikely to drop abruptly when its seller resigns or is let go.
How can that be? Because of the carryover sales effect.
Carryover sales represent the revenue that can be attributed to a certain year’s effort and will continue in the following years without further sales effort. Companies can enjoy substantial carryover sales of a product when it meets the...
September 2011
14 posts
2 tags
Let Your Key Accounts Know Why They Are Key
What attributes must an account have to qualify as key?
When companies set out to start a new Key Account Management program, this uses to be the very first question they choose to address. But there are other important matters that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Even though you’ve picked your selection criteria and elevated a certain account to key status, it doesn’t necessarily...
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The Diminishing Returns On Your Sales Force...
Lately sales results have been great at your company, so great that next year you can afford some additions to your sales teams and be better off sustaining the outstanding revenue growth. As you give your finishing touch to your PowerPoint presentation for the EVP of Sales, you think: “She surely expects to see a reasonable estimate of the additional revenue that the new hires can bring...
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When You Downsize, Do It Strategically
In businesses that move from maturity to decline, Sales Forces often get downsized in an attempt to preserve profitability. Workforce cuts are always painful, for those who are let go as well as for those who survive and whose workload can double or triple.
But is there a better way to downsize?
“As the size of the Sales Force is reduced”, A. A. Zoltners, P. Sinha, and S. E. Lorimer...
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From Time To Time, Stress-Test Your Value...
In a previous post, we discussed the importance of a compelling value proposition. It’s simply at the heart of your sales strategy. Therefore, when your top-line results are lagging, it could be worth considering a health check of your commercial messages as they probably need some sort of “revamping”.
How to practically do it is a different story. Revamping an ineffective value...
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3 Ways To Make Your Sellers Want to Use Your CRM
Many companies have learnt the hard way how challenging it is to make their sales and marketing organizations want to use their brand new CRM systems.
More often than not, adoption ends up to be spotty. A low adoption normally means that data quality is hampered and, if the quality of data in your CRM system is unreliable, at the end of the day no one will trust your heavily invested resource...
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Make Sure You're Focusing On Your Best Sales...
Companies put tremendous amounts of money and effort in pursuing the best sales opportunities that they see in their markets. But the problem is: what’s the yardstick by which to measure how good an opportunity is?
There are frequent misallocations of resources in the sales world. Significant amounts of investment dollars are squandered on low-value targets, while the most...
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“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”
– Mark Twain, novelist
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Get Your Account Management Strategy Right. From...
In essence, your account management strategy should be targeted at achieving these two complementary results: a) demonstrate that your company’s vision is superior and can best meet your clients’ needs; b) make your customers agree that change is necessary and that your company is better positioned to lead that change.
But how can your account managers support your strategy from an...
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“It is not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?”
– Henry David Thoreau, United States writer and social critic (1817-1862)
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Like Shoes, Sales Forces Are Better When Sized...
The size of your Sales Force affects your customers, your salespeople, and your whole company. There are quite obvious consequences of not having your sales organization properly sized.
[[MORE]]If your Sales Force is too small, it can’t service your customers well. Your salespeople are likely to be overloaded and unable to pursue every sales opportunity effectively.
If it’s too...
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Sellers That Can Whiteboard Win Their Customers'...
When asked about the skill set they mostly want to see in their salespeople, sales executives pour out the usual list of suspects: negotiation skills, business acumen, communication savvy, smart questioning, etc. Interestingly, the same question asked to customers might provide a slightly different answer. [[MORE]]You might hear them saying that they want a salesperson to be able to grab a marker...
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Designing the Best Sales Force Structure
In deciding whether to deploy a generalist or specialized Sales Force, companies must first assess the complexity and heterogeneity they’ll face in terms of the markets they’ll service, the products they’ll sell, and the selling activities they’ll have to perform.
[[MORE]]The remaining key steps when developing the most effective and efficient Sales Force structure are as...
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Your Customers Are Calling You. To Close a Deal?...
Don’t get too excited by your customers making the first move and calling you spontaneously. In fact, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are interested in buying your products or services.
[[MORE]]With more information available to customers today, the fact is that suppliers are being contacted when the purchase decision is almost taken. When calling, customers probably have already...
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What Can Reps Learn From Their Peers? A Lot, and...
OK, you’ve undertaken a major change management initiative and, understandably, you’re relying on your first-line sales managers to play as change agents. But, is there anything else you can do to increase your chances of success?
In today’s highly networked, collaboration-intensive work environments, peer influence seems to have outpaced authority in bringing about desired...
August 2011
5 posts
3 tags
Are You Sure You Are Targeting The Right...
The tough global economic climate has exacerbated one factor: the sharp rise in the amount of consensus needed across a customer organization to close deals. Not only is this factor extending sales cycle times in B2B markets, but it’s also increasing the risk of deals stalling.
[[MORE]]Today, there are no more single decision-makers as sellers must increasingly gain collective,...
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Sales Strategy Fundamentals
A sound sales strategy:
Focuses Sales Force attention on attractive market segments that value the company’s offering;
Tailors the value proposition and the sales process to each market segment’s specific needs;
Defines cost-efficient sales processes that communicate the value that the offering creates for customers;
Helps salespeople develop business relationships that benefit...
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Sales Strategy: A Practical Definition
You can state you have a sound sales strategy in place when you know:
Who your customers and prospects are;
What your value proposition is; and
How the selling is done.
A sales strategy articulates the activities that need to occur between the company and its customers and prospects with the goal of understanding customer needs and demonstrating the company’s products’ and...
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Shaping a Best-In-Class Sales Organization
According to the Sales Executive Council, world-class sales organizations are built on these 4 foundations:
Strategy and Customer Management
Sales Process and Productivity
Sales Talent Management
Metrics and Rewards
Real-world organizations usually fall short of excellence because they show gaps in one or more of the above mentioned critical domains.
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First-Line Sales Managers Do Matter. Surprised?
Well, it’s a no-brainer. In any sales organization, first-line sales managers play a pivotal role. A good sales manager selects, builds, leads, manages, and rewards the team. The manager succeeds when all of his/her people succeed.
And yet, sales managers aren’t usually paid for their team management activities, but for the revenue and profit results they deliver. Those results are...
