Wednesday, September 6th, 2023

The AI balance sheet

What will be the impact of artificial intelligence on business? There is a fierce debate (not to mention a lot of hype) surrounding the future impact of artificial intelligence, related both to its potential benefits and also to the not inconsiderable dangers of introducing AI into business and society. On the one hand, AI investment has been growing rapidly over… 


Friday, July 7th, 2023

Scared of change? So, what?

Grant van Ulbrich is Global Director of Sales Transformation at Royal Caribbean Group. His learning journey has taken him via a Master’s in Leading Sales Transformation to a doctorate in sales transformation, a new book, and the creation of a bespoke model for personal change. Q: What motivated you to create a new personal change model for sales? A: I… 


Thursday, April 20th, 2023

Sales AI in its own words

We’ve seen the hype, but what is the future of AI in sales? You were either asleep for the past few months or marooned on a desert island if you missed the hype surrounding ChatGPT, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot that was launched in November 2022. The system quickly became a social media sensation due to its detailed responses and articulate… 


Thursday, September 29th, 2022

Why is storytelling so powerful?

Stories are not only enduring; they help drive business. Telling stories is what humans do; it is fundamental to the human experience. We’ve been telling stories for tens of millennia: 30,000 years at least. Cave paintings in the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, located in the Auvergne district of France, date back 30,000 years and represent the oldest known storyboard to be… 


Tuesday, January 11th, 2022

The power of relationships and purpose

Digital is enhancing the way we manage business and sales organisations, but analytics are underpinned by relationships and human behaviours. The value tied up in customer relationships is vast but hard to measure; purpose is now a profit centre and predictable human behaviours can help us to forecast sales more accurately. These were just three of the key takeaways from… 


Monday, January 10th, 2022

Character to lead

We interviewed Kelly Garramone and Phil Styrlund to understand how character is a key driver of organisational success in sales. They explained how sales organisations can take part in some ground-breaking research that will drive performance. What is character science? Pioneered by Dr Fred Kiel (amongst others), character science is a new field of study that was born out of… 


Friday, April 23rd, 2021

Landmark merger for UK sales profession

What does the merger mean for the sales profession as a whole? AH: In the UK, this clears up what people have been potentially confused about: one body being more focused on the custodianship of sales and the standards of sales, and the other being perhaps more commercial – open to sponsorship and doing magazines and award ceremonies. I think… 


Friday, April 23rd, 2021

Supercharging sales

UK lawmakers warn that Britain is suffering from a shortage of salespeople and sales skills. MPs say much more needs to be done to recruit and train people with strong B2B selling skills. Last month’s report by Westminster’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Professional Sales underlined a persistent problem for the sales profession in the United Kingdom: quite simply, not enough… 


Friday, February 26th, 2021

4 key sales reads

Four new books written by distinguished contributors to the Journal offer business leaders, sales professionals, students and academics new insights and guidance as they seek to navigate the complexities of selling and sales leadership today. Each of the authors delivers that rare combination of academic credibility and practical business experience. Sales Management That Works by Frank V Cespedes Rather than moving… 


Friday, February 26th, 2021

Fast forward to the future

Waldemar Adams explains how SAP’s sales organisation moved quickly to adapt in a year of dramatic change. iJosT: What do you think are the most important issues around sales currently? W A: What we see is that we are anyhow in a transition in the world of selling that has now accelerated because of the pandemic situation. Most of it… 


Thursday, July 9th, 2020

Latest courses for students and apprentices

Never before have there been so many options for students, apprentices and aspiring sales professionals to study and gain valuable qualifications and commercial experience. Academic sales programmes are available to those anticipating a sales career either as university and college courses for undergraduate students on leaving school or at postgraduate level. Postgraduate options (often aimed at more experienced individuals) include… 


Friday, May 22nd, 2020

Sales and the COVID crisis

We asked leading academics, professional bodies and consultants for their views on how sales leaders can best respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Unprecedented is a word we hear being bandied about a lot since the emergence of the COVID-19 virus. Nevertheless, the situation we all face is indeed unprecedented, and the world will never be exactly the same again, even… 


Friday, December 13th, 2019

Pushing boundaries

SAP’s Manal Siddiqui discusses cricket, qualification and his career. Manal Siddiqui has an infectious enthusiasm for cricket and work, these probably being the two things he loves most in the world, aside from his family. Indeed, when pressed, the former under-19 UAE international cricketer jokes: “Cricket is my first love, you know; that’s what I keep telling my wife, ‘You… 


Friday, December 13th, 2019

Transformation is emotional

David Norris explains how participation in the Leading Sales Transformation Masters programme is reinforcing an ethos of continuous improvement at industrial giant SKF. Like most companies, bearings, seals, lubrication and rotating equipment systems specialists SKF operates an annual performance review system. At an individual review, David Norris, Sales Director United Kingdom & Ireland, presented his manager with an outline development… 


Friday, December 13th, 2019

A story of epic endurance

Barry Gray is preparing for the last great polar challenge. Here he talks mind-set and leadership. As Barry “Baz” Gray prepares to follow in the footsteps of his hero Sir Ernest Shackleton, he has a sense of history and his potential place amongst the pantheon of polar explorers. “For me it’s about doing something that’s never been done,” the former… 


Tuesday, June 25th, 2019

Courage and curiosity

Nilgün Atasoy’s wide experience, open mindset and empathetic approach have opened doors in her career. Nilgün Atasoy specialises in expanding horizons. From her multicultural upbringing to her progression in the traditionally male-dominated technology sector, to her trailblazing role as one of SAP’s first female salespeople in the Middle East and a pioneering woman sales manager in Eastern Europe, she has… 


Tuesday, June 25th, 2019

Blazing the trail for women sales leaders in technology

Dutch ICT Woman of the Year, Monic van Aarle is a sales director working with a diverse range of SAP’s customers in the Netherlands. Monic van Aarle has been working at SAP for 15 years and in sales for a total of 37 years – which stacks up to a significant amount of experience. Starting her career in marketing, she… 


Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

Sales enablement, AI and other hot topics

As the business world is increasingly disrupted by digital, sales enablement is coming of age. Is this relatively new discipline the key to competitive success for sales organisations? A variety of sales enablement hot topics were on the agenda at Miller Heiman’s 2018 Sales Enablement Summit at the Nobu Hotel in London on 8 November. Not least was the fact… 


Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

GST focuses on disruption and resilience

Consalia graduates and keynote speakers came together to discuss strategies to thrive in today’s disruptive business environment. As the business environment becomes ever more uncertain, with constantly accelerating change and increasing market disruption, both organisations and individuals need to become more resilient. But what kind of toll does this disruption take and how can we become more resilient? These were… 


Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

SPIN Selling

In this series of articles we look at some of the most popular sales methodologies. What’s the difference between a methodology and a process? In sales, the methodology is the application of general – possibly universal – principles to the way we approach a component of the sales cycle albeit that it may also be contextual. A process, in contrast,…