Insight

How the investment community works and why SV is good not only for marketing, but also for KAM. There are two schools of thought about the topic of shareholder value (SV). One school, led by Professor Hugh Davidson, argues that it leads to short-termism. The other school, to which I belong, argues that short-termism has been endemic in Western economies… 

Here are some simple thinking tools to help with problem solving and make us better managers. If someone asked you whether you were certain that your sales incentive programme was effective, what would you say? What about if they asked whether you knew whether your firm’s advertising was working? Or how about if they asked if you knew the impact… 

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses Market segmentation has traditionally been based on demographic factors such as company size, sector and location. But these simple characteristics are hopelessly inadequate predictors of which specific organisations you should focus your marketing and sales energies on. That’s because in any complex B2B sales environment, there will be a set of specific unique-to-you structural,… 

Leadership and millennial expert, Dr Mary Collins is Senior Executive Development Expert at the Royal College of Surgeons Institute of Leadership. She offers some expert advice on how to attract the female millennial into sales. Given the unique motivations of the female millennial, how can companies best engage them to ensure they attract and retain key talent and elicit the… 

Victoria Williams is Vice President and Sales Director at GSK. She describes the transformation that has occurred in pharmaceutical sales and urges women to put themselves forward and avoid over-questioning their capabilities. Selling has changed vastly in the past 20 years with the emphasis now on value. If I compare today to when I was a medical representative in Nottingham,… 

Trang Chu is an executive leadership coach and founder of Tallgrass Way where she works with high-profile executives in investment banking, private equity and law firms. Previously, she was a managing director at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch. She explains how success correlates as closely to confidence as competence. She can be contacted on www.trangtchu.com. Companies that embrace diversity tend… 

Annmarie Neal is Chief Talent Officer, Hellman & Friedman LLC, and has held the same role in both Cisco Systems and First Data Corporation. She is also the founder of the Centre for Leadership Innovation. She explains how having a strong sense of self is probably one of the most essential traits of leadership. There are several reasons why women… 

Dr Beth Rogers PFHEA is a sales educationalist and researcher at the University of Portsmouth Business School. Her advice to employers is to improve their sales pitch when it comes to attracting female talent and focus on rewarding those who deliver results, not “face time” in the office. The distribution of women in sales across various industries and different levels… 

Nicola Robinson is UK & International Sales Director, Kettle Foods and was previously Field Sales Director, Coca-Cola Enterprises. Winner of Best Sales Director, Women in Sales Awards 2014, she shares her advice for women starting a career in sales and why she’d like to see more open dialogue on the supports needed to retain female talent. She talks to Deirdre… 

Too many women believe that if they keep their heads down, work hard and meet their targets, they’ll be recognised as sales experts on the merits of their work and rise through the ranks. However, what really separates successful sales leaders from the pack is their ability to self-promote. We’re all aware of the depressingly disproportionate number of women at… 

Hiring and onboarding is an expensive and time-consuming process. It pays to get it right. The costs of recruitment are on the rise again, with an increase of around 50% from 24 months ago, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; meanwhile, four out of five employers are saying that the competition for well-qualified talent has increased over… 

Professor Mark Johnston explores the conundrum of the high-performing, low ethics salesperson. Organizations strive to hire, train, develop and enable salespeople to reach a high level of performance. Of course, as every sales manager knows, only a few can truly be considered “high performers”. Research on high-performing salespeople suggests they are different and often require sales managers to “adjust” their… 

Nick Lee on… The myth of natural talent Why the superstar culture is bad for both the “stars” and the rest of the team. One of the more pervasive ideas in the popular perception of success in almost any field is that of the “natural”. What I mean is that we humans appear to be almost hardwired to explain the… 

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses What can businesses do to ensure that they establish the platform for predictable, reliable and sustainable revenue and market share growth? I’m going to assume that you have a product or service that people want to buy. But that’s clearly not enough. I want to highlight three critical (and timeless) principles that have always… 

Authenticity, cultural fit and solving client problems are just some of keys to selling professional services, reports Chris Alder. Too many people in professional services do too little to understand the business of their clients – let alone clients’ specific issues and concerns. That’s a startling conclusion from a white paper published by sales training specialists Huthwaite International.1 Add in… 

Dr Beth Rogers ask whether the “Internet of Things” is set to transform the sales paradigm yet further. Imagine a future where customers’ needs are met even before the customer has identified them or a salesperson has prompted for them. It is a future where the role of the salesperson is focused on high-profile change projects, rooted in idea generation… 

The rewards for going after a choice piece of business can be huge, but making the right decisions can mean life or death. In today’s fiercely competitive environment the consequences of failure can indeed be career changing – for all the wrong reasons. Qualifying sales opportunities effectively is arguably the most important thing any company large or small will do,… 

What can we discover from research about the best way of dealing with problem salespeople? In the 15 years I have spent working with frontline sales managers, one particular issue has loomed larger than any other. Specifically, when a sales manager is faced with a problem with one or more of their salespeople, how best should they deal with it?… 

How can sales survive in a banking sector beset by scandal? Interest rate hedging products where businesses were mis-sold complex insurance deals… tax dodging… manipulation of the London interbank lending rate (LIBOR) to boost profit from trades… money laundering… the manipulation of foreign exchange rates by out-of-control rogue traders – these have been the scandals which for many have come… 

As buying behaviour becomes more sophisticated, presales has emerged as a vital engine in the sales pipeline, argues McKinsey & Co. At a time when CEOs are on a constant quest for growth, there is a promising but often overlooked capability available close to home: presales. Building on our analysis of what drives performance in our book Sales Growth, we…