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Britain is critically short of professional salespeople with the right leadership, negotiation and digital skills to win deals in new marketplaces, an inquiry by a cross-party group of MPs has found. In its first report, published as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, the All- Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Professional Sales highlights endemic problems in Britain’s sales sector… 

Alumni from Consalia and Middlesex University’s Masters sales transformation programmes joined other business leaders at this year’s Global Sales Transformation Conference to explore the fast-changing business landscape. Security was tighter than normal in the face of Extinction Rebellion protests as delegates gathered at the London Stock Exchange on 15 October for a packed day of discussion around the topic “Pushing… 

Marketing and sales messaging, content, and skills training company Corporate Visions acquired Memzy in October. Memzy specializes in designing memorable, neuroscience-backed communications and presentation content. Known for its science-backed whiteboard storytelling, Corporate Visions says the acquisition will allow it to expand into other areas – particularly for the growing number of online sales meetings (versus face-to-face where PowerPoint is the… 

The UK is trailing behind Europe in customer service as brands race to adopt AI technologies in order to transform how they engage with customers. This is according to a new report from customer engagement software company Freshworks. The report reveals that just over half (54%) of UK senior decision-makers state their business currently uses AI – in areas such… 

Global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry completed its acquisition of sales enablement specialist Miller Heiman, including research arm CSO Insights, on 1 November. It has also acquired two other companies in the leadership development sphere: AchieveForum, and Strategy Execution in the move which bolsters its learning and development offerings. The move is part of Korn Ferry’s bid accelerate to its… 

Overwhelmed B2B buyers are facing a crisis of confidence as they increasingly struggle to make large-scale purchase decisions. That’s according to research and advisory specialist Gartner. Research findings revealed at the recent Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference in Las Vegas suggest that the root cause of customers’ struggle has little to do with how they perceive suppliers’ offerings and… 

Reporting from the Cranfield KAM Best Practice Forum 20 June 2019. Key account managers and purchasing professionals are increasingly recognising the importance of co-creating value and the key part that the latest technology can have in facilitating that. So, the most recent KAM Best Practice Forum at Cranfield University decided to focus on how Key Account Managers can embrace technology… 

How a unified negotiations approach drives customer loyalty and more revenue for SAP. The digital revolution is having a dramatic effect on the sales world. Listening to the customer, taking their concerns and strategic objectives on board, and using their feedback to identify the best possible solution has always proved to be an effective strategy. However, sales success can also… 

World-class sellers don’t expect success; they prepare for it. On the face of it, sellers appear to be on a winning streak. New figures from CSO Insights (the research division of Miller Heiman Group) reveal that, over the period 2017–19, sales organisations globally saw a 7% increase across both revenue and quota target attainment. However, before sales teams are too… 

Following up on our previous article in last issue of IJST, we continue the discussion on how to best work with your strategic customers to help create joint solutions for growth. What do the best do differently to create joint solutions? Leading companies that excel at collaboratively creating value with their customers are not trying to do a thousand things… 

As B2B buying behaviour evolves, how can sales organisations adapt? This is the third of a series of articles in which Dr Simon Kelly, Dr Paul Johnston and Stacey Danheiser explore customer value and differentiation. In this article they offer an early view into their latest research around the roles and competencies required by salespeople to help their organisations differentiate… 

In the previous edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, I summarised some of the key aspects of the Sandler Selling System. In the second of my series of articles on today’s leading sales methodologies, I want to turn to another long-established approach: Strategic Selling® from the Miller Heiman Group. The Strategic Selling methodology is particularly effective in complex… 

Context is important in sales meetings. Successful approaches vary according to the level and function of the executive you are speaking to and how far along the buying journey they may be. Writing in Harvard Business Review, Journal contributor Dr Frank Cespedes and Tracy DeCicco warn of the negative consequences of choosing the wrong sales approach for the circumstances, such… 

Some 24% of inside sellers are actively looking for a new job, with the three most common reasons being dissatisfaction with the competitiveness of compensation package, manager quality, and the degree of respect the organisation shows employees. That’s according to findings from Gartner’s Global Labor Market Survey. The survey also highlights factors that would pull sales representatives to similar jobs… 

Highly skilled, highly capable key account managers are essential for any organisation seeking to transform to a KAM culture. As more organisations realize that having a strong KAM capability is an absolute necessity to manage the customer base where most of their business resides, increasing focus is being placed on finding those key “few things” that guarantee success. Through research… 

The 1st Annual Customer Expansion Marketing and… 

How L&D can support sales transformation by collaborating with the sales leadership team. In this case study, RS Components Director of Learning and Development, Ian Wearne explains how L&D, sales leadership and salespeople collaborated to create a sales development programme that is transforming employee engagement and sales performance. In keeping salespeople at the top of their game, learning and development… 

How developing a coaching culture can make you a “destination employer”. How to embed a coaching culture was a dominant theme at the most recent Sales Learning & Development conference. Sales learning and development is not just about teaching skills; it’s about engaging and motivating the whole organization to be passionate about learning and development, and adopting a coaching culture… 

As the modern workspace is changing and the workforce is becoming more social, mobile and digital, corporate learning functions need to adapt their ways of providing training and enablement. This is especially true when enabling the sales force. SAP’s Learning2Go organisation provides SAP sales colleagues with offerings that harness digital and virtual innovations, empowering them with the most up-to-date and… 

How to work with strategic customers to create joint solutions for growth. Article summary Persistent, disruptive forces impacting profitable growth are intensifying, and as a result, companies in many industries face slower growth and accelerating commoditization of product and service margins. Given marketplace complexity and dynamic shifts in how customers buy, traditional business models are threatened and new strategies and…