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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… 

When your competitors are floating in a sea of sameness you need to make sure you are waving not drowning. In the second of a series of articles in which Dr Simon Kelly and Dr Paul Johnston explore customer value and differentiation, they are joined by co-author Stacey Danheiser to ask: are you selling in a sea of sameness? In… 

In this, the first of a series of articles on sales methodologies, I want to turn the spotlight onto Sandler Selling. Introduced by the late David Sandler in 1967 as an antidote to conventional product-centric, hard-sales tactics, the approach aims to achieve a more equitable balance of power between the buyer and the seller. By emphasising rapport-building and empathy, and… 

Two half-day programmes explored the interrelated issues of performance and talent. Driving improved sales performance via strategic insights and best practices was top of the agenda for delegates at a morning conference for APS members and guests at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on 16 May. An afternoon conference focused on developing sales talent. Speakers included a mix of company… 

Royal Caribbean Cruises have been presented with the APS Investor in Sales award for passing the professional registration assessment. Professional registration with the APS demonstrates a commitment to ethical selling and the Investor in Sales award is granted to sales teams when more than 50 percent pass an exacting test. So far, more than 130 salespeople in the company’s pan-European… 

The Association of Professional Sales held its first meeting in francophone Africa on 19 June. The inaugural event in Dakar, Senegal, featured a presentation by Emmanuel Delvaux, Global Sales and Marketing Director, Schlumberger. Delvaux, who also doubles as International Development Manager of the APS, discussed “The art of negotiation: what challenges for a win-win approach?” Meanwhile, in the UK, the… 

TomTom Telematics has been recognised as an Investor in Sales for its commitment to ethical sales standards. More than 50 per cent of a company’s sales team are required to pass the APS professional registration assessment to gain this status. TomTom’s pass rate, across their UK sales force, was 100 per cent and their sales team now appear on the… 

Multiorders has launched software that makes it easy for vendors to sell across multiple online platforms to raise visibility, increase reach and boost orders. It offers automated stock-tracking and shipping management, easy management of purchase orders, as well as the reduced cost and creation of shipping labels. Free trial and further information available at: www.multiorders.com. +

Edenred UK recently launched Connect Incentive, an SaaS-based incentives platform designed to drive performance through their channel or internal sales and customer service teams. The platform enables incentive programmes to be set up in minutes rather than weeks or months, removing admin challenges, and making them more cost-effective to run because they don’t need a costly IT project to get… 

Intelligent platforms that integrate sales enablement and communications tools reduce salespeople’s admin burden and make the 18% of the time they spend in CRM more effective, according to a white paper from consultants Strategy to Revenue that quotes statistics from a 2018 Forbes article “Why Sales Reps Spend Less Than 36% Of Time Selling (And Less Than 18% In CRM)”…. 

Elementary sales jobs are among those at high risk of automation in England, according to recent analysis by Office for National Statistics (ONS). Around 1.5 million jobs (7.4%) in England are at high risk of some of their duties and tasks being automated in the future. “When considering the overall risk of automation, the three occupations with the highest probability… 

Scotland’s Edinburgh Napier University recently hosted rising sales stars from both sides of the Atlantic at a two-day sales contest. A team from the University of Texas Dallas jetted in to take on talent from Coventry, Sheffield Hallam and the home university at the UK University Sales Competition, sponsored by Textron Aviation. Edinburgh Napier third-year student Max Hampapa emerged as… 

Science is the missing ingredient most sales transformations lack, and advances in the “science” of change such as digital, analytics, and supporting methodologies can increase programmes’ odds of success by three to four times. These are the main conclusions of a new article “Meet the missing ingredient in successful sales transformations: Science” by management consultancy McKinsey. The authors highlight four… 

The overwhelming priority for sales leaders is improving sellers’ ability to communicate value while their top challenge is hiring, a new survey from global performance improvement company RAIN Group finds. Top Sales Leadership Challenges and Priorities brings together the views of 423 sales, enablement, and company leaders to better understand their greatest obstacles and primary focus over the next 12… 

This report from Cranfield’s KAM and Strategic… 

When companies embark on a digital transformation journey, they undertake a challenging quest for new business models, as they seek to leverage digital innovations to generate value for their customers and to differentiate from their competition. SAP’s Digital Elite Programme enables its salespeople to pitch a digital journey that is a perfect fit for their customers. The digital revolution is… 

Alliances between organisations can be marriages made in heaven, or they can go horribly wrong…. When organisations are first formed, whether in garages in Silicon Valley or back bedrooms in Bangalore, the original founders use the first-generation sales model to grow the business. That is, they “sell to” people. They sell to fellow enthusiasts to convince them to join the… 

As part of a wider professionalisation of the sales function, forward-looking companies are discovering the benefits of sales education as a way to equip their people to thrive in today’s complex and challenging business environment. Today’s business landscape is challenging in multiple ways: it’s super competitive; technology is forcing us to deal with change and adapt our go-to-market models at… 

This is the first of a series of articles in which the authors explore customer value and differentiation. In this article Dr Simon Kelly and Dr Paul Johnston consider the importance of customer value and its criticality in building effective value propositions. They draw together their experience as marketing and sales practitioners, their recent academic and commercial research, and their…