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The primary goal of sales enablement must surely be to increase sales effectiveness by progressively reducing the performance gap between our best sales people and the rest, measured by revenue and other tangible metrics. But it seems to me that a number of sales enablement programmes (typically the less successful ones) have made insufficient efforts to understand the winning behaviours… 

How Big Data-Driven Coaching has been boosting win rates. Maintaining a position of pre-eminence in the highly competitive IT industry requires leaders to adapt to changes in the business landscape more rapidly than the competition. Continued success also relies on the development of innovative sales enablement techniques that boost performance, help meet customer needs and achieve bottom-line results. Digital Transformation… 

The nature of professional selling has transformed profoundly over the past few decades, resulting in a fundamental redefinition of the role of the sales force. Drawing on a study comprising interview data from 37 senior sales leaders, sales consultants and prominent sales academics from the US, UK and other European countries, I synthesise three key drivers for change and identify… 

Last time around, I wrote about artificial intelligence (AI) and sales. More specifically, I speculated on the possible impact of one type of AI – deep learning – on sales as we know it today. I explained that many features of more routinised sales jobs might be amenable to replacement by deep-learning methods, and also that perhaps this might not… 

You’ll notice a number of articles elsewhere in this edition on the subject of coaching. I want to use this short piece to focus on an area that has become a particular interest of mine: using coaching techniques to help our salespeople develop more effective opportunity strategies. I’ve observed organisations that do a particularly effective job of opportunity coaching, viewed… 

Successful B2B sales teams need to strike a balance between digital and human sales – that’s the conclusion of May 2018 paper The secret to making it in the digital sales world: The human touch from consultants McKinsey. B2B sales leaders using digital effectively enjoy five times the growth of their peers who are not at the cutting edge of… 

With England’s Department for Education due to ink its approval of the country’s first degree-level B2B sales apprenticeship programme at the end of June, the profession stands at an inflexion point, according to Phil Linter, Degree Apprenticeship Lead at global sales performance improvement specialist Consalia. “We are on the cusp of formally being able to offer the B2B sales degree… 

Academic research has found that reducing gender imbalance in sales teams improves performance. The authors of a paper in Industrial Marketing Management suggest that there is evidence that the addition of women to all-male sales teams should positively impact team performance by: reducing the average turnover rate of high performers within the team; enhancing relational skills, organisational citizenship behaviours, and… 

A poll of 200 IT buyers and 74 suppliers from IT marketplace Probrand.co.uk has found that as many as 1 in 3 think they are getting good deals when it comes to buying IT. Indeed, the survey found that 85% of IT buyers believe that they don’t overpay for IT equipment. Yet additional research conducted using IT benchmarking application, KnowledgeBus… 

Sales leaders have been invited to contribute to the UK government’s strategy on the future of British business and industry. Business Secretary Greg Clark issued the invitation during a visit by members of the Association of Professional Sales (APS) to Westminster on 24 April. Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sales, the cabinet minister… 

A sales student at the University of Portsmouth has been crowned winner of the 2018 European Sales Competition in Paris. Final-year student George Nodwell is now seen as the best and toughest negotiator among the 56 competitors from 21 European universities and Texas State University, USA. Nodwell told the Journal, which was one of the event sponsors: “It’s been an… 

SAP’s D&I strategy seeks to build a more inclusive workforce and better business results. SAP is in an industry where the pace of innovation separates the winners from the losers, and a greater variety of insights and experiences leads to new ideas and innovations. We recognised this need and embarked on a strategy to ensure we were drawing on and… 

“More human than human”: The motto of the Tyrell Corporation, from the 1982 film Blade Runner. Recently watching that movie again, in preparation for a showing of the sequel Blade Runner 2049, I was struck (as I often am) by the interesting differences in what we can imagine the future to be like for different technologies. Of course, Blade Runner… 

If, as many successful scale-ups are, we are on a mission to challenge the status quo and to get our prospective customers to think differently about their critical business issues, we would be wise to ensure that we are accommodating diverse perspectives and experiences within our own organisations. I’m not talking about the demographic dimensions of diversity – of age,… 

In a February 2018 paper titled “Boosting your sales ROI: How digital and analytics can drive new performance and growth”, McKinsey authors argue that driving sales growth today requires fundamentally different ways of working, as well as outstanding execution across large, decentralized sales teams and channel partners. Advances in digital and analytics mean that sales leaders can drive and scale… 

This year’s European Sales Competition will take place in downtown Paris near the near Champs Elysees on 30-31 May. Hosted by Euridis Business School, the competition is open to students from 20 participating universities. Bernard Hasson, General Manager at Euridis Business School explains that the competition distinguishes itself by featuring real buyers playing the roles of IT buyers on the… 

Virgin Media Business Specialist Sales Desk Manager, Emma-Leigh Waters won big at the 5th annual Women in Sales Awards Europe ceremony held at the Sheraton Grand Park Lane last December. She was voted Best Woman Sales Newcomer and Most Distinguished Sales Woman of the Year. “I have come back from the experience feeling more inspired than ever before,” she told… 

Early supporters of the Association of Professional Sales have the opportunity to be recognised as Founding Fellows of the APS, the organisation has announced. This unique offer is open until 1 July 2018. An APS spokesperson said that the APS is looking ahead to a breakout year with a jump in membership and corporate supporters. “As we build on strong… 

The Association of Professional Sales (APS) launched its first overseas chapter on 1 March as part of expansion plans in Asia. Held at the Central Public Library in Singapore, the theme of the event was “Redefining the Sales Profession – Engage. Empower. Elevate”. The packed programme was opened by Venkat Subramanyan, Board Member and Director, Sales Effectiveness and Execution Excellence,… 

We asked three participants in the 2017…