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Revenue attainment was 23 percent higher for organizations that invest over $5,000 in their sales managers compared with those which invest nothing. However, only 8% of participants make such a substantial investment in their managers. The findings are in a report from Miller Heiman Group’s research arm, CSO Insights, published recently. The 2017 Sales Manager Enablement Report Sales Managers: Overwhelmed… 

Scotland’s Edinburgh Napier University’s sales programme has received international recognition from the US-based Sales Education Foundation (SEF). Its Craiglockhart-based business school has been included as one of the “Top universities for Professional Sales Education” in the organisation’s 2017 magazine. The SEF, which recognises universities that prepare students for successful careers in professional selling and help to raise the status of… 

Global IT research and advisory company, Gartner announced on 6 April that it has completed its acquisition of CEB Inc. CEB, formerly the Corporate Executive Board, is a provider of best-practice and talent-management insights, and best known in sales circles for The Challenger Sale book and the more recent The Challenger Customer, as well as associated development programmes. CEB lists… 

In what is seen as a landmark for the sales sector, the government announced its approval for the first-ever apprenticeship standard for business-to-business sales professionals in England on 3 May. The standard is for a Level 6 Degree Apprenticeship, which will enable participants to gain a Bachelor’s degree on completion of their apprenticeship. Consultation on the assessment plan for the… 

Nothing stands still in the world of… 

Are sales force incentives linked to drug sales volumes the best way to motivate individual reps? With the performance of the sales force directly linked to the bottom line, ensuring representatives are well motivated and incentivized is a critical ingredient in any company’s financial health. Yet, with the huge amount of change reshaping the pharma landscape – from digital to… 

How do we achieve a balance between input and output measures to manage sales performance effectively? Lucy is what many people would call a “high achiever”. She had always been focused on delivering the best service for her clients and always supportive of her colleagues and her organisation. Lucy always looked forward to Christmas time. It typically marked the completion… 

Surprisingly little research has been conducted to uncover the major challenges for KAM implementation in professional service firms. Here, the authors discuss how to identify and address them. Professional Service Firms (PSF) provide specialised advice to their customers, and are characterised by knowledge intensity, low capital intensity (in fixed assets), and a professionalised workforce, which makes them distinct from companies… 

Managing sales talent effectively through robust hiring and development processes is only half the story; we need to align these daily processes with company strategy… and we should be developing sales talent far earlier. Hiring and developing salespeople is costly – there is absolutely no doubt about that. According to a recent blog by Chally Group , while a low… 

For the past few columns, I introduced critical issues in designing your own research, with a special focus on how to design experiments. For the next few columns, I’m going to build on those pieces to some extent, to explore a set of issues that I see as perhaps even more important – and especially so in today’s world. Specifically,… 

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses Long ago and far away, there was a time when “selling to the C-level” was a credible and often effective strategy. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of sales books were written on the subject. If you could successfully sell to the top, so the authors claimed, sales success would surely follow. Now, there’s no… 

The Association of Professional Sales announced in February that it has launched a full suite of sales qualifications to represent the skills of salespeople at every stage of their career. Ben Turner, APS general manager, told the Journal: “We are putting in place the means for salespeople to demonstrate that they are professional people who are learning, and being assessed… 

Artificial intelligence–powered predictive sales acceleration platform, InsideSales.com unveiled plans last month to expand into Ireland as part of an initiative to better serve customers across the EMEA region. The firm says the move could create some 120 jobs in the republic. “We’re not only looking to hire some of Ireland’s best and brightest technology graduates, but also to help build… 

The International Journal of Sales Transformation is initiating a major research programme designed to provide increased insight into sales processes and performance. The programme involves a three-way collaboration between leading academics, industry sponsors with an interest in promoting authoritative research with a practical application and the Journal, which will assist in promoting the research and communicating the results. “We are… 

Could 2017 be the year car sales head out of the showroom and go online? That’s the speculation in some quarters, although commentators suggest it will take a couple of generations. Steve Huntingford, editor of What Car? has been quoted by the BBC as saying: “The traditional way of buying a car will gradually shrink and, in a couple of… 

The truth may hurt, but being a good loser is a key strategy for future success. Business has been using client feedback to sharpen performance since the year dot and Loss Reviews have long been part of the competitive sales cycle. But the process fell out of favour with many corporates because the information it provided wasn’t valued – why… 

The GSK bribery scandal rocked pharma when a record fine was handed down in 2014. It has forced the company and the wider industry to reconsider their sales approaches. Just over two years ago the Wall Street Journal reported that UK drug giant GSK’s local subsidiary in China had been found guilty of bribery and fined nearly half a billion… 

Pressure on the sales function has placed the salesperson in the uncomfortable position of dealing with complex, unrelenting ethical dilemmas on an almost daily basis. The sales department has never been more important to the organization. Given clearly established metrics and direct revenue contributions that connect to financial performance, coupled with an essential role in creating customer value, it is… 

How to prepare, execute, and learn from a new way to listen Last issue, we shared with you our thinking around “The Art of Discovery” (International Journal of Sales Transformation, September 2016/Issue 2.3). We discussed a nearly universal problem faced by salespeople: that “selling” is equated with “pitching.” Day in and day out, it involves a process that includes: a)… 

Donna O’Toole, managing director of August, introduces the Professional Sales Awards. In spite of these dramatic improvements, however, the sales force is still a grossly underutilised and poorly directed resource. This has more to do with ineffective marketing strategy than with inefficient sales strategy. Since the beginning of the century, and until recently, the sales profession in the UK has…