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Profound change is sweeping through the pharmaceutical… 

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… 

If you’re involved in complex sales in a B2B environment, your most significant competitor is almost certainly not another vendor, but the status quo. According to the latest findings from Sirius Decisions, Sales Benchmark Index and many other respected researchers, an increasingly common outcome for even well-qualified sales opportunities is not a win, or a competitive loss, but a decision… 

Development specialist TACK International is set to unveil the findings from the 7th edition of its “Buyers’ Views of Salespeople” study at the National Sales Conference on 8 October. Previous research identified that price is not always a key purchase motivator. A quarter of respondents indicated that a number of factors were ahead of price in determining their buying decisions:… 

When hiring sales executives, over 58% of employers believed that “salespeople should know what they are doing”, according to joint research from the British Institute for Learning & Development (BILD) and the Universal Sales Skills Audit (USSA). Just over 58% of employers also reported that “maybe some [sales executives] aren’t as good as we would like” and only 38% of… 

Oracle’s Christina Lammers triumphed at the inaugural Women in Sales Awards North America event at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts on 18 June. She won the Best Woman Sales Manager category and the overall award for Most Distinguished Sales Woman Of The Year. Lammers, Regional Manager Emerging Markets, Oracle, said: “it is an absolute honour that I have… 

Industry leaders are calling for a comprehensive shake-up of the UK’s educational system to reflect the needs of employers. This includes delivering a mix of academic and vocational options for 14-18-year-olds. However, there is no mention of how sales might fit into these plans. In a recent speech at the Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College, John Cridland,… 

We asked business thought-leaders from different sectors… 

Blackdot on the value of sales managers First-line sales managers are drivers of performance for pharma sales representatives, as they are in other industries… The profound and compounding impact sales managers have on their sales teams means that 1 high-performing sales manager is as valuable as a handful of high-performing sales reps. High-performing sales managers manage teams that achieve superior… 

The debate swirling around the controversial “Challenger” approach to selling has raised important questions about the way ahead for the sales profession. Chris Alder investigates. It’s probably fair to say that few books on the art of selling have caused quite so much of a stir as the one published in 2011 entitled The Challenger Sale – Taking Control of… 

Last year’s spat between Mercedes Formula 1 team drivers has implications for the performance of business teams, a recent study suggests. HOW does a sales manager harness the abilities of two competing star performers in the sales team to best advantage? The manager’s skill at getting the best out of his team could have a significant impact on the fortunes… 

Harvard Business School’s Dr Frank Cespedes tells Nick de Cent why strategy is even more relevant in an era of constant change. NdeC: Does strategy still work in an era of constant change? What is the role of a business strategy in these conditions? FC: Some now say that strategy is less important – and may, in fact, be an… 

Organisations need to understand how selling is evolving and to involve sales leadership in developing strategies to thrive in the new environment.   Summary Professional selling is undergoing significant and unprecedented change that, in turn, profoundly impacts the role of the professional salesperson. Change has always been part of professional selling; however, the scale and speed of that change has… 

While most areas of business have changed in recent years, none has seen as dramatic a revolution as procurement and supply chain management, argues David Noble, CEO at CIPS. Speaking exclusively to the International Journal of Sales Transformation, Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply chief executive officer David Noble explains that the profession has had to change dramatically to keep… 

Nick de Cent finds that pharma thought-leaders are successfully adapting KAM models to their own ecosystem. Not all big accounts are key accounts. That’s one important lesson that the pharma industry has been learning the hard way. Another is that effective key account management (KAM) is more about finding effective solutions than simply flogging product in a more complex environment…. 

Todd Snelgrove on how customer intelligence can help you define your strategic approach to value, with a choice of two approaches. As salespeople, we need to use our understanding of the customer, and each decision maker within a customer, to decide what drives them professionally and personally and to know which sales strategy is best suited to engage them in… 

Can business learn any lessons from the professional intelligence community? Dr John Ardis suggests we can. During the Cold War, teams of intelligence analysts would pore over microfilm and squint at grainy aerial photographs. Human intelligence sources (or HUMINT in the vernacular – better known as spies) provided secret information about weapons, other spies, dark strategies and double bluffs. You… 

Truly understanding the customer underpinned the success of this hugely complex mega-deal. We talk to William Mills of Atos about how information really is power. Succeeding in a sales environment sometimes means turning over long-cherished beliefs such as: all negative thoughts are destructive. It was this ability to embrace the problems when creating a bid for new business that enabled… 

What is the relationship between sales ethics and business performance? Professor Mark Johnston takes us through the latest research. From Apple to Volkswagen, the axiom – ethical business is good business – is firmly embedded in today’s corporate culture. While this ethical business model is driven at all levels and throughout the organisation, nowhere is it more important than the…