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As the Institute celebrates surpassing 10,000 members, it has also initiated an important leadership transition to drive its next phase of growth. Guy Lloyd has stepped down as Managing Director to focus on the Institute’s long-term strategic ambition: securing Chartered status for the sales profession. With chartership central to ISP’s vision of sales being universally recognised as a highly skilled and… 

The Institute of Sales Professionals has recently achieved two major milestones: just months after celebrating its 10th anniversary it also passed the 10,000-membership mark. This reflects the growing recognition of sales as a profession and the increasing importance of professional standards, ethical practice, and continuous development within the field. “To all those who care about selling professionally and have joined… 

The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, with that number rising for more complex or strategic purchases, according to research and advisory firm Forrester. And, while generative AI is fundamentally reshaping how business buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase products and services, it has also become something of a “double-edged sword” in the buying process…. 

With AI agents poised to reshape sales, sales leaders must rethink strategies to unlock true value, business and technology insights company, Gartner warns. By 2028, AI agents will outnumber human sellers by ten times, yet fewer than 40% of sellers will report that AI agents have improved their productivity, it claims. As AI agents become ubiquitous, Gartner advises that sales… 

20 years on from HBR’s seminal “Ending the War” paper, how can business leaders align sales and marketing to maximise market performance? When Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Sujay Krishnaswamy published “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing” in Harvard Business Review (2006), they gave managers a language for an enduring organisational tension. Sales and marketing, they argued, were structurally… 

This edition focuses on the importance of personal branding in sales. Here are five top tips each for salespeople and their managers. Sales Tips 101 From a salesperson’s perspective Sales Management Tips 101 From a sales manager’s perspective: +

Personal branding as a competitive advantage in a world of AI and automation. Personal branding has been a fashionable term for some years now and it is often taken as something “we all need to do”. Yet, very often we don’t stop and ask why. For this reason, personal branding seldom has the strategic attention that it perhaps deserves. In… 

Why your personal brand is built one conversation at a time. When social media consultants talk about “personal brand” many instinctively think of LinkedIn. They talk about polished profiles, regular posts, and carefully curated content. There is no doubt that a strong digital presence can raise visibility and credibility. It might make potential customers more willing to respond to our… 

Top tips for sales teams to get started with agentic AI. The next transformation in sales is already underway. One where AI moves from predicting outcomes to acting on them. Agentic AI, powered by generative models, is beginning to shoulder parts of the coordination, analysis, and execution that have long slowed down sales teams. By handling structured tasks, it frees… 

What is workslop? A recent article in Harvard Business Review coins a new term: “workslop” – poor-quality but plausible-looking work created using AI that is not fit for purpose. HBR defines workslop as “AI-generated work content that masquarades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task”. Research by the BetterUp Labs team, in collaboration with… 

The Institute of Sales Professionals has launched a new scheme to recognise organisations’ commitment to professionalism in sales. The Investor in Sales Award will celebrate businesses that invest in the development and impact of their sales teams, recognising organisations’ commitment to building and sustaining professional, ethical and high-performing sales teams and culture. ISP managing director Guy Lloyd tells the Journal:… 

A sales leader challenges common misconceptions around “silver bullet”, short-term tactics to boost sales. It’s the end of the fiscal period, sales have been tracking well but the OI/EBITDA 1 number isn’t where it should be, so Sales needs to sell more. Its budget time and we grew well last year, but the plan is for up to 40% growth… 

Could high-quality “foundational” sales education for those about to enter the profession be the key? About a year ago, Anderson met with a start-up founder who had scaled her agency organisation to ten people. She contacted him looking for sales and sales management support. When asked how she approached selling to a new client, she described the process: “Typically, I… 

Shining a spotlight on some common B2B sales methodologies Research demonstrates that B2B sales organisations which adopt thoughtful, principled approaches to selling benefit from higher win rates, shorter cycles, and improved forecast accuracy. But no one published methodology fits every context or situation. Some excel in major account management, others in questioning techniques, stakeholder mapping, or opportunity qualification. The idea… 

Why the future of B2B selling must be situationally adaptive. For decades, authors of books about selling have sought to promote the perfect methodology – the idea that there is “one best way” to sell. Whether SPIN, Challenger, Value Selling, Sandler, Miller-Heiman, MEDDPICC or many other approaches, each has claimed to provide the formula for sales success. But in today’s… 

Geopolitical events and the macroeconomic environment have combined to make the global operating environment significantly trickier recently, which means B2B companies face notable pressures as they seek to adapt and grow. However, companies can “accelerate toward above-market growth” using five “acceleration levers”, according to strategic consultants McKinsey. McKinsey describes these actions as “practical, highimpact approaches that drive measurable results, particularly… 

In today’s B2B landscape, buyers conduct significant research and vendor comparisons prior to ever contacting a salesperson. At the same time, vendors assume that buyers are likely to be confident in understanding the problems they are trying to solve, which can lead to sellers failing to conduct a robust discovery process once they do get involved. More paradoxically, however, buyers… 

In collaboration with Middlesex University, Consalia has launched a seamless progression pathway allowing graduates of the Level 4 Sales Executive Apprenticeship to enter directly into the second year of its Level 6 B2B Sales Degree Apprenticeship. The initiative accelerates the route to a full degree, enabling learners to complete the qualification in just two years instead of three, without repeating… 

Buyers favour online self-service tools over sellers when searching for general information and learning new things. However, for buying tasks requiring contextual intelligence, such as determining whether a product or service fits their company’s needs, buyers prefer to seek seller input. That’s according to Alice Walmesley, Director Analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice. “Instead of offering generic information that buyers… 

While AI-driven solutions offer speed, efficiency, and convenience, especially in the early stages of the sales process, recent analysis suggests that the demand for genuine human engagement is far from diminishing. In fact, by 2030, Gartner predicts that 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction over AI, prompting organisations to rethink how they structure their…