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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… 

There is a general recognition – backed by the latest research from CSO Insights and others – that sales organisations that have adopted a structured approach to selling consistently and often dramatically outperform their less-effective competitors. One of the key foundations of a structured approach to selling involves the adoption of an appropriate sales methodology. You might think of these… 

Sales acceleration consultancy Durhamlane announced a new apprenticeship programme focused on improving sales skills on 7 March. Presented in partnership with the APS, the programme is aimed at both levy and non-levy paying organisations and will consist of blended training and coaching that can be delivered remotely over 18 months. “Our founding mission was to raise the bar of the… 

Former head of sales at Royal Mail, Graham Davis has been elected the new chair of the Association of Professional Sales’ executive board, the Association announced on 4 March. “I’m very excited to be working with the APS on the next phase of our growth as we steer the industry towards professional chartered status,” he tells the Journal. Davis was… 

It’s easy to make schoolboy errors when you start selling, but ten-year-old Joe Beales is already well on the way to mastering telephone sales, thanks to his dad Kevin, the founder of Newcastle based start-up, Refract, a sales coaching platform. Beales junior has become an internet sensation – with approaching 100,000 views on LinkedIn – after his dad posted a… 

A recent paper from consultants McKinsey & Co suggest that forward-looking sales leaders can use analytics to enhance performance management by using data to directly link talent management to increased financial value. Authors Eric Buesing, Alexander DiLeonardo, Maria Valdivieso De Uster and Ben Vonwiller suggest companies can apply similar techniques used to calculate long-term customer value to measuring the value… 

Shame and stigma surrounding sales is a key contributor to poor UK productivity, according to a poll conducted by Censuswide. Nearly a third (31.1%) of UK managers believe that “sales shame” is negatively impacting their business growth, the survey of 1,000 managers found. In addition, more than a quarter (27%) of managers also believe that this sales shame is holding… 

The Journal is proud to be part of an increasingly professional global sales community. Here at the International Journal of Sales Transformation we are celebrating our fifth year of publishing. Over the time since we launched back in 2015, we have been able to chart a quite noticeable upturn in the professionalism of the sales community both here in the… 

The surprising thing I learnt from giving a 20-minute nonsense presentation to a well-known tech company. The greatest thing I ever wrote, something I’ve jokingly referred to as my magnum opus, was a 20-minute lecture on innovation for the executive team of a major US corporation. As they do not come out all that well in this story, I won’t… 

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses Account-based marketing (ABM), along with its all-embracing cousin “account-based everything”, have been touted by its promoters as a miracle cure capable of halting the precipitate decline in conventional marketing effectiveness – and derided by cynical detractors as just another over-hyped trend. As with most new(ish) trends, the reality is probably somewhere in between. The… 

In this series of articles we look at some of the most popular sales methodologies. What’s the difference between a methodology and a process? In sales, the methodology is the application of general – possibly universal – principles to the way we approach a component of the sales cycle albeit that it may also be contextual. A process, in contrast,…