Friday, May 22nd, 2020
VIDEOCONFERENCING UPTURN
COUNSURPRISINGLY, WITH SO MANY MORE PEOPLE WORKING…
Wednesday, June 26th, 2019
Enabling the digital sales force of today and tomorrow
As the modern workspace is changing and the workforce is becoming more social, mobile and digital, corporate learning functions need to adapt their ways of providing training and enablement. This is especially true when enabling the sales force. SAP’s Learning2Go organisation provides SAP sales colleagues with offerings that harness digital and virtual innovations, empowering them with the most up-to-date and…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Debunking the myths about the future of sales
A Harvard Business School professor’s insights into the science of sales. In this interview with Deirdre Coleman, Frank Cespedes, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, dispels the myths surrounding technology’s impact on the future of sales and why the need to rethink sales also means rethinking sales leadership. He considers the social and financial impact of sales productivity, and stresses…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Easier online sales
Multiorders has launched software that makes it easy for vendors to sell across multiple online platforms to raise visibility, increase reach and boost orders. It offers automated stock-tracking and shipping management, easy management of purchase orders, as well as the reduced cost and creation of shipping labels. Free trial and further information available at: www.multiorders.com. +
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
New incentives platform
Edenred UK recently launched Connect Incentive, an SaaS-based incentives platform designed to drive performance through their channel or internal sales and customer service teams. The platform enables incentive programmes to be set up in minutes rather than weeks or months, removing admin challenges, and making them more cost-effective to run because they don’t need a costly IT project to get…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
AI boosts CRM
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)”….
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Basic sales jobs at risk
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…
Wednesday, March 27th, 2019
Technology is driving servitisation
This report from Cranfield’s KAM and Strategic…
Friday, March 22nd, 2019
Winning customers in an age of digital transformation
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…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Digital is “rocket fuel” for sales says McKinsey
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…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Using data to drive effective coaching
Organisations understand the power of coaching and the importance of data to inform this activity. But could it lead to a zombie sales force? What is the difference between coaching and training? This is often poorly understood. As a starter, we might consider that training is about transferring knowledge while coaching is about enhancing that knowledge and developing people and…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Insight into sales talent: the power of big data
Sales talent analytics can drive competitive advantage and unlock new sources of corporate wealth. Pretty much everyone these days has heard of “big data”, but how many firms are actually using it to unlock new sources of corporate wealth in connection with their talent? Let’s start at the beginning: what is big data? Google defines it as: “Extremely large data…
Monday, March 26th, 2018
Replicants replace salespeople?
“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…
Sunday, March 25th, 2018
Boosting sales ROI
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…
Wednesday, December 13th, 2017
Creating value with hybrid IT
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is building its strategy around the proposition that the right mix of private cloud, public cloud, managed cloud and traditional IT infrastructure will play a pivotal role in speeding innovation and growth. HPE is currently in the midst of transforming itself, reflecting the IT industry’s evolution from selling standardized hardware and software to providing more flexible,…
Friday, September 22nd, 2017
Technology set to stamp out the tedium
Is artificial intelligence set to free salespeople from the most tedious aspects of their jobs? We talked to Miller Heiman president and CEO Byron Matthews. It will come as no surprise that, today, salespeople spend only around a third of their time on core selling activities in front of a customer trying to understand their needs, according to Byron Matthews,…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Can AI boost inside sales performance?
While inside sales has long been no stranger to automation, it is now poised to take another leap forward as AI-assisted sales acceleration technology and gamification help prioritise the most promising opportunities and energise the sales floor. As customers seize the balance of power and more aspects of the sales process migrate online, leading B2B sales organisations find they must…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Selling in a digital age
Digital is set to disrupt every aspect of life including business. So what’s on the horizon for sales and what’s already here? One day in the not too far distant future, a wave of technological innovation will transform society: for instance, brain-computer interfaces will replace keyboards; there will be intention-decoding algorithms; communications devices will be embedded in humans; and we…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Survey explores sales cadence
Salespeople make on average four attempts per lead to contact a prospective customer, a recent survey has found. Email and phone calls are still the most common touchpoints for sales teams: the most common pattern was a single email – 32% of respondents used that method, accounting for 61% of first contacts – while the second most common cadence is…