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Monday, February 19th, 2024
Of course, every new salesperson needs to have a clear understanding of what they are selling. But product knowledge is never enough to ensure success. Bob Apollo lists five things every new (and existing) salesperson needs to master: +
Monday, February 19th, 2024
For many salespeople, their obvious career goal is to advance into sales management. Unfortunately, this can turn into a frustrating move. Here’s what aspiring sales managers need to consider: +
Friday, October 13th, 2023
Sales managers have a responsibility to identify, understand and address the root causes of individual underperformance in their teams. Here are a few of the key considerations: +
Friday, October 13th, 2023
No matter how comprehensive the training programme provided by their employer, salespeople need to establish and implement their own personal development plan. Bob Apollo highlights a few key considerations: +
Wednesday, October 11th, 2023
Do salespeople have time to learn? Salespeople hold extensive power, influencing buying decisions that potentially have significant commercial impact and which can dictate both the future trajectory of their customers and the success of their own organisations. With so much responsibility falling on the shoulders of their salespeople, why then don’t more companies embed a learning culture within their sales…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
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…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
This 2016 Masters project asks: Do employee motivation schemes have to be financially focused to improve engagement and output? Study background Do employee motivation schemes have to be financially focused to improve engagement and output? During previous employee appraisal meetings within my organisation, a number of our employees asked if the company would consider introducing a financially focused bonus scheme;…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
These pages aim to keep readers informed of recently published research on sales-related topics, by including abstracts of peer-reviewed academic research published in a range of journals. In this edition, we have grouped them into three broad themes: sales performance, behavioural studies, and systems and tools. Sales performance An account manager’s relationship with their customer service team is more effective…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
This 2016 research conducted in the context of a programme of study leading to the MSc Professional Practice in Sales Leadership qualification seeks to understand the effects of sales force incentives and how to balance pay plans with company objectives (B2B). The aim of this project was to deepen my understanding of the effects of sales incentives, how salespeople are…
Monday, September 24th, 2018
Exploring co-creating commercial value for customers and company through values-driven leadership. Introduction As a sales manager for one of the largest business-to-business software companies, I am at the intersection of helping customers drive commercial value for their business and the constant drive of my company to sell more software, and sell it sooner. As most sales managers would concede, aligning…
Saturday, December 16th, 2017
In previous articles of this series in the International Journal of Sales Transformation, “Managing and Measuring Sales Performance” and “Setting Sales Targets”, we presented an outline of the properties of effective sales performance measurement systems guidelines to minimise the unintended consequences of sales targets. In this last article of the series, we address employee motivation and its relation to sales…
Friday, September 22nd, 2017
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. Peter Salovey and John D Mayer coined the term “emotional intelligence” in 1990, describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among…
Sunday, January 29th, 2017
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…
Thursday, April 7th, 2016
The data analysis provided here offers insight into what motivates “account managers”. Motivators are the extrinsic factors that determine whether your salespeople really get up in the morning “ready to rock and roll”’ – or not! The global data in the following charts provide insight into what motivates people from different regions. It will help sales leaders decide whether in…
Thursday, April 7th, 2016
Are you, your team members or your customers relationship driven, achievement driven or growth driven? It makes a difference. Brian Tracy in his many books and tapesI claims that 50% of any sale is a “transfer of enthusiasm”; in other words, it is something quite independent of the skill sets that so many organisations spend so much money investing in….
Saturday, January 30th, 2016
Continuing from the review of sales manager behaviours by region in the previous edition of the Journal, this time we are looking at regional variations in skills, critical reasoning and motivators (what motivates the individual sales manager) across the same group of sales managers. Data published in edition 1.3 (October 2015) indicated that sales managers in China were behaviourally less…
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
Mapping Motivation – Unlocking the Key to Employee Energy and Engagement by James Sale, Gower, January 2016, 978-1-4724-5927-5, £45 Selling successfully is hugely dependent on motivation and author James Sales seeks to provide the definitive book on the subject – its language and metrics are full of knowledge, insight and practical tips. The contents explore the concept and roots of…
Saturday, April 11th, 2015
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…
Saturday, April 11th, 2015
Beth Rogers leafs through some recent Masters dissertations to see what has been exercising the minds of sales managers. One of the joys of running a course such as a top-up Masters programme for sales managers is that their learning is applied to their company, and both tutor and student can see the potential impact. One of the downsides is…
