Thursday, July 16th, 2026
Top sales talent: it’s a sellers’ market
Why hiring great salespeople is a negotiation between two parties who both need to do their homework – it’s definitely not a one-way selection process. Anyone involved in sales recruitment for high-impact roles complains about the same thing: there just aren’t enough outstanding salespeople to go round. It’s not a new problem. Indeed, the underlying scarcity of genuinely top-performing salespeople…
Tuesday, July 14th, 2026
Sales onboarding: from early learning to first customer contact
Sales leader and commercial change practitioner Dr Jeremy Noad has teamed up with sales education specialist Dr Beth Rogers to produce a practical book series for people entering professional selling. In this article, Beth explores how the challenges of onboarding new hires shaped their thinking. Recruiting salespeople is difficult, costly and timeconsuming. That makes the first months in role too…
Tuesday, July 14th, 2026
Negotiating the path to hiring the best sales talent
Why the right fit is vital for both employer and candidate. It seems like an obvious truism, but finding the right fit is vital for both employer and the candidate when it comes to hiring enterprise account executives and other top sales talent. Yet, recruiters sometimes appear to forget this. The process of hiring top-level sales talent is definitely not…
Tuesday, September 30th, 2025
Five key questions a CEO should ask the sales leader/department to optimise revenue performance
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2025
Five key questions a CEO should ask a potential new CRO before hiring
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2025
Five key questions a sales leader should ask the new boss (the CEO) before accepting a CRO role
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Monday, February 19th, 2024
What salespeople need to succeed in a new sales role
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
Five things to consider before stepping up to a sales management role
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, February 16th, 2024
Your first day
What should a salesperson expect from their first few days in a new sales role? I suppose this article could have been titled “What do I wish I had known or done in my first day as a salesperson?” And maybe I might have benefited from reading it then – but that was a long time ago, and in a…
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
New VP global sales for German media monitoring service
German digital media monitoring service PMG Presse-Monitor has expanded its management team with the appointment of Michelle Harold as Vice President Global Sales. She will lead PMG’s international sales team from 5 June. With her extensive experience in the digital transformation of content, Harold will lead PMG’s market expansion based on the company’s ongoing investment and commitment to innovation in…
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
Close Brothers Asset Finance invites Sales Academy applicants
UK merchant banking group, Close Brothers Asset Finance is inviting applications to join its sales academy, which aims to attract new and diverse talent into the sector from across the UK. Six positions are available in this year’s sales academy, and experience in finance or sales is not a prerequisite. The role is being advertised at £32,500 basic salary plus…
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
Embracing all generations in the workplace
This paper has been adapted from the author’s Masters project and discusses how leaders can best cultivate “superpowers” that are applicable to multi-generational organisations and teams. Background During my time at the SAP Global Platinum Customer Unit in Walldorf (Germany), I was invited for a meeting with the Dutch SAP Managing Director. During that meeting he offered me the job…
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
War on attrition
How can effective coaching support the retention of employees within an organisation? Introduction This work-based project covers the topic of employee retention. The subject is very relevant for my organisation as we are 20 months into what’s being labelled the Great Resignation (Klotz, 2021). Employee talent is the lifeline of any business. My research project investigated how a successful coaching…
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Four steps to talent heaven
1. UNDERSTAND SALES TALENT Sales isn’t for…
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Hiring salespeople with talent
Why an evidence-based approach is the route to a successful sales hire. Finding and recruiting the right salespeople is perhaps the most important role for any sales manager or leader. Hiring the wrong person – or at the other end of the scale, failing to fill the position at all – is costly in so many ways. The wasted recruitment…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Consultants suggest how to maximize the lifetime value of your sales force
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…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Sales shame holding back the profession
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…
Friday, May 18th, 2018
Recruiting coachable salespeople
Can organisations understand how to recruit salespeople who are adaptable, coachable, and willing to embrace new learning? What makes a good salesperson? Arguably there are many characteristics and behaviours, and whilst some commentators pigeon-hole salespeople with simplistic titles to define their characters (Dixon and Adamson 2011), others take a different view and suggest that great salespeople demonstrate “differentiating mind-sets”, reflected…
Friday, January 29th, 2016
Accelerating the potential of new talent
Hiring and onboarding is an expensive and time-consuming process. It pays to get it right. The costs of recruitment are on the rise again, with an increase of around 50% from 24 months ago, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; meanwhile, four out of five employers are saying that the competition for well-qualified talent has increased over…
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
HIRING IS KEY BUT AN ELUSIVE COMPETENCY
Average sales turnover across firms surveyed by…