Wednesday, December 13th, 2017
What works in sales enablement
According to CSO Insights, only 13% of…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Challenging the disruptive approach
Almost six years on since the publication of The Challenger Sale by CEB authors, we consider the principles of the wider disruptive selling approach and discuss their application in the field and what the future holds for provocative selling. In a 2012 Harvard Business Review article titled “The End of Solution Sales”, authors Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon identified a…
Wednesday, September 20th, 2017
Critical skills for 2020
High levels of emotional intelligence applied the…
Sunday, January 29th, 2017
Selling (Hunting) 2016: Harder or Easier Than 10 Years Ago? A Comparison of Sales Calls, Emails and Voice Mails in 2016 vs. 2006-2015,
Robert James Author Robert James has been a business developer tasked with selling software and services to Fortune 500, public sector and SMB accounts in search for new business since 2005. During that time, he says he has generated more than $25 million in new client revenue from cold calling and exceeded quota multiple times for five different companies. Since…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Precision Listening
How to prepare, execute, and learn from a new way to listen Last issue, we shared with you our thinking around “The Art of Discovery” (International Journal of Sales Transformation, September 2016/Issue 2.3). We discussed a nearly universal problem faced by salespeople: that “selling” is equated with “pitching.” Day in and day out, it involves a process that includes: a)…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
APS joins forces with Huthwaite International to focus on skills and training
The Association of Professional Sales (APS) has announced a partnership with one of the sales world’s leading training, consultancy and research groups, Huthwaite International. The APS says that its new skills partner Huthwaite will “bring fresh insight and research to the profession, as well as working hard to drive the highest standards of quality and excellence across the sales industry”….
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
FTSE 100 company launches sales accreditation programme
In a bid to develop the country’s best salespeople, accounting software giant Sage has launched a scheme to train more than 400 employees to be Certified sales professionals. The programme runs in conjunction with the Association of Professional Sales (APS) and training partner Silent Edge. “At Sage, we are all about creating a high performance, customer-obsessed culture that is underpinned…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Sales professionals and revenue
On average, 60.1% of a company’s revenues…
Saturday, September 3rd, 2016
The Art of Discovery
Dr Roy Whitten and Scott Roy discuss what to do before the pitch and how to do it. The biggest problem my salespeople have is that they just don’t listen well enough!” The speaker was vice-president and director of sales for a division of one of the world’s largest telecoms companies. He continued: “Or, if they do listen, they only…
Thursday, April 7th, 2016
FE boots medtech sales performance 2-8%
A recent study by global sales and marketing specialists ZS Associates has found that strategically investing in sales force effectiveness (SFE) can boost sales performance for medtech companies by 2-8%. The firm ran a year-long study to measure the effect of SFE initiatives – such as sales territory redesigns, account planning processes, training or coaching initiatives and new compensation structures…
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
New qualification option
Sales professionals now have a new option to gain a high-status sales qualification. This year, Middlesex University – in conjunction with global sales transformation company Consalia – is making its award-winning Masters programmes available to individuals and small groups for the first time. Consalia marketing director Phil Linter tells the Journal: “Previously we’ve only been able to offer professional sales…
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
TRAINING, COACHING AND SALES REP RECALL
Today drug companies need to raise and…
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Keep CARM and talk smarter
Researchers from Loughborough University suggest that commercial sales “scripts”, and a great deal of communication training, fail to identify what really works to convert callers to clients and optimize the customer experience. Here, they explore evidence-based training for sales conversations – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method. How do you know that your telephone sales calls, “recorded for training purposes”, are…
Tuesday, July 7th, 2015
Neil Rackham on sales excellence
Renowned sales researcher and thought-leader Professor Neil…
Monday, July 6th, 2015
Field of dreams
When SAP set out to update its go-to-market approach, sales enablement also embarked on its own journey in support of the process. Axel Ferreyrolles talks about his voyage of discovery. With the advent of “the cloud”, shifting market conditions and changing customer expectations, enterprise application software giant SAP understood that it had to adapt. For Axel Ferreyrolles, head of sales…
Monday, July 6th, 2015
Best practice for running an effective salesperson onboarding programme
New research suggests the most successful programmes pursue a calculated blend of sales training and coaching activities. The bar has been raised. In a world where businesses are becoming increasingly proficient at managing a range of multi-channel, multi-touch and highly customer-focused interactions, how can we ensure that our newly recruited salespeople measure up to customers’ expectations? Toward this end, many…
Tuesday, April 7th, 2015
Bridging the gulf between professors and practitioners
As sales continues to develop at breakneck pace, business and academics need to open channels of communication. For well over a century, there have been organised attempts to increase sales professionalism. The case for doing so is nowhere more engagingly expressed than in an editorial appearing in 1884 in the magazine of the Society of Commercial Travelers: “If we do…