Friday, May 22nd, 2020
Resourceful humans, not just human resources
How to manage and lead through the current crisis with the wisdom of Aristotle. In a recent London Business School poll, we asked an audience of over 1,000 senior executives how as leaders they would like to look back on the current crisis. They could choose from five possible outcomes – for them personally as well as for their organisations:…
Friday, May 22nd, 2020
Sales and the COVID crisis
We asked leading academics, professional bodies and consultants for their views on how sales leaders can best respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Unprecedented is a word we hear being bandied about a lot since the emergence of the COVID-19 virus. Nevertheless, the situation we all face is indeed unprecedented, and the world will never be exactly the same again, even…
Friday, May 22nd, 2020
On-screen selling
Exploring the surprising benefits of remote selling by video. COVID-19 has suddenly changed the dynamics of selling. Salespeople who normally see prospects and customers in person are scrambling as they explore how to sell remotely. It may be a problem now, but could this be an unforeseen opportunity? Up until nine years ago, we sold our sales consulting services exclusively…
Wednesday, September 11th, 2019
Co-creating value via Fujitsu HXD
Reporting from the Cranfield KAM Best Practice Forum 20 June 2019. Key account managers and purchasing professionals are increasingly recognising the importance of co-creating value and the key part that the latest technology can have in facilitating that. So, the most recent KAM Best Practice Forum at Cranfield University decided to focus on how Key Account Managers can embrace technology…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Why seamless is important
Success metrics are refocusing around customer experience….
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Alliance sales: the third-generation sales model
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…
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…
Friday, April 28th, 2017
Sales Management: Strategy, Process and Practice
Authors Bill Donaldson, Javier Marcos Cuevas, Régis Lemmens Professional selling and sales management have become more complex and multifaceted than ever before, but also a more exciting and stimulating function and profession. Sales Management provides a comprehensive introduction to selling and sales management. Packed full of insightful real-world case studies, the fully updated and revised fourth edition of this highly…
Saturday, January 21st, 2017
Aligning Sales and Business
Sales Eductors Academy quotes a “recent study”…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Sales talent: the final profit frontier – part 1
Hiring, developing and retaining salespeople have been something of a dark art. It’s often expensive and inefficient, but new talent-management techniques are bringing us into the 21st century. Skilled professionals have credibility with customers, and you can’t afford to compromise the credibility of your brand by sending second-best into the field Dr Beth Rogers In their 2015 Harvard Business Review…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Getting the right salespeople on the bus
Jim Collins’ Good to Great has been the inspiration for many CEOs who are determined to elevate their companies from run-of-the-mill to lasting greatness. There are many lessons to be learned from the book but one of the most significant is the idea that, before organisations can stand a chance of realising their potential, they must get the right people…
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Align or die?
How do we re-engineer the sales and marketing interface for the benefit of our customers? Just as I sat down to write this article my email pinged. I tried to ignore it as I’d just come back from an excellent “Sales-Mind“ workshop that reminded me of the foolishness of multitasking. Then I saw the title – “Brands failing to align…
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Opening the “third box”
As part of his MSc Professional Practice in Sales Transformation, Sony Mobile’s Russell Keating explores how to unlock more sales through a strategic understanding of his client’s key concerns as well as those of his own organisation. This project relates to work with one of the largest mobile phone operators in Ireland, referred to as the “client” throughout this paper….
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Increased sales scrutiny: are you ready?
Sales should be a core agent of strategy, not just a vehicle for a given selling methodology. In my career, I have attended many strategy meetings. Very few articulate the implications of espoused strategies for Sales. Moreover, the process for introducing new initiatives often exacerbates the separation of the “strategists” from the “doers” in the field. The typical process is…
Thursday, October 1st, 2015
Strategic priorities of B2B customer management
What did companies prioritise? The first section of the report reveals that, at the overall level, Relationship & value building (farming) takes top priority. However, it is not an emphatic victory – it comes out on top because half the respondents rated it in their top three. People & competencies is a strong second overall and Brand & proposition completes…
Monday, July 6th, 2015
Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies From The World’s Sales Leaders
Nick de Cent, Editor of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, recommends Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies From The World’s Sales Leaders is by those bright sparks at McKinsey. Authors Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark offer a practical blue-print for achieving this goal based around what world-class sales executives are doing to find and capture growth and…
Monday, July 6th, 2015
Behind The Cloud
Nick Christian, managing director of Turnstone Sales, says: “Behind The Cloud by Marc Benioff is a very interesting insight into the growth and strategy of one of the world’s most disruptive and successful businesses (salesforce.com). Really strong sales insight delivered in a practical and, at times humorous way. It’s not a heavy academic paper, but a really easy-to-read book with…
Sunday, July 5th, 2015
Hard yards
Head of sales for global snacks company Mondelez International, Andy Tosney talks about how simplification and standardisation of sales processes is transforming the organisation and delivering a powerful boost to company revenues. Andy Tosney is passionate about what he does…. “I’ve never had a day in my life when I’ve woken up and not wanted to go to work. I…
Sunday, July 5th, 2015
To improve sales, pay more attention to presales
As buying behaviour becomes more sophisticated, presales has emerged as a vital engine in the sales pipeline, argues McKinsey & Co. At a time when CEOs are on a constant quest for growth, there is a promising but often overlooked capability available close to home: presales. Building on our analysis of what drives performance in our book Sales Growth, we…
Sunday, July 5th, 2015
Competing against “do nothing”
If you’re involved in complex sales in a B2B environment, your most significant competitor is almost certainly not another vendor, but the status quo. According to the latest findings from Sirius Decisions, Sales Benchmark Index and many other respected researchers, an increasingly common outcome for even well-qualified sales opportunities is not a win, or a competitive loss, but a decision…