Wednesday, April 9th, 2025
A Strategic Edge
How an MBA can enhance performance for sales professionals and leaders. In today’s competitive business landscape, exceptional sales performance requires more than persuasive communication and relationship-building skills. As markets become increasingly complex and data-driven, an MBA education can provide a significant competitive advantage for both salespeople and sales leaders. Here, we’ll explores how the strategic framework, analytical capabilities, and leadership…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
Gender imbalance in sales
To improve female representation in the salesforce in 2024 and beyond, chief sales offers should address gender-based differences at three different career stages, according to Gartner: Despite making up nearly half of the global workforce, women represent only 40% of mid-level B2B sales employees, dropping to 31% at the senior level, Gartner has found. In 2023, the consultancy conducted a…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
ISP publishes new Sales Framework
The Institute of Sales Professionals is publishing a new, modular version of the ISP Sales Framework outlining the knowledge, skills, behaviours, and tools required by sales professionals to be “effective and ethical in the prosecution of their profession, supporting personal development, professional advancement and improved business results”. Acting as a guide for effective, competent sales performance in line with organisational…
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
Is sales training dead?
Is sales training dead? I recall reading a blog about the issue on LinkedIn back in 2016. Of course, it sought to refute this premise. That was then, but what of today? Well, the sales landscape has undoubtedly moved on, driven by evolving business practice, technology, and the advance of relatively new disciplines such as sales enablement. Firstly, the traditional…
Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
Salespeople unhappy with their bosses
Survey analysis from the somewhat unlikely source of casinohawks.com has found that employees in retail, healthcare and sales report being the unhappiest with their managers, most commonly attributing their dissatisfaction to low pay, micromanagement and a lack of communication. By comparison, employees working in the creative arts and design and charity and voluntary sectors were found to have the most…
Friday, September 1st, 2023
First-time manager
Navigating the transition from sales to sales management. For many successful and ambitious salespeople, their first move into sales management is perhaps the defining moment in their career. Some will succeed. Some will fail. Some will make the move and then wish they had never abandoned the simpler life of a salesperson. And some will remain perfectly happy avoiding the…
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
Students from 11 countries participate in European Sales Competition
Congratulations to all the students who participated in the European Sales Competition (ESC) hosted by Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences in Apeldoorn, Netherlands during May and June. This year’s competition saw twin parallel finals. Students were split into two groups, one selling software from ATOSS, a European company selling workforce management software, while the other main sponsor was TeamViewer, another…
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, February 13th, 2023
Talent to thrive: inspiring cultural change
How can sales leaders inspire cultural change so sales talent can thrive? Participants and speakers from leading organisations such as BT, SAP, Sharp, UCAS and Vodafone came together at the London Stock Exchange on 1 December 2022 for Consalia’s 17th annual Global Sales Transformation event to discuss professional development for sales teams and individuals, as well as the wider sales profession. …
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Four steps to talent heaven
1. UNDERSTAND SALES TALENT Sales isn’t for…
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Developing the potential of talented salespeople
Why development is so much more than just training. In “Hiring salespeople with talent” (see pages 6-7), I explored the challenges involved in making good sales hires. Now I want to shift attention to some of the key things we need to do if we are to fully develop the potential of the talented salespeople that we have just hired….
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, September 29th, 2022
Making conflict work
While conflict needs to be managed well, it can also be productive. Conflict is a frequent challenge among business relationships with customers, partners and suppliers. Inside organisations, conflicts within teams and cross-functionally are also common, yet sales professionals often feel ill-equipped to manage conflict well. Unresolved conflict can spread and grow, and result in stress and well-being issues for those…
Monday, July 4th, 2022
Without character, ethics is just a rule book
Almost every leader claims to be ethical in business, but do they have the character to foster trust? Ethics, necessary but not sufficient Corporate scandals from Enron to Freddie Mac occurred despite the fact that the organizations and individuals leading them were operating in environments governed by a code of ethics. Yet, people still behaved poorly. Why? Why do people…
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022
The secret power of introverts
Too shy to sell? Why organisations need introverts. Do you ever hear the words “introvert” and “sales” in the same sentence and wonder if it is even possible to be successful in sale and shy or introverted? The conventional stereotype is that sales is an extrovert’s playground, but the reality is that this is simply not true.Countless industry giants are…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
New era of selling
Modern selling 92% think that remote workforces…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
Foreword
As we tentatively emerge from the pandemic, the consensus is that selling has moved on significantly – and not just in the most immediately apparent ways like the switch to the hybrid selling world of virtual and in-person engagement and the accompanying transition from field sales to inside sales. Such changes will be persistent, despite some shortcomings (such as issues…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
Technology
Rod Barthet, CEO, Kyocera Document Solutions UK; Iain Masson, RVP UK & Nordics, Showpad Q: What are the top-three new agenda items that sales leaders will be thinking about for 2022? IM: Buying behaviours have evolved tremendously throughout the digital age, seeing the most accelerated growth specifically throughout the pandemic, and sellers must rapidly adapt accordingly. Working and living in…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
The Professional Bodies
Australian Institute of Sales, New Zealand Institute of Sales – Stuart Edmunds, Director; Association of Professional Sales – Andrew Hough, CEO Stuart Edmund’s overview from New Zealand In reality, we’re probably not a lot different from anywhere else in the world – more of the same, but different, and we’ll have twice what we needed pre-pandemic in the post-pandemic world….
