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The Future of Sales
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The sales profession is in transition. It is shifting from an offline, seller-driven push-based model toward a digital-first, data-driven and buyer-focused response. There are four unmistakable buyer-led trends that will define the future of sales. Those sellers who adjust and embrace these trends will outperform those that do not. |
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Actions to Improve Sales Closure Rates
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Making even small improvements to sales win rates can yield big increases to top line revenues. Even better, improving sales close rates is a sustainable benefit. However, most sales leaders struggle with this goal as sales win rates are the result of several factors occurring much earlier in the sales process. Here are the 12 factors that will most improve your sales close rates. |
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A 3 Step Framework to Reallocate Sales Time for Improved Sales Performance
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Sales managers are acutely aware that sales reps spend less than half their time selling. But Best-In-Class sales companies pursue continuous efforts that incrementally shift sellers most limited resource—time—away from nebulous task-based activities to customer engagement that delivers measurable sales outcomes. |
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The 3 Step Framework to Increase Sales Productivity
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The most recent sales performance benchmark research survey found that improving salesperson productivity is the number 1 goal to improve overall sales performance. However, for most sales managers this goal remains elusive. Here is the 3 step framework to increase sales productivity for more effective selling. |
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Best Practices in Sales Pipeline Management
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Sales pipeline management and optimization are tasks that many sales managers have left unchanged for years—which is unfortunate as even small adjustments in pipeline management can yield substantive growth to top line revenues. Here’s some thoughts to revisit this critical business process and some best practices in sales pipeline design, operation and maintenance. |
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7 Steps to Jump Start Your Social Selling Strategy
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B2B buyers are publicly sharing their opinions about what they want and need, what they like and dislike, and what matters to them — and savvy sales professionals are using social selling techniques to act on this information and engage with these buyers before the buyers have engaged with sales competitors. Here are 7 steps to aid your social selling success. |
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The Business Case For An Integrated Revenue Cycle
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When companies move beyond just a sales cycle and get to a complete lead to customer revenue cycle, they acquire more and better leads, more effectively advance those leads through the pipe, increase sales wins, grow customer acquisitions and earn more revenues. But getting there isn't easy. Here I share the business case, along with a proven framework, to achieve an integrated revenue cycle. |
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The Sales Performance Bell Curve — and How to Grow Sales by 80%
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Understanding your sales force performance segmentation is extremely helpful in allocating scarce sales management time, applying tailored strategies to each tier and growing top line revenues as a result. In fact, research shows that applying specific sales management tactics to certain sales force segments delivers a multiplier effect and can grow top line revenues in excess of 80 percent. |
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Coaching Delivers Management's Biggest Business Impact
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To be an effective sales manager you have to be an effective sales coach. Good managers use personal development methods to produce the next generation of good managers. They know when and how to coach, facilitate, mentor or train staff in order to advance those staff, achieve a workforce-multiplier effect and scale productivity for business results. |
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The Ultimate Sales Forecast Dashboards
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Every CRM system has a sales forecast dashboard, but almost all of them are little more than watered-down versions of the pipeline report. This makes for some interesting eye candy, but doesn’t help sales managers understand the root causes behind performance variances or revenue shortfalls. Here's how to step up your sales forecast dashboards to improve both sales visibility and predictability. |
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5 Reasons To Invest in Sales Force Automation Software
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Research firm Aberdeen Group determined best-in-class adopters of SFA software saw their deals increase in size by an average of 27%, sales cycles decrease by 16% and cut the time-to-quota by 15%. Using SFA systems, these organizations' also realized revenue growth of 26%, while their sales administrative time was slashed by 14%. |
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Achieving High Performance Sales Teams |
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When enthralled in the day to day trenches, it can be difficult to maintain strategy, focus and forward momentum let alone systemically improve predictable performance and identify new solutions to old sales challenges. The following sales strategies are a reminder of the best practices to achieve long-term sales success, build winning sales teams and satisfy sales stakeholders. |
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5 Steps To Achieving SFA Buy-In |
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One of the knottiest problems in implementing a Sales Force Automation software system in any size company is getting enthusiastic acceptance of the project. Quite simply, without active buy-in from the sales people who will use and manage the CRM system, it will almost certainly fail. Here are several mitigating measures to achieve success with sales staff. |
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Practical Advice For SFA Software Selection Projects |
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Like a treasure map, SFA software helps guide your sales teams to increased sales person productivity, more effective sales planning, improved sales predictability, increased sales win rates, better sales person quota performance and higher sales commissions. Yet finding the right SFA software may require a different map, one to guide you through an array of alternatives. |
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Designing Better Dashboards |
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Dashboard designs are worth multiple iterative revisions as they are a primary means of communicating key performance indicators. Well designed dashboards make it easier for knowledge workers and executives to instantly view key metrics and based on the information, invest in further data analysis which often leads to actionable follow-up and course corrections. |
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What To Do When Your SFA System is Broken |
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The scary numbers related to CRM and SFA implementation failures are no secret. However, getting past the alarming statistics and reviewing root causes provides a balanced perspective on why sales force automation (SFA) implementations fail — why they break — and what you can do about it. Unfortunately, the problem isn't always with the software. |
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4 Crucial Steps To Fixing Declining Sales |
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CSO Insights surveyed 2,800 companies and found most were raising sales quotas, despite low quota achievement in the prior year. In fact, quota attainment has been steadily declining for years and CSO Insights expects it to drop further. This article examines the root causes of these sales challenges and explores how the best companies have adapted to deliver superior results. |
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Best Practices for Shortening the Sales Cycle |
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A 2010 Aberdeen research report reveals the reasons companies' sales cycles are too long and the methods which best-of-breed businesses implemented in order to successfully combat this costly problem. This follow-on article describes the 6 step approach to systemically reduce sales cycles, increase sales win rates and increase cash flow. |
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SAP Sales On Demand — An Initial Review |
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Sales OnDemand is the newest software as a service offering, and in contrast to SAP's history of delivering broad business suites, this on-demand product is laser focused on sales people and their need for a social injection to sales force automation (SFA). Our review of this product reveals a big shift from anything SAP has done before. |
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Salesnet CRM Deep Dive Review
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Salesnet was one of the earliest software as a service CRM systems in the marketplace. However, an unusual turn of events delayed this systems market share rise. Now under the auspices of RightNow Technologies, but with a new company direction and management team, Salesnet is proving its capable of more than just keeping its customers, but intends to add many more. |
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Optimove — Technology to Increase Customer Spend, Retention and Lifetime Value
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Software that substitutes science for guess work and removes the substantial time investment needed to organize customer behaviors and identify patterns which can be exercised in order to increase customer spend, retention and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is complex and consequently out of reach for most businesses. An innovative solution from Optimove seeks to change that. |
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Meeting Mapper
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Sales meetings represent the peak of customer engagement. They also represent an inverse relationship between the actual time invested and the most valuable insights gleaned during the sales cycle. Here I investigate an innovative tool designed to capitalize on extremely limited but valuable meeting time by helping sales pros stay focused and engaged on the most strategic meeting objectives. |
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