SalesHQ

Sales pros aren't the only ones who can offer valuable lessons in the art of persuasion. I saw a great sales job in the Tampa airport by a person who probably didn't even see himself in sales. It was an airport security person who did a masterful job of crowd control. We had an 8 a.m. flight from Tampa to Toronto. ...

When Jack Welch was chairman of General Electric, he would regularly ask the top managers in the company's 14 major businesses a series of questions about the global competition. These questions are worth sharing. What are your global market dynamics today, and where will they be over the next several years? What actions have your competitors taken in the last three ...

Companies, when they interview, focus their attention on learning about the candidate. However, equal importance should be placed on the candidate interviewing them so that both sides can make a solid decision on the relationship. My wife Sharon and I dated for exactly two years before I proposed to her. Over our two year courtship, I got to know her likes ...

The responsibility for ensuring that every member of the sales team is successful and performing at optimum levels lies entirely with management and below are the eight reasons why sales people fail. In fact, I usually ask just three very straightforward questions, in order to identify why a salesperson is underachieving i.e., • Are they visiting/talking to enough clients/prospects? In other ...

As a manager, executive or business owner your top priority today is exceeding company goals. You can't do it yourself, so the best way to exceed your goals is to have what we call "High Performance Teams" working for you.   High performance teams are a special class of team that has the ability to easily adapt in a rapidly changing ...

Her name was Cindy, but around the office, she was better known as "Solitaire Cindy." Whenever I walked by her desk, the Solitaire screen on her PC was running. Frankly, it bugged me. Why should Solitaire Cindy game her day away while I busted my hump in my job, along with my fellow employees? I asked her manager how she felt ...

In 2000 a computer distributor hired me to help them build a software specialist sales team. The distributor had more than 100 "generalist" salespeople, but these salespeople were doing a poor job of selling software. The distributor's management felt a team of specialists could help jump-start growth in software sales. This was a very interesting project for several reasons. First, the ...

 How to Measure Sales Success? Companies most likely to thrive are those that scrutinize their strategic sales-management plans, from forecasts to pipelines. They look hard at the cost of sales, percentage of market share, salesperson-effectiveness ratios and customer lifetime value. Conversely, companies that struggle often lack such blueprints. Effective plans require combining an organization's goals with the individual salesperson’s business plan ...

  Every group of people, no matter what they do, takes on its own unique philosophy, culture, expectations, norms and values. This is the fundamental power of small group dynamics. And a wonderful power it is. The problem? This culture will be formed with or without sales management'’ active participation!   Realizing that this is an organic reality – that your ...

Managing the Millennials Independent, tech-savvy, social, and optimistic – why are these “kids” so hard to manage? The New Millennial’s, people born after about 1981, are now entering the work force en masse. Even seasoned sales managers are having challenges helping these people become productive. They have a different approach to life, which greatly impacts their ability to sell effectively. Understanding ...

Most sales teams are overflowing with underperformers, from those who are consistently far below quota to those who meet quota but could be performing on a much higher level to some of the top salespeople who haven’t reached their full potential but who just can’t seem to find a way to step up another notch or two. All of these underperformers ...

...here are five surefire ways to improve relations between your sales and marketing departments...

POSDCORB is an acronym created by Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick in their “Papers on the Science of Administration” (1937).[1] Developed as a means to structure and analyze management activities, it set a new paradigm in Public Administration. Based on the theories of Henri Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management, Gulick and Urwick disputed the prevailing thinking that there was a dichotomy ...

Here is a question I recently received from a sales manager: "I get a decent budget for sales contests and our team is spoiled by 'big money prizes.' What successful ideas do you have to get salespeople motivated without always having to win something?" This question points out a common problem with sales incentive programs, which is that the newness ...