Why the Best Sellers FAIL as Sales Managers
“We keep promoting our best salespeople to be sales managers, but most of the time they don’t succeed in that role.” Ever hear this statement before? It’s an extremely common refrain, to be sure, but...
View Article7 Deadly Sales Management Trends… #3
Lack of a Common Language If there is a single, unrecognized issue that we see holding back progress in the evolution of sales management, it would have to be the lack of a common language. We observe...
View ArticleNo, You’re Not Alone… 7 Troublesome Sales Management Trends
Trend 4: The Specialization of Selling Roles and Its Impact on Sales Managers A trend that we have seen growing for the last decade or more is the specialization of selling roles. Where a sales force...
View ArticlePut ALL Your Reps on a Performance Improvement Plan
This seems kind of obvious, but we think that a sales manager’s primary job should be to increase the performance of his or her salespeople. In the absence of that, the manager is just an...
View ArticleSales Management and the “80% Solution”
Early in my career, I began to hear senior management refer to something called the ‘80% Solution.’ I immediately despised this term as well as its intent. In fact, I proudly despised the 80% Solution...
View ArticleSales Management and the Need for Simplicity
Sales managers live in a complex world. In fact, we believe that they have the most complex role in any organization. They typically have to navigate high-stress relationships with salespeople,...
View ArticleCRM Usage… A Condition of Employment?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling the country speaking on the topic of how to use CRM data to improve sales coaching. (View my presentation at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce) Of course, our...
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