If I asked you what the most important tip, technique or strategy is that you learned in your sales career, what would you say? I easily remember the one that I learned early on because I’m reminded of it nearly every day. In fact just last week I read a story about Gary Emanuel, the […]
If you’re a business owner, then I know you place a lot of responsibility on your inside sales manager. In many companies, managers are not only responsible for finding, hiring and developing successful reps, but they are also responsible for training these new reps and for the continued training of existing sales reps as well. […]
If you are an inside sales manager (or director or V.P.), then I know you spend a lot of time in meetings – meetings with the marketing department coming up with strategies to create and close more leads, meetings with the owner forecasting revenue numbers, meetings with sales reps going through their pipelines, meetings with […]
If I were to ask you what the most important thing a sales manager can do to drive business, what would your answer be? Hire the right reps to begin with? Properly train them? Keep them motivated? Help them close deals? I’m sure you thought of these and many others, but I wonder if you […]
I consult with a lot of business owners, and I hear a common complaint: “The sales team isn’t making their revenue numbers and my sales manager doesn’t seem to know what to do to get them to improve. What should I do?” After reviewing their sales processes, their training program, sales scripts, etc., I always […]
If you’re in inside sales management, then you know all about metrics. In fact, whenever I consult with new clients the owners and managers automatically begin showing me their call monitoring reports. They show me metrics on how many calls a rep is making, how much average time each rep spends on the phone, what […]
Legendary basketball player and coach John Wooden said something years ago that I have adopted as a life philosophy: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” Living by this philosophy has enabled me to accomplish much in my life, and it was the spring board to transitioning to top […]
There is a disturbing trend I’ve heard with the companies I’m working with. And it starts when prospects begin asking for a lower price or a “deal,” or for a reference before committing, or for a free trial to demo services or products. The problem I’m hearing is that sales reps—both newer reps and even […]
“Ask yourself this question: ‘How big can I dream?’” Conrad Hilton “Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.’ Emerson was a keenly gifted philosopher, but he spoke like a seasoned sales manager: He understood the power of big thoughts. “All of us are surrounded […]
“We are all salesmen every day of our lives.” Charles M. Schwab Whenever I’m at a used bookstore, I always browse the business section. There is gold in those isles. I found a short book called, The Salesman’s Book of Wisdom, by Dr. Chriswell Freeman, and the introduction on “The Joy of Selling” was so […]
