Kevin F. Davis Every sales team has senior salespeople who are a little burned out, who don’t sell with the passion they once had. Since senior reps can set the tone for a whole sales team, your role as a sales coach is extremely important. How much more could your sales team achieve if you as the sales … Read full article
To achieve meaningful and significant improvement in your sales team, you must spend more time coaching your salespeople. Trouble is, there are so many barriers that prevent effective coaching from happening. Here’s a 5-point plan (sound familiar?) for overcoming these barriers and significantly improving your sales team’s performance. Adopt the sales leadership mindset. Many of … Read full article
Far too often, sales managers get involved too late in qualifying specific sales opportunities that their salespeople are pursuing. The manager discovers that the “sure-thing” deal is anything but a sure-thing. The sales opportunities your salespeople are working on right now will comprise the lion’s share of your team’s sales revenue between now and the … Read full article
Every sales coaching workshop that I deliver I ask sales managers, “How many of you have a performance problem with a sales rep that is just unacceptable, and you know you need to address the situation?” Everyone raises their hand. Then I ask, “How long have you known this?” The answer I hear is often … Read full article
I recently reviewed the sales manager job description for a Fortune 500 company, and 85% of their sales managers’ responsibilities were related, either directly or indirectly, to sales coaching. Then my partner and I conducted in-person interviews with four of their regional sales managers, and asked, “What percentage of your time do you actually spend … Read full article
The # 1 competitor you face today isn’t another company. It’s the customer’s decision to do nothing, to make no change at all. You can hear your #1 competitor talking, every time a prospect voices a value objection. Objections like “I can’t afford it,” “It’s not a priority,” It’s not in our budget, “ “We … Read full article
If your company has only one product to sell, and only one decision maker type to sell to, read no further… Many Sales VPs are frustrated by the slow start of their new-hire salespeople – the time it takes a new-hire to learn enough to arrive at sales proficiency, and achieve quota. Your new-hires are … Read full article
Sales managers often don’t realize that they can sometimes be a strong de-motivating force for their teams. Our company has delivered sales management training all over the world. Recently we have begun asking our participants to “think of the worst boss they have ever had, and identify the specific behaviors that boss had that discouraged … Read full article
What are the most common objections that you hear from prospects and customers? Chances are, they are what I call “value objections.” Objections like, “I can’t afford it”, “it’s not a priority” or “it’s not in our budget”… We have bigger problems… We’re doing OK with what we have… The absolute worst value objection is … Read full article
Many thought leaders today are talking about the importance of understanding your customer’s buying process, and aligning your sales strategy accordingly. But what does that mean? Pam, a sales manager for a leading office technology solutions provider, received an RFP for an opportunity to sell 600 monitors to a healthcare facility with 20 locations. The … Read full article