Finding the Perfect Sales Rep

If you have a company that produces a small line of products or just one original product, chances are you need a sales representative.

Career Tip #1: Act Like You Own the Place

Want a raise? Act like you own the place and get it!

Red Flags Of Sales Recruiting: No Need To Take Action (Don't Hire Them In The First Place!)

Recruiting and hiring sales professionals is typically reactive in nature: sales managers generally do not start looking for candidates until they have an immediate need. In an attempt to fill an open position as quickly as possible with the most qualified candidate (the best of the bunch), hiring managers often overlook or ignore critical areas in candidate's backgrounds and personalities, only to realize they've made a bad decision down the road.

Does Your Sales Training Program Address Your Sales Performance Issues? Part 1

Here’s a Proven Method to Target ‘Sales Skill Training’ to Resolve Sales Performance Issues

Small Companies Really Can Compete - Here's How

A small improvement in bidding techniques and tactics can lead to a disproportionately large increase in the number of contracts won.

How to Run a Sales Blitz

Follow these five elements to increase the success of your next sales blitz.

Are Self-Limiting Beliefs Constraining Your Sales Team?

Allowing self-limiting beliefs to constrain performance, will in turn limit sales results because like everyone, salespeople hold stubbornly to private beliefs about themselves, clients, markets, competition, and even the economy, beliefs that can have an enormous impact, either positive or negative, on their sales achievement levels.

Why My Sales Manager is a Computer Program

The computer will replace a salesman’s best friend when it is programmed to perform the duties a salesperson doesn’t like to do. In my case, the program reminds me of every contact or communication I need to make and it makes many of them for me. If I forget to make a call or overlook one, it reminds me that I need to take action. When I used to do this with a paper method, it would take hours to perform what now takes minutes and I have more time for additional sales calls.

Sales Incentive Program Design

There is a process for developing sales commissions with respect to overall sales compensation that can be followed. The principles are quite easy. The variables include the amount of base salary that you pay to an individual (if any), and the percentage of total compensation that base salary represents in relationship to the incentive program itself.

How To Achieve Sustained Sales Growth - Efficiently, Reliably And By Design

The Sales Cabinet concept is a sophisticated process for analysing, planning, directing, and monitoring the activity of a sales team. It is an essential tool for setting sales policies and the management, at whatever level, of a sales team, if not every sales call produces an order and there is a time lag between the first contact with a potential customer and that company placing an order.

Strategic Selling Begins In The Boardroom

In most industries today, a handful of ideal customers have become universal targets. Nearly every industrial salesperson dreams of calling on the CEO’s or managing directors of those top companies, which logically means that there are maybe 500 customers for a million sellers. With such intense competition, conventional approaches are not equal to the challenge. Salespeople need to develop strategies that distinguish their products, services and their organisations in the mind of the customer.

Reputation Expectations

When people are aware of the good opinions others have about them, they want to live up to those opinions. This tendency is why we act out the roles that are assigned to us. If we receive praise, we want to be worthy of that praise.

A Fresh Approach To Managing Your Most Important Accounts

Most companies are looking for ways to manage their most important business relationships more effectively and more efficiently. It is not easy to do and it is not always enjoyable to do, but when a major account strategy works well it is extremely satisfying.

What Does It Cost To Make A Sales Mis-hire?

Think about how much time and energy it takes to hire a good sales person. Think about how much it costs to carry a good salesperson on your payroll, and then think about the amount of revenue needed for your company in order to help you accelerate your sales. Finally, add in the opportunity costs for your company if during a given period, particularly a long one, instead of selling a million dollars a year, you have an under performing rep. When you add in all of these factors, it’s very costly to make a mistake when it comes to hiring sales people.

Developing Sales Discipline: Here's What It Means To You!

In an earlier article I asked whether selling is more of a skill or a discipline. My take on it: It comes down to about 80% discipline, and 20% skill. Some people took umbrage with my view, probably because they want to glorify this fine occupation of ours, making it seem difficult, and therefore somehow more professional. But the real difficulty is summoning the discipline to do what has already been proven, in millions upon millions of transactions, over many decades, to get buyers to buy.