8 Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid

It is hard to get funding from a business plan, even a very good business plan. You can give yourself a much better chance of raising capital if you avoid these common business plan mistakes.

Sales Forecasting: A Few Tips To Make It Easier

Forecasting the future is something we all have to do as business owners.

Sales Manager and the Phone Book Prospecting Trick

You know there are still some sales managers out there who instead of insuring proper amounts of qualified leads for their sales force will instead throw a new salesman or woman a darn phone book and say good luck, there is the phone? Oh great the new salesperson thinks.

Sales Management and Cold Calling Programs

Most people who are in sales do not really like cold calling much and I suppose that makes sense, yet if you are very knowledgeable about the industry for which you are calling you should not worry much and actually come to enjoy talking to like minded business folks. Indeed you may find they actually enjoy talking with you.

Is your Sales Plan Engineered by Design or by Default?

This article walks through the best practices approach to engineering a winning sales plan.

Top Ten Strategies Large Corporations Use Against Small Businesses & Their Countermeasures

Time and again we have heard the story: a small business is doing well then a huge corporation moves in and takes over their trade. Does it have to be this way? Is there some way the little guy can win against their giant adversaries?

Is Business Formulaic?

This article describes the many benefits associated with using a formulaic approach to business process engineering.

Salary Or Commission - Which Is Better?

Are you in sales? Do you hire salespeople? Would you rather be paid a salary or a commission? After reading this conversation I had, you may find yourself changing your mind.

Positional Authority

Those who have authority based on the position they hold in the community have Positional Authority. This includes your boss, the U.S. President, or a police officer.

The 8020 Rule Fallacy In Sales

The 80/20 rule in sales organizations dies hard. You'll need to work diligently and hard to eliminate it and then even harder to keep it from resurfacing.

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

How To Create An Effective Business Development Strategy

The Business Development Strategy is used to underpin your main Business Plan and essentially it sets out a standard approach for developing new opportunities, either from within existing accounts or by proactively targeting brand new potential accounts and then working to close them.

Savvy Sales Managers Know Call Backs Don't Count!

Recently, you hired someone who seems to have all of the enthusiasm in the world. In tracking his performance you can’t help but notice that he has (1) Either no sales, yet; or (2) Very few sales; fewer than expected. You ask what’s up, and he replies that he has “A ton of call backs.” Well, because he’s so upbeat, you figure that he’s on track, and his optimism will be rewarded with a good number of sales, as he calls into his growing database of leads. But you’re probably being conned, says Dr. Gary S. Goodman, Fortune 1000 consultant, top speaker, and best-selling author of 12 books and more than 750 articles.

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.