Is Your Sales Team Undertrained? Ten Ways to Know

If you are an business owner or a sales manager who is responsible for the success of your sales team, you know that it is necessary to constantly evaluate the team's performance. Your ongoing business success is determined by continuous training so that the team has the best tools and strategies available. When you evaluate your team's statistics, it's also a good idea to apply this simple ten question test to measure whether your team is undertrained and perhaps requires a little extra help.

Building A Top - Level Balanced Scorecard

ActiveStrategy details the foundation of a strategy map that is used to build an organization's balanced scorecard.

5 Reasons to Not Divulge Client References Up-Front

I just got this email inquiry from a prestigious, international hotel chain: Hello: I am interested in getting information regarding your seminars, speeches and training programs. Could you please forward me details of some of your recent corporate engagements with names and phone numbers of the contact person there for reference purposes. Thank you. Not bad, right? It has all of the earmarks of a serious inquiry, one that is ready to award a contract providing the references check out. But wait a second. Before I divulge references, I have found it is essential to know several things, especially whether there is a viable deal in the offing. Here are 5 reasons to NOT divulge references too soon, says a top speaker, and best-selling author of 12 books, including SIX-FIGURE CONSULTING and HOW TO SELL LIKE A NATURAL BORN SALESPERSON.

The First Step In Sales

Most if not all sales processes consists of three steps. The first one is a very simple one. It is such a basic step that many tend to forget to use it. Even in a normal communication process this activity is also required, but often source of confusion when the complete step has been skipped or ignored. But whether it is the internal sales process, communicating the goals and activities to pursue or the external sales process, it starts with...

Improvisation Techniques Will Boost Sales

An article that shows how to bring the wonderful skills and techniques of improvisation into the workplace to create stellar sales performance.

Managing Your Self Talk To Get Powerful Sales Results

An article that shows sales managers how to help salespeople discern their useful/useless self talk in order to achieve breakthrough results.

Dealing With Troubled Salespeople

An article that shows sales managers figure out what makes their salespeople tick, and how to leverage their observations for increased sales success.

When To Hire A Salesperson

One of the questions I am asked is, when should I hire a salesperson and what should I look for? I have always felt that hiring a salesperson should be like any business decision. The business should consider the investment as a capital expense that will deliver profitable, measurable results. A budget should be allocated for the expense and a return on the investment should be calculated.

At What Layer Are You Managing Your Career and Business?

Do you know where you are in the levels of peeling back the layers of your career and business? It reminds me of the great philosopher, Shrek, who said that Ogre's come in layers. Well, so do businesses.

6 Ways to Resolve Employee Conflict at Your Store

In retail environments, where commissions are up for grabs, competition between salespeople can sometimes go from sportsmanlike to unsportsmanlike. Do you have strategies you can turn to when workplace tension goes up at your store?

Good Recruits Gone Bad

There is a difference between sponsoring and recruiting someone. Do you know the difference? In Network Marketing or management in general here are a few tools to help give you clarification. This article is geared towards network marketers.

True Value Creation And Your Customers - An Alternative To Close More Sales

This paper is based on personal experience with the larger or major sale, and insights from the research conducted by Huthwaite. Major sales are more complex, take longer to develop, and typically involve many decision makers and influencers. Knowing how to navigate these waters and creating value is key to the success of any sales force. Indeed, the customer decides if the value is real or not. Customers have different notions of value, which are based on their particular circumstances, culture, procurement policies, leadership style of decision makers, business objectives, and ROI expectations. Different customers even in the same industry have varying degrees of value notions.

Why the Sales Process Is Like a High Performance Engine (And Missing Gears Aren't Recommended)

Engines are a set of parts and processes that work with one another to achieve greater power and efficiency. In some ways, a company's method of selling is also a set of parts and processes that should work in the same way. Unfortunately, many business sales cycles aren't treated like the machines they should be...