7 tips for successful sales pitches

When it comes to successful sales pitches, there are some components that should show up every time. You need confidence and enthusiasm. You need to know what your message is and who your audience is. And you need to look the part and have the right tools or materials to convince the listener. For this…

What are the benefits of a part-time Sales Director?

Many growing businesses don’t consider the advantages of hiring a part-time Sales Director. Business owners think of employing a Sales Director as a binary decision: when we’re big enough I can employ a Sales Director. Until then I’ll manage without. The problem is, this is not how your customers behave. As your business grows there’ll…

How small businesses can drive sustainable impact. Part 2: Community

We wrote last month about the climate crisis and how it’s difficult to know where to start in fixing the problem. For many businesses, community is at the opposite end of the scale. Most organisations already run support schemes for their employees or help local charities. This stuff has been going on for years. Building…

Three steps guaranteed to boost sales team effectiveness

If you’re really short on time, the ways to boost sales team effectiveness can probably be summarised in three words: Direction, leadership and skills. Business owners often stress about recruiting the right sales person – then spend more time worrying about whether they’ve done the right thing. Yet in our experience the biggest determining factor…

How small businesses can drive sustainable impact. Part 1: The environment

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” – Edward Everitt Hale The climate crisis is a topic of such immensity it’s tempting (and justifiable) to give up.…

The importance of customer loyalty and how to measure it

If sales measures had a Greatest Hits catalogue then customer loyalty would be the one everyone is singing along to. Customer loyalty is the banger that keeps everyone singing long after the band have left the stage. Customer loyalty is what gets you more deals, at higher prices, at a lower cost of acquisition. It’s…

How to choose the best psychometric profiling tool for your team

Many large organisations use psychometric profiling tools nowadays. If you’re an employee you might have been asked to complete a number of them on different occasions! But if you’re in control of your company budget and responsible for people outcomes how do you choose the best one? We’re very clear that the worst profiling tool…

How to create meaningful sales measures

We wrote last month about the importance of sales funnel measures. This month we’re focusing more on sales measures and results. How many sales measures should I have? A question you might want to consider is how many sales measures you should have. We’ve seen everything from one to twenty! We’ve yet to see a…

How questions can improve the performance of your team

I remember my very first day at school. It sticks in the memory because the teacher asked a whole bunch of questions and a couple of us were able to answer them all correctly. In those days there was none of this “taking part is important” stuff. If you got the right answer you could…

The importance of sales funnel metrics

Sales is all about the numbers, right? If you’re in a sales job and you’re falling short of budget then you’ll have questions to answer. In some organisations if you miss target for three months in a row you’ll be out of the door. It’s a target-driven environment and results count. But this is all…

What’s the difference between leaders and managers?

“Leaders focus on doing the right thing and Managers focus on doing things right” So goes the well known quote. But is it as simply defined as this? And would it even be desirable for everyone to be a leader if that left an organisation with too few people to ensure things were done right?…

What sort of sales training does my business need?

It’s surprising how often companies decide they need sales training before answering this key question. In many ways the decision is a no-brainer: Good sales training helps you engage better with customers and it helps motivate and keep great sales people. So budget time comes around again and everyone agrees “sales training” is something that…