Where does marketing stop and sales start?

This is one of the most important handover points to get right in any company. But the boundaries are really fuzzy. How many times have you heard comments like this? “We could improve performance if only Sales followed up on the leads we give them” “We could grow sales if only Marketing gave us decent…

5 steps to building a high-performing sales team

Have you ever baked a cake? A few people who are expert bakers can throw together a few ingredients and come up with something sweet and fluffy in a matter of minutes. Most of us, though, need to follow a recipe. That recipe tells us what the component parts are and in what order to…

Three ways to understand your ideal prospect

Knowing your ideal prospect is vital to be able to connect with them, and have a higher chance of turning them into a client. But how do we find out more about them?How do you get to know what they like?How do you understand where to find them? Imagine you’re happy to take money from…

How to attract the right customers for your business

Identifying and attracting the right customers for your business isn’t always an easy task and you’ll often need to make tough choices at both a strategic and operational level to optimise your sales. Remember those grammar tests you were set at school? The ones where you completely changed the meaning of a sentence by emphasising…

How do you give feedback to sales people?

Questions around giving feedback to sales people is something that’s come around a number of times just recently. It’s perhaps revealing that it rarely shows up as a question about “building a buzzing sales team” or “getting the very best out of” someone. When people pose this challenge it’s much more likely to be presented…

Client success story – Care Homes

Our client ran a group of care homes in the midlands and southeast. The business was well-established, but Covid had impacted occupancy rates and staff patterns had been disrupted. They had completed some mystery sales calls and had concerns about how their homes were represented to potential clients: Enquiries were handled in an inconsistent way,…

The Face Race. Where next for hybrid sales?

Have you played the new etiquette game yet? You’re meeting someone for the first time in a while and handshaking seems a bit uncertain whilst bumping elbows all feels a bit artificial. Then you meet a friend in a pub and before you know it you’re in a good old-fashioned hug. Weird eh? It’s easy…

What is Value-based selling?

You’ll probably have a very accurate idea about what your business costs you. The bricks and mortar (or your desk, laptop, printer and supply of chocolate Hob Nobs) Your people – either on your payroll or as associates or suppliers. Your manufacturing, purchasing or tech development costs. What you spend on marketing your business and…

How to use questions to improve the skills of your sales team

You’re busy, it’s been a long day and another sales-person is asking for guidance or help. Is answering your sales team’s questions a good thing to do or not? And what’s the alternative? Does it save you time to jump straight to the answer? Undoubtedly in that moment it does – and if you’ve been around…

How to get sales recruitment right

How to create an effective sales recruitment process to bring a new salesperson into your business. Be certain what kind of salesperson you want. There are different types, and they require a different mix of skills and attributes. You can read more about this in our March blog – ‘How do I recruit the right…

How to be an effective sales manager

Being a sales manager requires effort. It means joining the dots between your business strategy, sales plan and sales activity. It means knowing which sales goals to aim for, and which sales people to recruit. It means keeping a number of plates spinning at the same time. You’re the owner, the founder, the mender-in-chief. The…

How do I develop the sales skills of my team?

sales skills - Duck on a agility course with a sheep dog

The shape of your sales team and the mix of sales skills needed must reflect your business and the clients you serve. Where and how you invest in developing your salespeople will also be unique to you. Making the wrong choice offers a plethora of bespoke ways of wasting your time and money on the…