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…

How do I recruit the right salesperson?

There are lots of people in sales roles, but not all will or should be the salesperson you recruit. Recruitment takes your time, effort and money. So how do you ensure that the right salesperson joins your business? ‘Sales’ is an all encompassing generalised term, but look closer and the distinctions between sales roles are…

How to buy the right sales training for your business

sales training - pondering while looking out over a lake

Choosing the right sales training for your business is a real challenge. Search for ‘Presenting Skills’ in Google and the pages of offers and companies go on and on and on. We did, and Google reported is has 246 Million results for you to choose from! How are you finding sales training options for your…

Getting the best from sales training

Sales training is more than just making the booking and hoping for the best. All training has a cost attached to it. There’s the obvious financial one if you appoint an external training business to support you. There’s also the opportunity cost of asking your people to leave their day jobs and spend time doing…

Client case study: Sales process improvement for IT service businesses

Customer journey case study how we helped improve sales process

The Customer Journey a good place to start a case study Sometimes customers are so picky. You think their “journey” through your sales process is simple and predictable. Yet it turns out understanding what they do and when is akin to herding cats. This client asked us in to help improve sales process more because…

Motivate, setting goals and recognition.

motivate leading to reward is seeing a great sunset

Not everyone has a price to motivate… It may be a coincidence, or maybe a result of planning cycles beginning their annual re-boot; but we’ve noticed that a number of clients are thoughtfully scratching their chins and debating bonus, incentive, reward or commission schemes (again!) And it causes real angst and debate. Designing reward structures:…

Is it important to have a “hungry” sales team?

Disrupter businesses like Uber, Amazon and Facebook have changed the business world forever. Not just in the standards they set for consumers, but also in shaping the way we work. Gone are the days of the dull staff canteen, to be replaced by beanbags, footie tables and free Budweisers. You might question the nutritional value,…