Does every business need a sales pipeline?

Part of our Sales Untangled promise is to make business simple. So whenever this question gets asked we’re always willing to listen to why the questioner thinks their business can manage without one. [Note: This is a topic where terminology varies. For the purpose of this article we’re using the terms sales funnel and sales…

How do you prove ROI on personality profiling?

Personality profiles like DiSC, Insights or Emergenetics are common in the workplace. Many experienced employees proudly claim to have completed a number of them! Lessons are learned and the reports carefully hidden away at the bottom of a drawer until they are randomly discovered in an office move! Some organisations use personality profiling as a…

Untangling Sales Enablement

I spent many years in key account management for the UK’s biggest consumer goods companies. The first time I was asked to present recommendations for a major retailer’s range review I was completely stumped. How were you supposed to approach that? Asking my colleagues, I was advised to simply present each of my brands in…

5 questions to answer before employing a Sales Mentor

Most business owners are not sales experts. AND most business owners will never pay for sales advice or a Sales Mentor. Is this the most damaging equation in your business today? The first part of the equation is perfectly understandable. When people leave education their career usually introduces them to something they are good at…

What is your ideal selling style?

Are you having trouble figuring out your ideal selling style? You won’t be on your own if you’re a bit uncomfortable about selling. Let’s be honest, sales has lots of negative connotations. The Hollywood portrayal of sales is always the brash, win-at-all-costs mentality. Think of the Wolf of Wall Street or Richard Gere in Pretty…

What is sustainable selling?

You might think this is about selling sustainability. Maybe you imagine sustainability consultants who help organisations build their green plans. Or you think of companies selling composting boxes or green bins. But sustainable selling isn’t about what you sell. It’s about how you do it. It’s ensuring that your sales capability is sustainable over time.…

Should you be using AI in sales?

When it comes to deciding whether AI in sales can positively impact a business, there are many factors that must be considered. We’ve said many times that sales is all about people: It’s about the talent you recruit into your team and about the way you train and lead them. It’s also about the quirky…

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…

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 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…

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…

Moving sales from an artform to a science

Successful selling. Is it about working alongside someone and collaborating on solutions, or is it about getting them to do what you want? Is it about helping them or manipulating them? We hear both of these views and there are believers in both approaches. Nor is it easy to draw the line between these styles.…