Descartes Philosophy: Applied to Modern Sales Challenges “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How wo... 9 Jul 26 4 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Sales Leader's First 90 Days: Learn and Take Action for Early Wins This is a continuation our exploration of how sales leaders approach their first 90 days in a new role. The topic was bo... 9 Jul 26 15 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Customer Success Strategy Sales How to Write a Cold Email That Gets a Response Most prospecting campaigns fail for the same reason, and it's why many sellers don’t know how to write a cold email that... 30 Jun 26 9 min read By David Jacoby Read More
How to Boost the Revenue Impact of In-Person Sales Training Sales Training that Drives Results When budgets are tight, training spend often takes the first hit. And too many enable... 19 Nov 24 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Your Best Commercial Kick-Off Ever (No Taylor Swift Needed) Start Planning Your Best Ever Sales or Commercial Kickoff Blame it on Taylor Swift. The bar for live events is higher th... 9 Aug 24 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Leading Through Change: Managers as Compass and Cushion Change in today’s sales organizations is constant. For front-line sales managers, navigating their teams through disrupt... 24 Jul 24 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Smarter Selling Toolkit Mid-year is the make-or-break period for hitting annual sales targets. Don't go at it alone. We've curated a set of reso... 10 Jul 24 3 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
The Deal Review Dilemma: Surface Skimming vs. Strategic Depth How Sales Managers Can Master MEDDPICC Deal Reviews Too many sales coaching conversations revolve around activity levels... 29 Apr 24 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
MEDDPICC: The CRO's Secret Weapon in Uncertain Markets When Every Deal Counts In a market defined by softening demand, missed deals are no longer bumps in the road; they can d... 29 Apr 24 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Smarter Deal Coaching Guide Smart qualification is more important than ever. MEDDPICC (and its related MEDDICC cousins) is the simplest, most action... 11 Dec 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
Champion Candidate Assessment Deal champions come with different titles, roles, and personalities. But the truly effective customer advocates and coac... 21 Sep 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
A Sales Leader's First 90 Day Guide The pace of sales leader turnover is accelerating. For those new to the role, success is forged by your earliest actions... 10 Jul 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
The Greatest Tool for Getting Deals ‘Unstuck’ Sharpening Your Deal Champion Strategy Customer cost-cutting and market uncertainty continue. For sales teams, this mean... 3 Jun 23 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
MEDDPICC: A Metrics-Driven Approach In today's hyper-competitive sales landscape, the difference between success and failure often comes down to deal qualif... 2 Jun 23 4 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
A Sales Ops Leader's First 90 Days Today's Sales Ops leaders are masters of strategy, data, change, tech, and more. Expectations for quick results have nev... 15 May 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
Champion Activation Workbook Active collaboration with your champions drives deal momentum and influencer alignment. This editable workbook is a prac... 12 Apr 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
A Guide to Go-To-Market Strategy Rapid shifts in markets, decision landscapes, and competitors mean more frequent GTM pivots. This eBook provides leaders... 11 Apr 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
A Leader’s Guide to True SKO Success It's never too early to plan next year's sales kick-off. With tighter budgets and greater executive scrutiny, SKOs requi... 13 Mar 23 1 min read By The Brevet Group Read More
How to Advance Complex Deals Right Now Turning Your Most Valuable Asset into Your Most Valuable Player Our recent pulse survey of more than 300 sellers confirm... 3 Mar 23 12 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
MEDDPICC: Beyond the Checklist How to Ignite Action from Insights At Brevet we train to MEDDPICC as the cornerstone of effective B2B sales qualificatio... 2 Jan 23 4 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
SaaS Companies are Revamping Sales Comp: Here's How SaaS companies are thinking differently about their sales compensation plans. We recently teamed up with SPIFF to discus... 30 Sep 22 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Rethinking the SKO: 5 Actions to Take Now Next Year’s Sales Kickoff Must Look and Feel Different In-person SKOs were declared forever dead at the start of the pan... 23 Sep 22 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Building Trust and Customer Relationships in a Virtual Environment What if today’s unprecedented hybrid world can help build stronger relationships with customers? What if we became the t... 11 Feb 22 6 min read By Rachel Cavallo Read More
New Year, New Beginnings: Brevet Merges with Symmetrics Welcome to 2022 – the complexity and confusion of our world continues! Confidently navigating change is table-stakes for... 18 Jan 22 2 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Death of the B2B Sales Rep? Have you bought a car in the last 18 months? If you want to take a trip down memory lane, walk into a car dealership and... 17 Jan 22 4 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
"Pipelies" – The Sales Pipeline Mirage We once consulted with a VP of Sales who worked for a large Fortune 50 financial services firm. He was having, like many... 2 Nov 21 5 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Do You Run a Sales Team or Just a Group of People Who Report to You? Sales Loves Collaboration Whenever we work with groups of salespeople, there is one prevailing theme: They love to inter... 1 Nov 21 4 min read By Rachel Cavallo Read More
How to Use SPIFFs to Motivate Sales & Drive Revenue We recently joined other revenue leaders to discuss mid-year opportunities for re-energizing sales teams with special in... 11 Aug 21 2 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Top 10 Account Planning Mistakes to Avoid In B2B sales, driving revenue from existing accounts is far easier than landing new customers. With so much opportunity ... 1 Aug 21 8 min read By Masami MIddleton Read More
6 Strategies for Sales and Marketing Alignment Like oil and water, sales and marketing teams don’t always “mix” the way they’re supposed to. This is a sad truth, given... 17 Jun 21 6 min read By Masami MIddleton Read More
State of Field Sales 2021 Last year, we conducted a survey to see how organizations adapted to the changes triggered by COVID. Now, we're excited ... 17 Jun 21 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
The Chronicles of Account Planning: The Lion, the Whip, and the Chair In the 'good old days', when I was selling instead of consulting, we did a lot of account planning. You know… that thing... 7 Jun 21 7 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Sales Leaders: Assess Skills Gaps Now to Avoid Pipeline Issues Later “Some of our best sellers have become some of our worst,” said the Sales Ops team at our largest client. We suspected th... 1 Jun 21 4 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Your Post-Pandemic Sales Reset: Top 3 Recommendations A long-time client called us recently. He’s a sales VP who joined his current firm during the pandemic. He’s never met t... 29 May 21 5 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
7 Tips to Get the Most Value from Your Virtual Meetings Like most of you, we’ve been working to adjust to a world of meetings and social interactions on virtual devices. Stress... 12 May 21 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
5 Steps to Find Your Actual Cost of Sales Training (Part 2) Part 1 of this blog began with a statistic showing that U.S. firms spend just south of one trillion dollars on their sal... 6 May 21 8 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Confessions of a Fired Chief Sales Officer This is the story of Tom, a recently fired Chief Sales Officer (CSO). Although the sting of professional failure is star... 4 May 21 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Losing is Winning: Leveraging Win Planning to Improve Your Win Rates “If you’re not first, you’re last,” - Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights. In most cases, sales is a zero-sum game. There is t... 21 Apr 21 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
When it Finally Clicks: Behavioral Coaching Makes All the Difference Many argue that sales managers play the most important role in the salesforce. They can drive adoption of your sales pro... 12 Apr 21 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Front-Line Sales Leadership: What Works Now Everyone agrees on the importance of front-line sales managers. But in practice, sales coaching continues to fall short.... 5 Apr 21 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
How Do Sales Leaders Stay Credible and Legitimate? There’s this TED talk we like by General Stanley McChrystal called “Listen, Learn… then Lead.” General McChrystal has se... 31 Mar 21 3 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Sales Leadership Excellence: A Virtual Master Class Brevet Partners with TCU Sales Center Students Everyone agrees the world of selling continues to change as we navigate a... 19 Mar 21 2 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Leader's First 90 Days: Dig Deep to Determine Long-Term Strategy This is a continuation our multi-part exploration of how sales leaders approach their first 90 days. So many of our clie... 16 Mar 21 12 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Sales Leader’s First 90 Days: Setting a Longer-Term Sales Strategy This is the conclusion of our multi-part exploration of how sales leaders approach their first 90 days in a new role. We... 12 Mar 21 10 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
What Sales Leaders Can Learn from Epicurean Philosophers It’s called Pandemic Downtime, and we have it. It’s that extra time we’d normally never have because we’re on airplanes,... 1 Mar 21 4 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
The Top 4 CRM Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them CRM (Client Relationship Management) can be defined as, “The strategy upon which companies plan, manage and analyze inte... 13 Jan 21 6 min read By Erica Abt Read More
Setting Sales Priorities in a Fast-Changing World Think how much the landscape of sales and company structures have changed over the course of the past few years… Sellers... 8 Jan 21 5 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Sales Leaders, Did You Make the Right Decision? We recently came across a VP of Sales, talking about their sales pipeline. During this conversation, he lamented about a... 5 Jan 21 6 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
The First 90 Days for a Sales Leader: A Guide to Success If you’re a sales VP and have been for more than 2 years – Congratulations, you’re above average! You’ve exceeded the av... 1 Jan 21 4 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
New Research: 2020 Sales Compensation Policies & Practices We’re excited to launch the 2020 SaaS Sales Compensation Policies and Practice Survey in conjunction with the great team... 1 Dec 20 2 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Leadership Counts DURING Training, Too! Whether in-person or virtual, there's no question of the positive impact a strong sales leader can have during a trainin... 12 Nov 20 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Show... Then Tell (with Win Themes) The value proposition. It’s at the core of everything we sell, right? Value propositions come in many varieties, but ess... 11 Nov 20 7 min read By Rachel Cavallo Read More
Talking to Your Sales Team: Do it More Often, Starting Now If you manage sellers, frontline sales managers or indeed anyone, you understand they’re under stress, apprehensive, and... 29 Oct 20 5 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
State of Field Sales Survey Effective virtual selling is more than turning your camera on. Unprecedented market changes over the last 6 months have ... 7 Oct 20 2 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Transforming' vs. 'Tweaking' Your Sales Force We've found that many sales training companies use the word “transformation” when they’re only talking about tweaking th... 17 Sep 20 9 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Why Newly Promoted Sales Leaders Rise to Their Level of Incompetence If you’re a successful top performer seeking a senior management position, there is something you should know. It’s been... 18 Aug 20 5 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
The Big (Data) Obstacle that Sales Organizations Must Overcome Buzzwords like “big data” and “strategic data-driven decision making” have been bouncing around board rooms for quite so... 12 Aug 20 8 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Boosting Sales Coaching: 3 Techniques to Reinforce Selling Skills We spend a lot of time with sales leaders, fully understanding the hours they work and pressures they face in their role... 6 Aug 20 9 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
What Your Virtual Sales Meetings are Missing For most sellers, face-to-face customer meetings are still out of the question. They may even be a thing of the past. Ph... 21 Jul 20 10 min read By Justin DiBella Read More
7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation: Building for the Future What is your vision for the future? Do you know what you want the sales organization to become? Is your vision of the fu... 1 Jul 20 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
Now is the Time to Rediscover Your Customers The market is changing quickly. Organizations are having conversations they couldn’t imagine two months ago. Projects an... 25 Jun 20 10 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
The Sales Transformation Dilemma – To Tweak or To Transform? “Sometimes a tweak (delivered through training or a new tool) is all a sales force needs; other times, a full-bore trans... 23 Jun 20 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation: Building Your Case for Change In our research on sales force transformations for our book, 7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation, the greatest challen... 3 Jun 20 2 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation: Drivers of a Transformation What does it take to truly transform your sales organization? Do you even need to transform, or simply tweak? What lever... 1 Jun 20 3 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
4 Lessons After 6 Months and 100+ Hours of Virtual Sales Training Like many of you, our team spent much of the pandemic learning how to make the most of virtual tools. Webex, MS Teams, Z... 15 Apr 20 4 min read By Erica Abt Read More
5 Steps to Find Your Actual Cost of Sales Training (Part 1) Annually, U.S. firms spend approximately $900 billion on their sales forces, which is greater than three times their tot... 2 Apr 20 9 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
7 Hard Truths About Selling Value Everyone wants to sell their offerings for more. But sales teams are torn. Corporate says, “We need to sell value. What ... 26 Mar 20 7 min read By Rachel Cavallo Read More
What Does Sales Enablement Do During Our Current COVID-19 Situation? Another crazy week. Companies are reeling from the news. Continuity plans are being deployed. Sales teams are rallying a... 23 Mar 20 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Compensation: Adapting to a New Normal During COVID-19 Changes This is unchartered water for all of us – both personally and professionally. We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking... 16 Mar 20 5 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Guiding Your Sales Team During COVID-19: What Every CRO Needs to Know Guiding Your Sales Team During COVID-19 Turn on the news and you'll likely find yourself in state of panic. The stock ma... 9 Mar 20 10 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Onboarding A New Salesperson: The Mistake that Lengthens New Hire Ramp There’s A Science to Onboarding a New Salesperson Onboarding is likely at the top of the “to-do” list as any business in... 24 Feb 20 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The Most Impactful Sales Enablement Action You’re Not Taking Your sales reps’ biggest enemy is time. A typical week for a rep includes many time burdens, yes – even sales enablement... 10 Feb 20 10 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Creating a Customer for Life in Volatile Times What if TODAY is the day that you create a customer for life? If you’ve sold to small or mid-sized businesses, you’ve in... 21 Jan 20 4 min read By Rachel Cavallo Read More
Sales Team Support: How to Support Your Teams During a Slowdown 2020 will go down in the books as the most challenging year in contemporary selling. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, al... 12 Jan 20 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Sales Enablement Ideas: 5 Things That Won’t Happen in 2020 Another year in the books! Now’s the time to celebrate the wins and learn from the losses. Whether you made your number ... 29 Dec 19 8 min read By Justin DiBella Read More
The Agenda Item Missing from Your Sales Kick Off (SKO) Most sales kick offs focus on training sales reps on specific things they need to sell in the field – the “hard skills.”... 15 Dec 19 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Change Management: A Critical Skill Missing from Modern Sales Toolkits The Best Sales Reps are Tapping into the Mindset, Skillset, and Toolset of Change Management The phrase “change manageme... 8 Dec 19 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The Diagnosis to Avoid When Evaluating Sales Performance Evaluating Sales Performance Through The Lens of Your Compensation Plan As the song goes, we’re about to enter “The Most... 24 Nov 19 10 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Sales Content: Cracking The Sales Code Cracking The Sales Content Code The goal was right: bridge the divide between marketing and sales. Equip sellers with co... 11 Nov 19 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Prepare Your High-Potential Sellers for the C-Suite It all started with a small group of high-potential sales leaders that included seven VPs and directors. One of our long... 7 Nov 19 5 min read By Hope Eyre Read More
Sales Methodology Defined: Buy or Build? Sales Methodology Definition The term “sales methodology” has been around for a long time. It was a way to elevate sales... 3 Nov 19 7 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Key Sales Enablement Challenges That Need to Be Tackle in 2020 Sales enablement has secured a seat at the table across a variety of industries and companies. This is the biggest takea... 20 Oct 19 7 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
How is Your Alignment Between Sales and Marketing Coming Along? Several weeks ago, we sat in a client meeting with the company’s sales and marketing leaders. It went something like thi... 15 Sep 19 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Unlock Your Sales Strategy with A Sales Compensation Plan How Can You Leverage Your Sales Compensation Design Process to Bring Clarity on Your Sales Strategy? One of my former le... 8 Sep 19 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Recession Proof Your Sales Teams Now Recession Proofing Your Sales Organization This June marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. economic expansion that beg... 25 Aug 19 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Enablement KPIs: Time to Step Them Up As we approach the fourth quarter, there’s some good news and some bad news. The bad news is it’s probably too late to s... 18 Aug 19 7 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Flying Blind: Your Teams Are Executing the Wrong Deal Strategy Selling complex solutions to modern buyers is hard. Your teams should be looking for every edge possible. A low-hanging ... 11 Aug 19 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Build a Sales Experience that Differentiates The Goal of a Great Sales Experience is Differentiation What’s it like to buy from a great sales rep? For the past decad... 4 Aug 19 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
7 Coaching Strategies to Help Reboot a Sales Rep's Slow Start “Ya Gotta Believe!” In 1973, Tug McGraw instilled these three words into every NY Mets fan. As the All-Star break ends a... 21 Jul 19 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Why Aren’t Your Sales Reps Making Their Number? Modern buying has impacted nearly all aspects of sales. And many sales organizations have stepped up to fill the gaps – ... 14 Jul 19 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Start Training Your Sales Reps to be Real Business Consultants It’s Less About What You Sell and More About How You Sell We find some interesting contrasts as we work in different ind... 23 Jun 19 5 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Practical Field Activation & Enablement: Drive Focus to Drive Results Virtual Activation Strategies that Drive More Results In a blink of an eye the first half of 2019 will be behind us. For... 2 Jun 19 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Build a Smart Enablement Plan That Helps Them Hit Their Number The pace of sales organizations hasn’t let up in the first five months of 2019. Every CRO, sales ops leader, and sales e... 19 May 19 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Product Training or Skill Training? Both, And! Product training has gotten a bad rap lately. In a lot of companies, it’s the only sales training that’s offered. Many i... 5 May 19 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Sales Enablement ROI: 6 Things to Get Right in Your First 6 Months Congratulations! You’re now a sales enablement leader. Your excitement is in full swing as you prepare for your first da... 28 Apr 19 7 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Which Sales Reps Make the Best Managers? Sales Reps With Strong Mental Muscle are Your Hidden Gems Raise your hand if your March Madness bracket is a now just a ... 20 Apr 19 9 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Business Acumen: The Sales Training You’re Missing Improving the Business Acumen of Your Team Should Be A Priority The college admissions scandal raises a lot of questions... 24 Mar 19 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
It’s the Final Days of Q1: Do You Know Where Your Numbers Are? The end of the first quarter is only days away. It’s the first critical milestone of the year and will establish the mom... 18 Mar 19 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Facilitating Problem Definition: The Key to Closing Complex Deals Framing The Customer’s Problem Can Be The Hardest Part of Selling Talk to any rep and ask: “How often do your customers ... 10 Mar 19 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Avoid the Sales Bonus Exodus It’s that time of year. Spring training is underway, NCAA brackets are forming, snow is a thing of the past (hopefully).... 4 Mar 19 6 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
More Isn’t Always More: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Team Selling Effective Team Selling Means Much More Than Just Adding People To The Team Paul, a rep for an alternative energy company... 3 Feb 19 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Bad Sales Discovery Meetings Are Killing Your Deals For an Effective Sales Discovery Meeting, the Seller Acts as a Facilitator We’ve all been a part of a bad sales call. Ma... 27 Jan 19 7 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Post Merger Confessions of a $200M Company CEO 14 Months into a Merger: Phil Saunders covers how he merged two sales departments, pre and post merger issues, healthy p... 17 Jan 19 2 min read By Dan Perry Read More
The Sales Technology Challenge: How Much is Too Much? Deals and dollars invested into sales tech startups are hitting all-time highs. Sales organizations are continuing to sp... 16 Jan 19 5 min read By Warren Shiver Read More
4 Ways Sales Enablement Metrics Can Make A Difference Next Year Several weeks ago, on the eve of the new year, we polled several dozen senior sales leaders about sales enablement. The ... 13 Jan 19 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Seeing Through the Hype: Making Sense of SE Technology Sales technology analyst Nancy Nardin, in a unique position to understand and clear the technical fog of sales enablemen... 10 Jan 19 3 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
When Sales Reps Need to Call an Audible Sales Reps Need Great Situational Awareness to Properly Execute a Sales Process One of the most fascinating parts of foo... 6 Jan 19 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Starting Strong: Sales Enablement Planning & Budget Strategies Sales Enablement Planning & Budget Strategies With Guest, George Bronten 2019 is HERE. Time to at least start your p... 3 Jan 19 2 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Enablement Trends in 2018: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Congratulations - you made it to year-end! For most of us, year-end brings both stress and relief. But it's also one of ... 30 Dec 18 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
What Every Sales Leader Wants Sales Enablement to Know Sales needs sales enablement; it’s an art and science relationship, with each balancing the other. The art of sales can ... 20 Dec 18 1 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
The Art of Sales and Science of Sales Enablement I recently talked with John Krumheuer, VP of North American Sales at SmartDrive Systems. We discussed the relationship b... 16 Dec 18 7 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
3 Strategies to Ensure Your Sales Force Performs Under Pressure Key Strategies for Improving Under Pressure Sales As a consultant, I spend a lot of time in the field with clients. Whet... 9 Dec 18 6 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Crushing Your Quota Using Situational Awareness With Guest, Chris Day Our conversation is with Chris Day, inside sales leader at Bazaarvoice. We explore how to using situational awareness an... 6 Dec 18 1 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Sales Leaders: 3 Tell Tell Signs It's Time To Go Sales Leaders Today Have An Expiration Date Ben was the sales leader of a billion-dollar manufacturing firm, and he was ... 2 Dec 18 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Setting Sales Quotas: The Universal Afterthought of Sales Leaders What do dinner rolls, an umbrella, and sales quotas have in common? While this may sound like a bad joke, these are all ... 25 Nov 18 5 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
How to Use the Holidays to Win Sales Deals So much of sales comes down to relationships. But even great relationships can grow a little cold over time. This is eve... 18 Nov 18 6 min read By Collette Parker Read More
The Sequel to the Best Business Book in 95 Years is Released The Persuasion Code by Patrick Renvoise & Dr. Christophe Morin Today is a special day because within the last 24 hou... 15 Nov 18 4 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
3 Practical Ways to Get Sales and Marketing Working Together How Marketing and Sales Work Together Last week I had two sales managers at different companies complain, “Marketing doe... 11 Nov 18 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Inside Sales is Expanding in the Market. Are You Ready? Today we welcome Sam Wilson, Senior Vice President of Small Business and eCommerce at 8x8 Communications. Our topic toda... 8 Nov 18 2 min read By Dan Perry Read More
LeBron James Has a Message for Sales Leaders We’ve been spending a lot of time in the field with reps lately. Some reps are on track to hit their Q4 numbers, but oth... 4 Nov 18 7 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Do Relationships Still Matter When Retaining Accounts? We have Bill Hicks as a guest this episode. Bill is the Chief Relationship Officer for Ultimate Software. He is responsi... 25 Oct 18 1 min read By Dan Perry Read More
Getting Real About Your Sales Enablement Tech Stack Sales Enablement Technology Are we reaching the peak of the sales technology hype cycle? How can sales leaders make sens... 21 Oct 18 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Enablement: Is it Really Worth the Recent Hype? Thursday July 19, 11:00 am Pac - Mike Kunkle is our guest today. Mike is a highly-respected sales transformation archite... 18 Oct 18 2 min read By Dan Perry Read More
What Your Reps Really Think About Your Sales Kick Off (SKO) Like many at Brevet, I’m a former sales rep. And I’ve been to my share of good and bad sales kick-offs. While the intent... 14 Oct 18 8 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Integrating Two Sales Teams Post Merger or Acquisition During this program on Sales Enablement Radio, host Dan Perry (The Brevet Group) interviews Phil Saunders, CEO of the $2... 11 Oct 18 2 min read By Dan Perry Read More
Sales Incentive Plans: There's Still Time to Get Comp Right Business, like nature, is governed by cycles. And just like nature, the planning and preparation for the next season occ... 7 Oct 18 8 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
How to Maximize Your 2019 Sales Enablement Plan & Budget The day after Labor Day I had a conversation with a sales enablement leader. She was heading to Dreamforce soon and had ... 16 Sep 18 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The Definitive Guide to Key Sales Metrics Never before has sales had access to so much data. And you’d think that with this level of data there’d be more fact-bas... 9 Sep 18 9 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Importance of Sales Coaching: Stop Wasting Your Time There Are Three Distinct Modes of Sales Coaching Enough already, let’s get practical about the importance of sales coach... 13 Aug 18 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Is Your Sales Force Stuck in the 1980s? Sales is arguably the oldest profession in the world. As long as there are products and services, there have been sales ... 29 Jul 18 5 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Hire Slow, Fire Fast Every sales leader we know faces too much work and not enough resources. Often the response is to hire a body – ANY body... 22 Jul 18 7 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Sales Retention Strategy: 3 Strategies for Grooming Future Leaders Turnover continues to be a challenge for modern sales organizations. A strong job market, the disappearance of pensions,... 15 Jul 18 6 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Rethinking Sales Discovery Process: Three Ways to Win Deals Early Results from our latest Buyer Pulse Survey are in. Yes, buyers are inundated with information about purchase decisions a... 24 Jun 18 7 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Three Sales Enablement Musts from Senior Leadership In my previous post, we discussed the impact of the front-line manager on sales effectiveness initiatives. A sales manag... 17 Jun 18 5 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Are You Better with a Nobody or NO body? Most sales leaders know that just because you’re in sales, it doesn’t mean you’re a good salesperson. Last week we were ... 10 Jun 18 6 min read By Carrie Ward Read More
Field Training Manager: The Missing Link in Your Field Sales Model In my first outside sales job, each district had a dedicated field training manager. At first, I was intimidated. Not on... 3 Jun 18 7 min read By Peter Catalano Read More
Should You Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager? You have an opening for a sales manager. Your rainmaker is vying for the role. He's great at personal selling and has he... 20 May 18 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Accelerating Your Deal Velocity: Are You Driving a ’79 Civic? Shorten Your Sales Cycle With Four Targeted Actions My first car was a used 1979 Honda Civic. Five-speed manual. Cracked... 13 May 18 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Why Your Sales Initiatives Never Make It Past the Starting Gate Front-line Sales Management is Where Your Initiatives Live or Die Most sales initiatives don’t take hold. At least not i... 6 May 18 6 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Should You Hire a Recent Sales Graduate or an Experienced Rep? Graduation season is upon us and more than 5,000 students will graduate with a formal sales major. Over fifty universiti... 29 Apr 18 5 min read By Dan Perry Read More
It’s Time to Rethink Your SMB Sales Force Ask most sales leaders about their sales force structure and they’ll likely reference a triangle. Global/strategic accou... 22 Apr 18 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Hiring Internally vs Externally. What’s Better? Internal and External Recruiting Over and over we hear the same question from our clients: “Should we be hiring internal... 15 Apr 18 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Confessions of a Fired CSO Management consultants wear many hats – advisor, change agent, devil’s advocate. Sometimes we find ourselves in the role... 8 Apr 18 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
All Hands On Deck - A Sales Enablement Leader Gets Us Back On Course When It's All Hands On Deck – A Sales Enablement Leader Gets The Ship Back On Course You walk into your monthly leadersh... 1 Apr 18 6 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Something Special Happened at the Steigenberger Hotel Sales managers are the most important people in the salesforce. They can drive adoption of your sales methodology or the... 25 Mar 18 6 min read By Dan Perry Read More
Embrace the Messiness of the Deal I met last week with the Sales Operations leader of a large software company. After much discussion about his current st... 18 Mar 18 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
What You Don't Know About Motivating Sales Reps Can Hurt You How To Motivate Sales Reps "Sales Reps are just coin-operated machines. Pay them to get results." It’s a common phrase w... 4 Mar 18 6 min read By Elaina Engel Read More
Aligning Functions for Sales Enablement Sales Enablement can be defined as getting the right content, in the right hands, at the right time, with the right mess... 25 Feb 18 4 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Do You Have the Wrong Go-to-Market Strategy? We see it all the time. A company was once booming. In past years, revenue growth ranged from 20-30%. The market was exp... 18 Feb 18 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
#SalesManagerFails: 5 Risks to Hitting Your 2018 Targets Our consultants have been busy in 2018. More than 100 ride-alongs and sales call reviews. SKO sessions in eight countrie... 11 Feb 18 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
10 Deal Killers in 2018 The calendar has quickly turned to February. Sales teams are shaking off their SKO hangovers and back building pipeline ... 4 Feb 18 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
The Trap of a "Perfect" Salesperson Profile Picture a high-performing sales rep. What do you see? Is he a charming and charismatic? Is she aggressive? Does he chall... 28 Jan 18 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Sales Enablement Increasingly, sales enablement is seen as a core organizational capability. And right now, nearly every enablement team ... 21 Jan 18 5 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Three Keys to Keep Your Initiative from Getting Knocked Out After SKO As a sales enablement professional, now is the time when the rubber meets the road. You've spent months developing busin... 14 Jan 18 6 min read By Mike Riksheim Read More
Adaptive Methodology: Challenging vs. Adapting – The New Approach For years we’ve shared our view on the flaws of a one-size-fits-all sales methodology. Our research shows that the best ... 17 Dec 17 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
One of The Biggest Challenges for Sales Managers: Wasting Time We work with a lot of sales managers. Over 51 countries visited, 221 countries represented and 103,000 sales managers wo... 3 Dec 17 4 min read By Dan Perry Read More
5 Things We're Thankful for in the New World of Selling Family, food, football. There are a lot of traditions that come with the Thanksgiving holiday. Of course, the most impor... 26 Nov 17 4 min read By Elaina Engel Read More
Sales Enablement Strategies: Avoid the Self-inflicted Wounds Here’s a hard truth: sales and sales enablement leaders can be their own worst enemy. Our research shows that ill-concei... 12 Nov 17 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
What We Learned at the Sales Enablement Society Conference Sales enablement has arrived and making a difference across companies of all sizes. This is the biggest takeaway we lear... 29 Oct 17 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
What Does Your Chief Sales Officer Expect of You? | A HPE Case Study We’re headed to Dallas on October 26th for the Sales Enablement Society conference: Experience Sales Enablement 2017. St... 6 Oct 17 2 min read By Dan Perry Read More
Human Resources and Sales Compensation don’t mix well together An effective sales incentive design is critical to enabling your reps to achieve their quota. Yet the design of most sal... 24 Sep 17 3 min read By Reese Bacon Read More
Uncovering the Secret to Methodology Adoption The push for field adoption of sales methodology misses the point. Reps will never embrace a one-size-fits-all approach.... 17 Sep 17 2 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Strategic Planning Season: How to get your 2018 Number Reduced It’s that time of year again: strategic planning season. This is when the executive leadership gets together to plan for... 10 Sep 17 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The Biggest Mistake Sales Reps are Making - And How to Fix It 4 Ways Sales Reps Can Maximize Their Time With Customers A recent 2017 Sales Benchmark report had some eye-catching stat... 4 Sep 17 4 min read By Elaina Engel Read More
Unlocking the DNA of Tomorrow's Elite Sales Force Professional selling has always been tough – and it’s not getting any easier. Research from Brevet and other sources pai... 27 Aug 17 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
3 Deadly Sales Training Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) Product and sales training are one In interviewing buyers, one of the biggest complaints we hear about is the “walking p... 24 Aug 17 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Nailing the Right Deal Strategy for Your Situation High performers of all types—from highly trained military operators to elite athletes to world-class surgeons—share one ... 24 Aug 17 1 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
What Senior Leaders Don’t Know About Sales Transformations One of the best parts of being a consultant is getting to know senior executives across many industries. Compared to the... 24 Aug 17 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
3 Steps To Get Your Reps to Use Your Simple Sales Process When I interact with sales leaders, the question I get asked the most is, “How can I get my sales reps to actually use o... 24 Aug 17 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Enablement Leader And Their 4 Rockstar Characteristics Sales leaders standing up a sales enablement function don’t always know what a “rockstar” looks like. Thankfully, we’ve ... 24 Aug 17 4 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
What Every Sales VP Should Know About Their Millennial Sales Team If you’re like the average B2B sales organization today, you’re probably clinging for dear life to an organization-wide ... 15 Mar 17 16 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The One Discipline That Separates Elite Performers from Their Peers What separates elite performers from the rest of the field? How long did it take Mozart and Picasso to achieve “world cl... 10 Mar 17 13 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Styles of Adult Learning: Your Current Sales Training Misses the Mark Learn the Seven Distinct Styles of Adult Learning Most people intuitively understand that teaching a new concept to an a... 9 Feb 17 22 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Turn Your Sales Training Best Practices From Theory to Application Sales Training Best Practices Many senior leaders don’t fully appreciate the complexity of creating a truly effective sa... 17 Jan 17 11 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
PointForward Recognized as Must-Have Solution by SmartSellingTools.com We are proud to announce that PointForward, our video-based training and coaching solution, has been named one of the "T... 20 Dec 16 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Video Sales Training: Consider Supplementing The Old With The New Sales leaders and Trainers Should Expand Their Thinking Beyond Live Sales Training Alone Quick question: Who has the sho... 20 Dec 16 10 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Are You Ready For Next Generation Sales Reps? The Importance of Sales Training for Millennials Supporting, compensating and retaining top sales performers is an expen... 20 Dec 16 13 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
5 Unconventional End-of-year Activities to Kick-start Your Sales Note: This article was originally published as a guest post on the LeadFuze blog. With just a couple days left until the... 20 Dec 16 15 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Skills: The Importance of Mastering the Softer Side of Sales Developing Soft Sales Skills can be Detrimental to Your Next Sale Most instructor-led sales training programs focus on e... 8 Nov 16 9 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
How to Identify Meaningful Insight from Your Best Salespeople Understanding the true capabilities of your sales force is critical, whether you're a startup company scaling a new prod... 20 Oct 16 10 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
How to Improve the Efficiency of Your Sales Training How To Improve Sales Training Imagine you’re the founder of a startup software company that just received its first roun... 11 Oct 16 12 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Solving the Problem of Sales Training ROI Developing a training program that is both impactful and a high-quality learning experience is a critical part of operat... 3 Oct 16 10 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Information Overload: Closing the Last Mile in Sales Training Having trouble making your sales training concepts “stick”? Here’s the step you’re missing. If you’re like most companie... 15 Sep 16 9 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Dreamforce Sales Enablement Soiree See You In San Francisco! We’re Going to the Dreamforce Sales Enablement Day Soiree. If you’re a sales enablement profes... 13 Sep 16 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Embrace the Irrationality of Selling With Emotional Logic There's a lot to be said about following a structured, logical process in sales. But just because you're using a discipl... 2 Mar 16 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Don't Paint Your Car with Spray Paint & Other Sales Training Lessons If you've watched any of my sales training videos, you've probably guessed from my accent that I’m from the South. A lot... 9 Feb 16 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Running Can Teach Us How to Implement Sales Effectiveness Programs I’ve recently taken up running. Actually, I’ve become an addict, completing a 5K or 10K just about every other weekend. ... 21 Jan 16 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Allen and His Magical X-Ray Machine For Sales Reps No doubt technology has changed the way we sell today. We’ve now loaded down our reps with mobile devices, presentation ... 18 Oct 15 8 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
5 Points to Build the Case for Social Selling Salespeople seem to have a set of rules and habits that they stick to stubbornly, no matter how much the selling environ... 15 Sep 15 7 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Training Tips: Make the Most of It Your company has made your development as a sales professional a core part of their strategy, so you are about to enroll... 9 Oct 14 8 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Why Sales Training Fails: The Most Common Mistake "U.S. firms spent about $156 billion on employee learning in 2011, the most recent data available, according to the Amer... 9 Sep 14 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Social Selling with LinkedIn: Getting Started Despite all the hype around social selling, a recent Brevet Group study showed that less than 50 percent of salespeople ... 25 Aug 14 12 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Using Sales Competency to Maximize Sales Training ROI We see it time and time again. Companies pour money into the wrong types of sales programs. Millions are spent on the an... 14 Aug 14 6 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Onboarding Sales Reps: Lessons from the First Day of Kindergarten Monday was a big day in the Williams household – the first day of school for our kindergartner. We’ve been busy the past... 6 Aug 14 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
3 Attributes of Smarter Selling For Your Team To Follow In the 1980s Oldsmobile ran a series of pretty cheesy, but memorable ads with the tag line, “This is not your father’s O... 21 Jun 14 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
The Entrepreneur Brain and What It Means for Sales At Brevet, we like to think we stand out (hopefully, in a good way!). In a profession where far too many decisions are m... 5 Apr 14 4 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Sales Coaching the Seattle Seahawks Way Perhaps Success in Sales Teams is Rooted More in Sound Fundamentals and Positive Atmospheres I was disappointed to see P... 4 Feb 14 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Great Salespeople Think Like Entrepreneurs, Part Two In our last post we began to share insights from Brevet’s research into high-performing solutions for sales reps. For ye... 10 Dec 13 6 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More
Leaving No Doubt Motto to Everyday Sales Skills Okay, I will admit it. I’m a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan. I grew up watching the team, an experience that included a l... 9 Nov 13 3 min read By Ralph Grimse Read More
Great Salespeople Think Like Entrepreneurs, Part One More than a decade ago, companies shifted from the sale of single products to combinations of goods, services, and intel... 29 Oct 13 5 min read By Brian Williams, PhD Read More