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Coaching & Training

The #1 Trait to Look for in a New Sales Rep

Finding salespeople is easy but finding the right salespeople is a challenging task. Plus the cost of a bad hire is high...

24 Jun 16

8 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Create a “Gritty” Sales Team

Psychologist Angela Duckworth defines Grit as the combination of passion and perseverance. She studies Grit for a living...

31 May 16

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Why Sales Management Skills Should Be Your Top Priority

Changing the skills, behaviors and culture of the sales organization is hard. Most sales executives, sales enablement ex...

18 May 16

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Sales Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance for Better Results

It’s about Grit. Grit is passion and perseverance to long term goals. According to Angela Lee Duckworth, “Grit” wins ove...

29 Oct 15

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Negotiate Deals & Start with the End in Mind

"Begin with the End in Mind" Over 35 years ago, Steven Covey identified this as one of the Seven Habits of Highly Succes...

22 Oct 15

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Pay it Forward to Develop Great Customer Coaches

In today's challenging and complex selling environment, having a great customer coach (or better yet, customer coaches) ...

2 Oct 15

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Respond to Customer Feedback Most Effectively

Think of a recent sales call where you just presented your solution to a buyer. Assuming you have done an effective job ...

23 Jul 15

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Set Realistic Prospecting Goals

Most sales teams I work with have a common prospecting challenge: the sales people dread prospecting, but their sales ma...

10 Jun 15

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

4 Factors for Determining Optimal Sales Training Classroom Size

Whenever we start a sales training project, our client inevitably asks, ”How many sales reps should we have in each clas...

6 May 15

9 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Why You Need to Become the Chief Training Officer of Your Sales Team

One of the first lessons I was taught as a newly commissioned officer in the Navy was that the division officer (first l...

15 Apr 15

8 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Call Planning

The 30-Day LinkedIn Challenge to Increase Sales Performance

As SRG’s Director of Marketing, one of the most common questions I get from sales professionals is whether LinkedIn can ...

8 Apr 15

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Setting Clear Expectations: It's What Great Leaders Do

Abraham Lincoln was known for his uncanny knack to lead others – even those with whom he disagreed. Click here for a gre...

26 Mar 15

3 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Make Social Selling a Must-Have Sales Skill

It’s time to stop treating Social Selling as a shiny new object in sales enablement With the hype and promise around Soc...

18 Mar 15

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Top 5 Characteristics of Successful Salespeople

Whether you’re a sales manager looking to hire a great salesperson or a good salesperson looking to get better, recogniz...

4 Mar 15

4 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

If I Had More Time I Would Have Written a Shorter Sales Presentation

One of my favorite quotes about writing has been attributed to many great authors, including Pascal, Cicero, Twain, Fran...

11 Feb 15

8 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Generating New Business with Referral Prospecting

While many sellers avoid the activity of prospecting like the plague, prospecting is the lifeblood of generating new bus...

3 Feb 15

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Open Target Accounts

Across our client base and in our sales training workshops, we are seeing sales professionals becoming more familiar wit...

10 Dec 14

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Behavioral Interviewing: How to Hire Top People for Sales

Amazon is notorious for having a challenging hiring process. In fact, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, once said “I’d rather i...

26 Nov 14

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Why Reps Should Be Using LinkedIn for Sales More Often

Updating and using LinkedIn has become a bit like flossing your teeth. We are encouraged to do it every day, it seems li...

17 Nov 14

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How To Use LinkedIn For Sales Prospecting

I often discuss the value of LinkedIn as a way of mapping and researching new areas of the account, and I continue to he...

3 Nov 14

2 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

4 Areas Where LinkedIn Can Improve Your Sales Process

It may be time to get serious about using LinkedIn for sales, including prospecting. We all hear the buzz about social n...

27 Oct 14

3 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Plan an Effective Annual Sales Meeting

As organizations go through process of planning their upcoming annual sales meetings, we thought we’d share a few though...

15 Oct 14

9 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Improve Your Sales Forecast Accuracy

Forecasting can be a challenging task. As a Sales Manager, you're asked to look into the future, predict the probable be...

17 Sep 14

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

What Are the Best Sales Training Programs for Your Organization?

There are many sales training programs to choose from and the investment is not insignificant. In order to find the best...

4 Sep 14

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Reinforce Sales Training With These 6 Key Steps for Sales Management

Organizations engage in sales training programs for numerous reasons. Despite best intentions, these programs too often ...

11 Aug 14

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Identify an Effective Sales Management Training Program

Too often we see sales leaders procure their sales management training program only to find out that it is just a reconf...

8 Aug 14

2 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Sales Training Provider

People buy from people they like and trust, correct? That’s a given. But when you are making a sales training investment...

21 Jul 14

1 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Onboard a New Manager in Sales

It is often hard for the sales people to make the transition to sales manager. Part of this challenge is attributable to...

17 Jul 14

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Avoid Promoting A Top Sales Rep to Bad Sales Manager

The transition from Sales Professional to Sales Manager is often a difficult one and a topic that has been discussed in ...

8 Jul 14

8 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

5 Deal Coaching Questions Every Sales Manager Should Ask

Deal coaching often gets a bad rap because it is frequently unstructured, and often becomes a contentious discussion bet...

16 Jun 14

8 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Ask High IMPACT Sales Questions to Help Buyers Find Value

Being a sales professional in today’s internet-savvy, procurement-driven, cost-conscious environment is extremely challe...

10 Jun 14

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Five Sales Training Best Practices from Industry Leaders

One of the benefits of attending industry trade shows is being able to learn best practices from industry leaders. For u...

20 May 14

12 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

The Sales Call Template Highly Successful Salespeople Use

Let’s face it: when we think of a great salesperson, we often think of that hard-charging, fast-talking, go-getter that ...

27 Apr 14

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Value Intangible Benefits & Assets To Your Customers

I used to sell software licenses. My customers didn’t even get a box in their hand. I reflected on what I was actually s...

18 Feb 14

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

What to Consider Before a Sales Manager Promotion

Here is an all too familiar story: A sales organization needs to fill an open position for a frontline sales manager and...

8 Jan 14

5 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Sales Call Best Practices: How to Have More Effective Sales Calls

Louis Pasteur’s famous quote, “Chance favors the prepared mind,” was intended to guide a better scientific method, but i...

11 Oct 13

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Sell on Value for Better Sales Results

One of the most startling changes in selling over the past decade has been the rapid evolution in customers’ overall sop...

4 Oct 13

6 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Coach Sales: 6 Vital Lessons from Coaching Youth Soccer

As a self-diagnosed “soccer dad,” I have had the opportunity to coach and watch hundreds of youth soccer games over the ...

5 Feb 13

7 min read

By Ray Makela Read More