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Coaching & Training

How to Improve Sales Skills With a Lesson From President Lincoln

After reading “Gettysburg: The Last Invasion,” by Guelzo, I learned the answer to one of American history’s great trivia...

25 Sep 13

3 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Making a Slam-Dunk ROI Case for Sales Training

As an analyst focusing on Sales Effectiveness, I am in frequent contact with senior B2B sales leaders. Too often I hear ...

29 Aug 13

2 min read

By Peter Ostrow Read More

Coaching & Training

Choosing the Best Competitive Negotiation Style for Sales

Much of the advice on how to conduct effective sales negotiations counsels you to use a collaborative sales negotiation ...

23 Aug 13

3 min read

By Debbi Conger Read More

Coaching & Training

Why Feature Dumping Doesn't Work & What You Should Do Instead

One of the worst mistakes salespeople make, even highly experienced ones, is “feature dumping.” Here the sales professio...

17 Aug 13

3 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Extending Sales Training beyond the Classroom

This past Tuesday we sponsored a panel discussion on Leveraging Technology to Deliver Highly Effective Sales Training So...

23 May 13

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Align Selling Skills with the Sales Process To Achieve Better Results

What's more important: developing selling skills or following a sales process? This question has become much more amplif...

24 Apr 13

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Lead More Effective Sales Presentations by R-E-A-Ding Your Audience

One of the most nerve wracking experiences for any sales professional is making sales presentations to buying committees...

12 Apr 13

2 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Onboard New Sales People Efficiently

Here is a troubling statistic: the average sales person stays with a company for about two years. Considering all of the...

27 Mar 13

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Great Sales Coaching Elevates Team Performance

With March Madness tipping off this week, I plan on getting my annual fix of college basketball. What I find striking ab...

20 Mar 13

2 min read

By Steve Braverman Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Get Your Non-Sales People to Improve Your Sales

“I need my sales team to be more proactive.” It’s a comment we hear frequently from sales leaders. The reason for it is ...

25 Feb 13

1 min read

By David Jacoby 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

3 min read

By Ray Makela Read More

Coaching & Training

Building Relationships: “Honesty is the Best Policy”

Mom was right: “Honesty is the best policy.” This is true in all aspects of life, including building relationships with ...

31 Jan 13

1 min read

By Steve Braverman Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Get Sustainable Behavior Change from Sales Training

What can a sales organization do to maximize its ROI from a sales training initiative? Start by focusing on the followin...

12 Nov 12

2 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Great Sales Conversations: “What’s in it for me?”

We are now in the homestretch of the 2012 political season, and the airwaves are flooded with political ads, speeches an...

1 Nov 12

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Why Sales Training Fails (And What You Can Do About It)

According to the American Society of Training and Development, US-based companies spend approximately $20 billion a year...

6 Sep 12

2 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Captivating Customers: The Magnetic Pull of Storytelling in Sales

Dating as far back as the Stone Age, the art of story telling is a highly effective form of communication. People are si...

9 Jul 12

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Tips for Effectively Opening a Sales Call

For better or worse, research has indicated that we make decisions or judgments about a person in the first seven second...

26 Jun 12

2 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Motivating Sales People: It’s Not Just About the Money

Motivating sales people is an ongoing challenge for sales managers. Give them more money and a few months later they com...

13 Jun 12

1 min read

By Steve Braverman Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Ask Great Sales Questions

Most sales people know they need to ask sales questions to uncover customer needs. However, many make this part of the s...

6 Jun 12

1 min read

By Steve Braverman Read More

Coaching & Training

3 Building Blocks of Successful Customer Relationships

Sales reps, who typically tend to be pretty social by nature, will often try to build rapport with customers based on a ...

29 May 12

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Improve Sales Prospecting Process Through Better Targeting

Let’s face it, most sales reps need to spend more time sales prospecting. In our experience sales reps avoid the sales p...

22 May 12

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Find Top Sales Talent Like a Pro Football Recruiter

Does it seem like the NFL season plays out on TV or sports talk radio 365 days a year? I was watching ESPN and one NFL a...

11 May 12

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Sales Coaching ROI: Avoiding the Trap to Drive Improved Results

Consistent sales coaching is a great way for sales managers to improve results. However one common challenge we see with...

2 May 12

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Sales 2.0 Conference Insights on LinkedIn for Sales

How traditional selling is being transformed into “social selling,” and how LinkedIn has become a key social selling too...

16 Apr 12

1 min read

By Steve Braverman Read More

Three Territory Management Time Wasters to Avoid

In our current slow growth, budget constrained economy, sales teams have to do more with less. Quotas keep going up, whi...

7 Mar 12

2 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Creating a Coaching Culture & Why It Matters With Your Sales Rep

Many managers get so immersed in tracking past performance that they neglect to focus on how they can improve the effect...

16 Feb 12

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Increase Your Mobile Sales Team Motivation

Given the rapid pace of technology and the efficiencies of working from a home office sales people are spending more tim...

11 Jan 12

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

How to Manage Your Underperforming Sales Team

Managing an underperforming sales team is always a challenge. As you think about the underlying causes, consider whether...

15 Dec 11

1 min read

By Marlaina Capes Read More

Coaching & Training

Importance of Understanding Customers Needs and How to Do it

The stalled sale is one of the most frustrating experiences for a sales professional particularly when the sales person ...

7 Dec 11

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Cloud-Based Sales Training

Better selling produces better performance. It’s intuitive. And sales training is a proven method for improving the sell...

2 Oct 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

How Does Your Sales Team Stack Up?

Every day we are inundated with blogs and articles describing how selling has changed. The primary driver of this change...

14 Sep 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Lead Qualification Process: Magic Carpet Ride

The lead qualification process is a critical but challenging selling skill for salespeople. Ask too few sales questions ...

22 Aug 11

2 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Missed Opportunities

In an ideal world, sales reps would only focus their efforts on “sales ready” opportunities. While this makes intuitive ...

17 Aug 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Investing on Sales Training to Set Up Inside Sales for Success

Inside sales is becoming increasingly sophisticated and the preferred method of selling for many products and services t...

1 Jul 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Idea to Show Your Team The Importance of Packaging in Sales

I attended a lecture (not sales related) where the speaker discussed the importance of packaging and the impact it has o...

20 May 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

The Importance of Sales Training Reinforcement - Case Study

As every training professional and most sales leaders know from experience, sales training as a standalone event is, at ...

11 Apr 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Help Your New Sales Managers Avoid “Star-Athlete Syndrome”

Managing a sales team is one of the most important positions in a company. Great sales managers have a profound impact o...

11 Mar 11

1 min read

By Norman Behar Read More

Coaching & Training

Money is Only One Way to Increase Sales Team Motivation

One of the primary functions of sales managers is to always keep the sales team motivation high. Of course, the easy ans...

3 Dec 10

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Marketing

Sales & Marketing 2.0: A Lot More Than Just Technology

After spending two days attending the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, I was amazed at the number of companies (la...

10 Nov 10

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More

Coaching & Training

Hire Effective Sales People By Looking for These Key Attributes

One of the most frequent questions I hear from sales leaders is what are the key attributes I should look for when I hir...

20 Oct 10

1 min read

By David Jacoby Read More