Bridging the sales coaching gap

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Bridging the sales coaching gap

High-quality sales coaching is mission-critical to the successful functioning of a sales operation in two key ways:

Firstly, it validates the quality of data relating to pipelines, sales opportunities, stakeholder relationships and other key metrics and indicators within a CRM system. The accuracy and quality of this data are vital to enable effective decision making and business steering.

Secondly, it boosts the motivation, skill and confidence of salespeople. They therefore perform better and sell more.

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You can lead a horse to water.....

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You can lead a horse to water.....

Does the following scenario sound familiar? Your company invests a significant amount of time, effort and money on a new sales, leadership or customer service training programme. It is launched with a certain degree of fanfare. The launch goes well – there is plenty of initial excitement and enthusiasm. However, in the end, there is little or no tangible improvement in performance and a few years later, more time, effort and money is spent on a new initiative.

Why does this happen? 

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How well tuned is your sales 'engine'?

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How well tuned is your sales 'engine'?

Organisations manage their production process to within an inch of its life - quite right too. However do they also manage the process that produces new business with quite the same precision? If we think of the sales operation as a business generation 'engine', perhaps we can identify where appropriate fine tuning could lead to significant improvements in sales.

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Face-to-Face training is dead - hold the horses!

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Face-to-Face training is dead - hold the horses!

Time to debunk a learning myth or two.

Here is one I hear quite a lot…. Face-to-Face training is dead. The future is all about ‘resources not courses’. Really!

Now don’t get me wrong, digital technology and tools such as Zoom and MS Teams offer great potential for the world of learning but sounding the death knell of Face-to-Face learning is way too premature.

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Are deals taking too long to close? Try this test....

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Are deals taking too long to close? Try this test....

I have lost count of the number of times organisations have told us they need to improve the ability of their salespeople to close deals. The story line is usually along the following familiar lines…Too many sales opportunities have been sitting in the 'closing' stage of the pipeline for too long - they take much longer to close than anticipated or else they simply evaporate and disappear from the pipeline altogether. The conclusion therefore often drawn is “We need to improve our closing skills”.

Not necessarily...

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Is there a silent assassin destroying your business?

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Is there a silent assassin destroying your business?

Customer Experience is important to you. You spend large sums of money on your brand. It sets an expectation with your customers of what it will be like to buy from you. However, in most businesses there is an assassin at work – with the potential to destroy both your brand and your reputation with your customers. How many times does this assassin strike in your business every day? How often is your brand expectation undermined?

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Do your customers like you, trust you and rate you?

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Do your customers like you, trust you and rate you?

Years ago, I was given some very valuable advice about whether or not to go into partnership with someone. “You need to like them, trust them and rate them” was what I was told. I was also advised that it is not often that you will find all three of these conditions are met. It has proven a very valuable  benchmark for me down the years. However I also think that it might be a useful yardstick for us to assess what our customers might think of us.

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