Sales Training Learning Community has researched the latest magazine, journal, and online articles to provide members of our knowledge community with the latest resources from industry thought leaders. Members may click on a link to access the article.
Money Objections: It's Never About the Money
After having several conversations with a new prospect and his team, we all decided to move forward and get them trained in Buying Facilitation. As per our agreement, I wrote up a contract and sent it out to “Joe”. Then I got an email from him saying he needed to put the program on hold for six months at least, so that his new hires could prove their value and start earning money.
By Sharon Drew Morgen
10 Sales Strategies for a Down Market
In today’s market everyone wants to know … Are you going to make your number?
Recession, economic concerns, a slow-down in demand…….clearly, we are in the midst of change, and it is the agile organization that will fare the best during today’s challenging times. After many years of growth, organizations are having to focus and become more efficient and very aggressive in multiple areas in order to survive and grow their business.
By Sales Effectiveness, Inc.
7 Common Sales Challenges
With the complexity of today’s business solutions and their farreaching effects, more often than not senior level executives are actively involved in the process of assessing the issues and their options.
By Jeff Thull
Know Your Customer's Financial Priorities
Seems every notable business journal or publication has confirmed what we have all suspected, we are entering into a recession. There is tangible proof that economic activity is slowing and decisions are becoming more difficult for companies to make in the face of growing uncertainty. Most organizations are struggling to predict the impact a recession will have on their business and how they should respond. Typically, salespeople are the first to be confronted with these economic realities. Slowly but surely they experience the change in their customer’s buying behavior and patterns. Customers begin to defer decisions; postpone investments; and ask for more concessions from greater pricing flexibility to more generous terms. Or, they flat out stop spending.
By Bob Rickert, Revenue Storm
Click here to read the full article
The Vision
You really have to have the courage to think big in articulating a daring and exciting vision of the future for yourself, your team, and your company that inspires your people to go for quantum performance. I’m not talking about a “five-year” strategic plan that weighs about five pounds and puts everybody to sleep.
By Michael Hendren
Ready or Not : Sales 2.0
Do you know what Sales 2.0 is? Like many salespeople, you may not be sure — but as the expression goes, “You’ll know it when you see it.” As a matter of fact, you are in it.
By Linda Richardson
Leaders Who Coach
When we think about leadership words such as vision, inspiration, strategic thinking, charisma … come to mind. The word coaching isn’t something that commonly appears on the list. Coaching is usually relegated to first line managers, not senior managers who have managers reporting to them.
By Linda richardson Click here to read the full article
16 Reasons for Breaking the Rules on RFPs
1. Leveling the playing field does not make for optimum decisions. When complexity exists, it is helpful to highlight differences rather than mitigate them. Yet many RFP responses reduce critical information to
a spreadsheet grid or rote written answers that don’t really assess diffrences. The goal of competition is to improve the quality and value of the selected solution provider. Yet, paradoxically, many RFP
processes reduce rather than enhance the quality of competitive information in a desire to “be fair” or “level the playing field.”
By Sales Performance Group at Franklin Covey
Get Rid of Half Your Sales Force - Now!©
Why? Because the average sales professional these days is a high paid service person. Yep, I said a high paid service person.
I know this from spending a lot of time with sales professionals in the field.
Here is what companies want to have happen. They want their customer base to grow so they can spread their future over as many customers as possible. That makes a lot of sense and I know that most of us want the same thing. The more customers we have the better and safer we are.
By Bill Truax
Members may click here to read the full article
Don't Take it all so Seriously
Workaholism We all know the guy who treats his job as life and death. Every activity is very serious, he works 65 hours a week, and, due to exhaustion, has little time for anything else – like play, loved ones, etc. “You don’t understand – I have to do it” is the mantra he lives by, if you can call it living.
Some shallow senior executives actually believe this approach to one’s job is admirable and encourage/mandate/dictate it. They, and their employees, have got it all wrong. They don’t understand that, if done properly, there in fact is an inverse relationship between hours slaving at work and productivity.
By Michael E. Hendren
Love my Alliances, Hate Negotiation
Everything in life is a compromise; everything in life is a negotiation. We all seem stifled by the word and implications that surround negotiating. Yet what most of us do not realize is that we have been negotiating since we were born. From the time we wanted a bottle or refused napping our education in negotiation began. In fact, research for this article illustrates that 43% of the American workforce changed jobs since 2006. And, the divorce rate in the United States hovers at over 53%.
By Drew Stevens, PhD Members may click here to read the full article
Obama vs. Clinton (Analysis #3)
Not since Ronald Reagan have we seen a political Power Struggle steal the limelight in American politics like the current contest between Obama and Clinton. Back then it was Ronald Reagan taking a calculated risk and initiating a Power Struggle against the air traffic controllers, and upon his success, he leveraged his victory by getting a host of initiatives through a divided congress. Such is the merit and power of a victorious Power Struggle.
By LaVon Koerner CEO and Co-founder of Revenue Storm
Mobile marketing is tailor-made for political campaigns, giving them the ability to put a compelling message in each individual’s hand. Mobile entertainment community Limbo recently conducted a 1-million SMS campaign for the Obama and Clinton campaigns, which produced some impressive results according to post-campaign research:
By Scott Hornstein, Hornstein Associates
As sales boomed at ExactTarget Inc., it became increasingly difficult for the sales-support staff to handle all the queries from the software provider's sales force.
Sales representatives, needing client information or specific details about the company's email creation and delivery product, barraged sales-support staffers with questions by phone and email. Some questions required very technical explanations that took several hours to answer. And some reps asked the same questions more than once.
By Kelly K. Spors
How Obama Outsold Clinton
Just a few months ago, most of us had barely heard of Barack Obama. Currently, he is leading in the delegate count and in the popular vote as well. By contrast, nearly all of us knew of Hillary Clinton. And because of her popularity, the political pundits were united in their unending announcements that the nomination for the Democratic Party was hers to lose. How did this Happen?
By LaVon Koerner
I Propose
Many companies and their decision-makers require written proposals, and if you are like many sales people, you probably shudder at the thought of this request. However, writing a good proposal doesn't have to be painful providing you keep a few points in mind.
By Kelly Robertson
Members may click here to read the full article.
5 Secrets to Record Breaking Sales
The principle mission of the professional salesperson is to gain commitment from customers. Unfortunately, for most salespeople the skills that lead to gaining commitments consistently - and, therefore, to record-breaking sales - appear to be secrets.
By The Sales Board
The Three Traps of Selling Conventionally in a Complex Environment
Prospect, qualify, present and close. These are the basic elements of the conventional sales process that most sales organizations and salespeople still follow today. The conventional sales process is the most widely used selling paradigm for good reason: it works. That is, it works if you have a simple sale. Problem is, the world in which we sell has changed. We must deal with complex problems and correspondingly complex solutions that involve multiple decisions and multiple decision-makers—most of whom are having an increasingly hard time understanding their own problems and the solutions that will best resolve them.
By Jeff Thull, Prime Resource Group
Breakthrough Proactive Services-Your Source of Competetive Advantage
When competing for sales, do your salespeople sell your company’s Competitive Advantages or do they drop the price in order to win? Experience indicates that, although salespeople have learned the features and benefits of their products, they rarely understand and employ their company’s competitive advantages. Therefore, price (profit) discounting becomes their alternative to an empty order book, particularly in recessive times.
By Conrad Elnes, STI International®
Winning Ways: Wyeth Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceutical company Wyeth’s healthy corporate culture uses scorecards to track, measure, and analyze almost every job and training program in some way.
By Holly Dolezalek, ManageSmarter.com, February 2008
Creating the Right Team - Hiring
One of my management principles is to hire slow and fire fast. When I say this, particularly on firing fast, the typical response is it sounds like a harsh policy. In fact, it is based on love and respect for the individual. On the front end, hiring is like a life and death decision – for the individual, the company, and the manager.
Creating the Right Team-Firing
I believe in firing quickly in a compassionate and caring way. Of course, if you’ve done a meticulous and intelligent job in hiring, the occasions where you have to fire an employee will be minimal. The firing fast principal makes most managers and HR departments shudder. They don’t understand the depth of this principle and have a superficial perspective that leads to a lose/lose process.
You're the Boss...Now What?
An ineffective manager can cost the organization one million dollars.
By Bob Selden, ManageSmarter.com, February 2008
Relationship Selling
How can you leverage the single greatest asset you have with a client—the relationship?
How to Beat a Lower-Priced Competitor
It’s every company’s nightmare: a competitor enters your market with a similar product priced at a fraction of what you currently charge. You need a strategy for beating the low-ballers. So what’s the best way to proceed?
By Geoffrey James, BNET Business Network
Achieving Your Revenue Goals Through Demand Creation: What To Do When You Are Missing Your Target
Allow me to be direct: If your account development activities have remained static over the past few years, chances are good that you may now be having a problem hitting your account’s revenue growth goals. And, if that is true, it is probably time for you to consider elevating your sales approach from one of demand management to demand creation.
By LaVon Koerner, Revenue Storm Corporation
If You Want to Get Clients You'll Have to Talk to Them
"I've done everything I can think of to get clients." a desperate self-employed professional writes. "I printed a brochure, I have a web site, and I've placed ads. But no one is hiring me. What am I doing wrong?" By C. J. Hayden, EyesOnSales, January 2008
A New Look at Time Management
The term "Time management" is a common oxymoron. Nothing we can do will manage the inexorable "march of time" into eternity. We can, however, manage the activities we choose to perform over time in order to maximize its economic and personal value. By Conrad Elnes, STI International®
They Were Not Interested
Perhaps every one of us has used this explanation on occasion when justifying a “dead end” sales meeting. Whereas this could be a true statement, it also implies other things that may not be endearing to the person making the statement. By LaVon Koerner, Revenue Storm
Defining Consultative Selling
Today Consultative Selling is almost a household word. It is an approach to selling in which customer needs are used as the basis for the sales dialogue. When the word consultative was applied to sales in the 1970’s, it was revolutionary. It marked a major transition from the salesperson as the purveyor of information and the customer as the recipient to a much more collaborative interaction — one in which the customer’s needs, not the product — was the focal point of the sale. By the early 80’s, the term Consultative Selling began to be misunderstood as a long, arduous sales process that focused on needs at the expense of closing business. By Linda Richardson, January 2008
The Spiritual Capitalist Approach
The business philosophy of spiritual capitalism is equated with quantum performance. What are some examples of this contrarian APPROACH?
Will You Pass the Sales Flinch Test?
After a lengthy buying process, the time has come to submit pricing. Proud of your accomplishment, you present the proposal to the buyer. Skipping the sections about your company and your solution, she flips right to the pricing page. "Oh my gosh, I didn't think it would be this expensive!"
By Lee B. Salz, Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, December 2007
Auto Sales Training in the 21st Century
Auto sales training is definitely not what it used to be.
In the 70-s, you could walk onto an auto dealers showroom floor, ask for a job and be selling a car that afternoon. No experience, no background to speak of, as well as (generally) no character.
The 80-s changed little; however, technology began to take hold. Software began making its first entry into the world of auto sales. Consequently, auto sales training moved in a completely new direction with the first introduction and integration of technology.
Things were on the move.
By Tim Davis
Are Sales Stars Made or Born?
Last week I was chatting with John Asher of Asher Training. He has data, based upon personality and character testing, proving that about 50 percent of success in sales is directly related to natural talent. He maintains that natural talent is sometimes squandered through a lack of training in skills and product knowledge. But he’s just as convinced that some people simply don’t have the innate talent to be successful in sales — and that no amount of sales training is going to make all that much difference.
By Geoffrey James , BNET, December 2007
How to Change Your Emotional State
Your physiology is in a feedback loop with your emotions. For example, if you are depressed, your body will consistently slump and slouch, which will influence your body to become more depressed. Feedback loops get more intense if not interrupted so, over time, that feedback loop may eventually result in a physical illness. (And that, in turn, gives you another excuse to be depressed, etc.) Conversely, if you are in great physical condition, it’s easier to have a positive outlook.
By Geoffrey James , BNET, November 2007
Qualifying Prospects
The goal of qualifying is to give yourself a better than 50 percent chance of closing the sale. My qualification process focuses on getting the right information from the prospect. To get information, you have to ask questions.
By Skip Miller, M3 Learning Corporation
Sales Incentive Software Set to See More Sales
The market for sales incentive compensation solutions is ripe for advancement, as companies across the board -- looking to accelerate their corporate performance -- turn to the applications to synchronize selling strategies with execution, according to a newly released report from market analysis firm IDC.
By Jean Thilmany, CRM Magazine, November, 2007
ADP Hopes To See Deal with Centive Pay Off
Payroll, benefits administration, and human-services services provider ADP Data Processing announced this week that it's teamed with Centive to offer the vendor's incentive compensation management (ICM) application to ADP's largest customers. Burlington, Mass.-based Centive's on-demand application is immediately available to ADP's National Accounts Services customers, those with 1,000 employees or more.
By Jean Thilmany, CRM Magazine, November 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
The Eight Deadly Sins in Customer Relationship Management
In the rapidly evolving world of Customer Relationship Management and CRM technology and solutions, there are several pitfalls into which new and even experienced companies and managers commonly stumble.
By Geoff Ables, Customer Connect, November 2007
How Come No One is Buying my Chocolate
We recently had an email from a sales person who had a predicament. His company sells chocolates to retail stores. Not only standard chocolate mind you, but all shapes and qualities. Custom shapes, sizes and flavours as well. They had a great price list, shipping, billing terms and reputation. What more to ask for?
By Skip Miller, M3 Learning
Everyone Wants Different Results - But Few Want to Change
When you're in the "change" business like we are at Caskey, we come across a lot of companies/people who say they want different results in the market: more money, more fame, more customers, more profit, etc.
By Bill Caskey, EyesOnSales, October 2007
Self-Coaching
Salespeople are often alone as they make sales calls. Many say they do not get coached. Most are hungry for good feedback and would benefit greatly from it.
Practicing what they preach
Early on in the establishment of his corporate sales training firm, Basho Strategies Inc., Jeff Hoffman learned an important lesson: Someteimes the CEO is the perso most ideally suited to initially sell his company's services. By Sean McFadden, Boston Business Journal
Focus Your Marketing
You've probably heard the old marketing maxim that says 50 percent of all advertising is wasted. Don't believe it. It's a lot more than just 50 percent.
By Robert Grede, ManageSmarter.com, October 2007
Harrah's Teams Up
The incentive programs at Las Vegas Meetings by Harrah's Entertainment support a team-oriented sales strategy
By Leo Jakobson, ManageSmarter.com, October 2007
Dale Carnegie - The Man, The Myth, The Message
"You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one." - Dale Carnegie
By James B. Crawford and Gerhard Gschwandtner, SellingPower.com
A Hostage Situation?: Customer Loyalty
Apple Inc.'s decision to cut the price of the iPhone required some delicate handling: The potential customers that might be attracted by the lower $399 price tag instead of the original $599 price had to be balanced with the unhappy Apple consumers who had rushed to get the phone when it came out and mere weeks later saw the latecomers getting a better deal.
By Alex Palmer, ManageSmarter.com, October 2007
Rejection Can Motivate You!
This week, we’re going to turn that bane of selling — rejection — into something that will make you more effective and more successful.
By Geoffrey James, BNET Basics, October 2007
The Big Picture - Customer Satisfaction Hijacked
For the most part, I think a lot of us greatly underestimate the power of customer satisfaction. We sometimes don’t define it in terms of profit and loss, but we know it’s a factor. We base decisions on self-congratulatoryinformation. Dissatisfaction augers the hole in the bottom of our customer base.
By Scott Hornstein, Hornstein Associates, September 2007
Upgrading your Sales Force
We often hear sales leaders refer to their top sales reps as "A" players. Typically A players represent the top 10 to 15% of your sales force. The next 65% are your B players and the bottom 20% is split between C players that are struggling to make it and those that will never make it, and then of course you have your new hires sprinkled in amongst all of these groups.
LSA Global, September 2007
Is Sales Process Wasted Effort?
I recently had a conversation with Julie Thomas, the CEO of ValueVision Associates. She pointed out that most companies have sales processes that define the steps in the sale that seems logical to the seller, such as “initiate cold call,” “obtain appointment for presentation” and so forth. However, she notes that while such steps vaguely define how the sale might (under ideal circumstances) take place, a standardized sales process can’t possibly encapsulate the way that an individual company actually buys something.
By Geoffrey James, BNET Basics, September 2007
CDI Comes in All Shapes and Sizes
There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to customer data integration (CDI), and requirements differ depending upon the type of industry, customer, or organizational structure your business operates in or caters to, according to a presentation at the Gartner MDM Summit here today.
By Colin Beasty, CRM magazine, September 2007
Positioning for Quantum Performance
When people ask me what factors must exist in a company for it to be positioned for Quantum Sales Performance and Quantum Corporate Performance, they’re a bit stunned by the simplicity of my answer.
Cross-selling: A Management Perspective
Many call centers have recognized the enormous untapped potential of cross-selling as a way to increase not only revenue, but the level of service they provide. Customer service representatives can provide unexpected value to their customers as they develop deeper relationships. The reasons to cross-sell are compelling: from increasing revenue to strengthening the bond between the customer and the organization.
A Richardson Resource Center Article
Wisdom of the Pros
What does it take to clinch an idea sale? We asked the experts—including a movie producer, an ad exec, and a minister—to give us the low-down on their ultimate idea-selling tactics.
By Geoffrey James, BNET Basics
Referrals as a Sales Strategy
Now that you know how to get a truly effective customer referral (see my previous post), here’s how to make referrals the core of your sales process, and in the process render your marketing group largely irrelevant.
By Geoffrey James, Sales Machine, September 2007
Traditional Marketing Practices Won't Work in an On-Demand World
On demand. Real time. Right time. Today's catchphrases are more than market hyperbole; they articulate a monumental shift in how consumers want to receive information and a wake up call for businesses to adapt or perish. For marketers in particular, this evolution means traditional information dissemination and message delivery strategies just won't work.
By Joe Gustafson, CEO Brainshark, for CRM.com, September 2007
The Key to Rapport Building
Any successful sales pro will tell you that building rapport is the foundation of making a sale. If you don’t (or can’t) establish rapport with the customer, the likelihood that the sale will take place is minimal.
Keeping Pace with 'The New Influencers'
One of the business world's most talked-about dynamics -- the changes in the market that are being ushered in as a result of the impact that bloggers and podcasters have on consumers -- was a cornerstone of a keynote delivered here Wednesday at the 2007 RightNow Summit.
By Coreen Bailor, August 2007
Leverage Your Preparation
Preparing for a sales call, while it still takes discipline and time, has never been easier. Technolgoy (CRMs, Google, other web resources) has dramatically reduced research time. The other side of the coin is that technology hs made business more instantaneous and that has put more demand on salespeople's time.
By Linda Richardson, August 2007
This Too Shall Change
“This Too Shall Change.” These four words helped to change my perception of every situation I encounter. Although I don't remember who it was that spoke these words to me when I was in need of them the most, I have never forgotten them. Whether times are good or bad I always remember that, “This too shall change.”
By Geoffrey F. Knott, Automotive Sales
Sales Training Coaching Techniques: From Discouragement to Self-Care
In this sales training article, you'll learn how, in sales, to go from discouragement to hope; how to keep up your sales momentum going forward instead of lapsing into apathy or depression and how to change old sales ideas of what it means to hear "No".
HighPoint Selling - Sales Training Program
Is Your Vocabulary Costing You Money?
When we give a presentation to a future client not only do our appearance, visual aids, and body language relay a message, but the words we use create pictures in their minds. When we hear a word, we often picture a symbol of what that word represents. We may even attach emotions to some of these words. For example, let's consider the words, SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, WINTER. Depending on your particular experience, each of those words can generate positive or negative emotions in you, right?
By Tom Hopkins, Tom Hopkins International
How to Sell via Webconference
A good friend of mine – the best man at my wedding, in fact – has sold for about two dozen firms over the past two decades. He thinks that using web conferencing to make online sales calls is unlikely to prove very effective. (Actually, he compared the entire idea to the end product of a male bovine’s digestive process.)
By Geoffrey James, Sales Machine, August 2007
Is Your Customer Clueless?
A momentous event occurred in the history of software this week—though some may have been too consumed with the stock market malaise or hand-wringing over Apple's (AAPL) iPhone sales to notice. For anyone who missed the news, a company called SugarCRM, a provider of software that helps companies manage customer relationships, threw its weight behind the latest version of the GNU General Public License, which governs the use of freely distributed software.
By Geoffrey Sales Machine, August 2007
How to Sell to a CFO
A few weeks ago, I explained how to sell to a CEO. Now I’ll explain how to sell to the CFO. While a CEO is generally concerned with strategy and running the company, a CFO is usually interested a value proposition (usually cost-savings) backed with hard numbers and expressed in a way that makes sense to an accountant. With that in mind, here are the five rules:
SugarCRM's Sweet Taste of Freedom
By Eben Moglen, BusinessWeek, July 2007
Seven Things Every Salesperson Must Do Before the First Meeting
Meeting with a new prospect? Don’t get distracted with thoughts of how you’re going to close the deal with this person. Focus instead on the seven pre-meeting steps that will help you open the relationship effectively. If you do this for every new prospect you meet, you’ll find that your overall closing numbers will improve.
By Steve Bookbinder, EyesOnSales, July 2007
Productivity Coach's Corner: Don't Delay: Debrief!
"Hindsight is 20/20," and yet few people take advantage of this wisdom systematically. How often do we take the time to do a thorough debrief of an event? Yet, so much of our work is cyclical, with yearly national conferences, quarterly workshops, and weekly meetings.
By Jason W. Womack, ManageSmarter.com. July 2007
Delegating, Empowerment, and Strategic Alignment
There are good habits that we hope all of our supervisors and managers have to help them handle the often powerful and complex challenges of leadership. Bill Gates once said:
"Virtually every company will be going out and empowering with a certain set of tools, and the big difference in how much value is received from that will be how much the company steps back and really thinks through their business processes, thinking through how their business can change, how their project management, their customer feedback, their planning cycles can be quite different than they ever were before."
By Timothy Firnstahl, Corexcel, July 2007
Does Your Company Need Sales Training?
I was meeting with Joe, a new client and small business owner, this week to discuss what he needs to do before he hires a new salesperson. I asked him what type of sales training he was planning on providing. Joe’s answer made me snicker.
By Will Turner, Dancing Elephants Achievement Group
An effective IT solutions salesperson is a valuable piece of manpower. Such an individual necessarily combines the qualities of a good salesperson — listening skills, the ability to sell yourself, persuasiveness, etc. — with the technical knowledge needed to explain complicated yet potentially advantageous applications in a way a customer can understand.
By Daniel Margolils, Certification Magazine, July 2007
When learning professionals think about the power of enterprise learning, they usually think about how increasing competencies directly can maximize operational performance on the job. But in the increasingly competitive, services-oriented global marketplace, there are few operational elements that truly differentiate one organization from another.
Today, it is the company brand — both internal and external — that makes the difference in increased market performance. There is growing support from operational leaders who see learning as the key to creating winning value propositions for clients and prospects because learning efforts can be used to develop not only employees but also clients and markets.
By Jeff Snipes and Lize Becker, CLO Magazine, June 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
From phone calls we've received during the past few weeks it is apparent that there are likely a boatload of sales VPs who still don't understand that long-term sales effectiveness improvement doesn't come from shrink-wrapped speeches or out-of-the-box, stand-alone sales training programs.
By Dave Stein, EyesOnSales, May 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
This past week I placed 700 cold calls. That’s right. Seven hundred. Count ‘em. I have been seeking visionary sales training managers that have interest in licensing new program content (Buying Facilitation or Facilitating Buying Decisions) and it’s impossible to find visionaries through mainstream marketing. So I called. And called.
By Sharon Drew Morgen, April 2007
While the stress on business efficiency is driving organizations to implement ERP, SCM, and CRM applications, deploying these applications and realizing their benefits is a complicated task fraught with a number of risks. Quite often, an enterprise-wide rollout is a global rollout.
By Vandana Pancham, Genpact, April 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
Only now in 2007 do we have evidence that the 130-year-old discipline of sales training is on the right path to meeting the special needs of its direct customers: salespeople and their managers.
Why has this taken so long? Is anyone accountable? What is occurring now that wasn’t occurring earlier that facilitated this advancement in the right direction? What can we look forward to regarding how corporations train the people responsible for delivering their top line?
By Dave Stein, CLO Magazine, April 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
Show and tell : What sales and marketing really think about sales aids
For years sales representatives have been forgoing the use of their brand's sales aids. And for years this has frustrated marketing managers. With so much research and money invested in the creation of these pieces, we wanted to find out why reps weren't incorporating aids into their messages. After all, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that we retain more information when visual aids are used. When words and pictures are combined, we are forced to use our brains more fully, thereby processing the content more deeply, which increases our understanding of the information. Essentially, the harder our brains work, the more we remember.
By Patricia Strandboge, Jim McGuire, Pharmaceutical Representative, March 2007
Some Fortune 500 sales organizations are facing greater competitive and costs pressures. Organizations that used to enjoy 40 percent to 50 percent profit margins now have to cut those margins to a barely sustainable 10 percent to 15 percent. They are transferring this pressure to salespeople, asking fewer of them to sell more and produce more profits for the company. And they are relying on sales managers to drive the salespeople to make this all happen.
By Tina Teodorescu, CLO Magazine, March 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
Developing Sales Professionals in Today’s Complex Selling Environment
Today’s marketplace is characterized by the increasing complexity of the business problems we solve and the solutions we offer that address them. Combine that with a highly competitive market that offers abundant solution options, and you’ll find that many customers are overwhelmed with choices and are looking for guidance in making quality business decisions. Salespeople are the obvious source for this guidance, and there now may be more people influencing the decision to buy as it moves higher and broader in the organization. Unfortunately, this level of guidance is frequently not forthcoming from salespeople, yet providing it can become a critical source of advantage.
By Jeff Thull, CEO of Prime Resource Group, April 2007 Members may click here to read the full article
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