Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but a sales slump can and will likely happen to every business at some point. One minute, your company sales are cruising along, only to be hit by stagnating or plummeting revenue. These speed bumps in growth can be caused by a variety of reasons, but business [...]
“Don’t put the cart before the horse.” This age-old analogy often becomes a reality when a company’s sales have slowed, and new leads are not being generated. A quick, and instinctive reaction for business owners is to provide the sales team with additional training as the solution to the problem. Unfortunately, this way of thinking [...]
I’ve always believed that at the heart of it, business buyers are just consumers with different priorities and a bigger checkbook. Businesses now shop for suppliers very much like we do as consumers – digitally. That behavior is increasingly the norm. These pandemic months of sheltering in place have only accelerated changes in B2B buyer [...]
Your customer relationship management (CRM) software system is filled with details about the people and companies most important to your business. But are you using CRM to add value to your sales team? If you haven’t set up a CRM system to actively monitor and effectively track the steps your sales team takes with business [...]
In this seventh month of social distancing, client communications seem ever more remote – less accessible and a bit aloof as well as physically distant. How in the world can your sales force stay on top of their game and meet their goals? Now is the time to reassess their online skills and teach them [...]
As we start our sixth month of quarantine across America, it is time to come to grips with the fact that some version of “virtual selling” is here to stay. What this means for leadership is that just adapting in-person techniques to digital/virtual sales will no longer get the job done. Instead, teach your team [...]
A friend in the process of starting a new business recently sent me an email, asking, “How in the world do I set sales quotas?” For anyone who hasn’t done this before, the answer can be fairly elusive. Setting quotas is a blend of art, experience, and data. Before you start, make sure your sales [...]
If there is a silver lining to the pandemic-related economic shut down, it is that a lot of excellent salespeople are now available and hungry to contribute to your business. The opportunity here is to rehire your best performers and then build a stronger team than before. To hire a stellar sales team to accelerate [...]
Learning to adjust your sales leadership practices to fit these unusual times may not be an easy correction. You probably have been honing your system for years; pivoting to these extraordinary circumstances is hard for even the most limber. So my advice is to focus your attention on the definition of “Leader” as supporting your [...]
Business books written in the last 20 years certainly did not envision the current challenges posed by COVID-19. Whatever you thought 2020 would look like for your company is now a completely different picture. Any plan to achieve revenue objectives in the short term should be carefully reviewed with more than the usual amount of [...]
