Managing and monitoring your sales pipeline is key to the achievement of your stretching sales targets. The good news is that Hugh Macfarlane’s book – “The Leaky Funnel” – provides a fantastic and easily accessible overview of why this process is so important. Ready? Read Post

A sometimes ignored part of sales strategies is ensuring sales reps have the necessary skill levels to achieve those strategies. The most thought-out and potentially successful strategy in the world will only succeed to the level that salespeople are capable of executing it. Hence the enhancement of sales skill level should be a vital part of sales ... Read Post

One vital key to getting the most ROI from your CRM tool is to ensure your CRM application mirrors your sales process. Regrettably, traditional CRM solutions have not done this, and the resulting extra work and “workaround” has been a nightmare for sales. Today, however, there is every reason for CRM to mirror a sales ... Read Post

The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson is an invaluable read for any sales professional wanting to gain a competitive edge. It reveals a totally new approach and way of working with customers – and one that may go against your instinctive thoughts about what works. 10 Second Summary This book argues that ... Read Post

Traditional CRM tools didn’t offer much in the way of benefit for a manufacturing sales force. Shying away from the plentiful reporting required by such applications—and also not perceiving that such solutions would provide much assistance in controlling their sales—many manufacturing salespeople have continued to use Excel spreadsheets and other similar solutions for tracking sales. Read Post

In today’s business enterprises, marketing and sales are commonly divorced. In fact, their behavior can actually parallel that of a divorced couple—constantly bickering and blaming each other over lead quality and quantity. Marketing will assert that sales just isn’t following up the leads they have and is wasting them, while sales, following their sales strategies, ... Read Post

Cold Calling 3.0 – The Art of Selling Smarter Not Harder by Wyn N. Davies – explains what tactics should be incorporated alongside cold calling to ensure it becomes a worthwhile course of action. This short synopsis of the book picks out the key messages. Read Post

Salespeople can be total geniuses with their sales techniques. But they can become so focused in on their individual sales cycles that they can neglect the fact that part of all sales strategies is the actual management of opportunities—confidently keeping on top of them, making sure all of them are moving along, and knowing where ... Read Post