How to Coach B Players: Stop Bailing Every Bucket at Once Every sales team has one. He makes his number most months, rarely by much, and your sales manager has tried everything with him: more calls, a new opening line, ride-alongs, another product session. He’s still a B player, and the manager is running out […]
How to Coach B Players: Pick the Right Bucket Read More »
Effective Sales Coaching Lives Between the Five and the Ten Your sales manager rides along on a prospect meeting, and on the drive back he asks the question almost every sales manager asks: “How do you think it went?” The rep says it went well and the buyer is going to think it over. The
Effective Sales Coaching: Find the Interference Read More »
At your most recent L10 the pipeline number was red. You ask why, and one of your reps says the thing that ends every conversation about prospecting: “Nobody answers the phone anymore.” Is cold calling dead? Well, your team has already answered that question in their minds. They answered it by not dialing. And here’s
Is Cold Calling Dead? Or Did Your Reps Bury It? Read More »
Last year I worked with a distributor whose comp plan paid a monthly bonus to any salesperson who put out 100 or more quotes. Six salespeople. Six hundred quotes a month. To what end? They hit it. Of course they hit it. And the average win rate across those six people was 8%. Yep, 8%.
Paper on the Street: What an 8% Quote to Close Ratio Is Actually Telling You Read More »
In 1987, I was a newly minted commercial real estate broker in New York City, making 400 dials a day. Nobody asked me to track any of it. My firm didn’t have a system, didn’t require one, and wouldn’t have known what to do with mine. So, I built my own database on a Macintosh
The Outboard Brain: CRM Adoption Tips for a Sales Team That Thinks You’re Watching Them Read More »
In 2024, a client of mine in the promotional products distribution business ran his sales candidates through a Predictive Index benchmark before he made an offer. He built the benchmark. He ran the finalists against it. He hired the one who matched. The man he hired could build rapport with anyone. Customers liked him. The
The Break Room Test: Why the Best Sales Assessment for Hiring Isn’t a Personality Test Read More »
You wrote the job posting requirement yourself. Five years in the industry. Knows the product line. Knows the competitors by name. Let’s call it industry experience required. Then you handed it to whoever ran hiring and waited. Six weeks later, you have four résumés. Two are unemployed for reasons no one has put in writing.
The revenue report says he’s your best salesperson. Is he doing what you need a salesperson to do? Is he a hunter or an account manager? What do you need? Biggest book. Longest tenure. Every account in that territory has his cell number, and half of the accounts, he knows their family. When somebody says
Hiring an Account Manager: The Seat You Lost Control Of Read More »
It’s month seven and you’re still using the phrase: “He’s ramping.” You said it in month three and it was true. You said it in month five and it was mostly true. You’re saying it now because the alternative is admitting you know he is failing which means doing something about it. So here’s the
Price the Seat: The Sales Comp Plan That Attracts Closers Read More »
Why Sales Hires Fail: The Machine Breaks in One of Four Places Your last three sales hires failed three different ways. One never filled the pipeline. One interviewed like a champion and sold like a spectator. One took the offer, dragged through onboarding, and quit at month nineteen — right when the ramp math
Why Sales Hires Fail: The Machine Breaks in One of Four Places Read More »