How Do You Get A Sales Team Off On The Right Foot With Sales Process Improvement? (members-only)

The numbers are down. You’ve had to do a lay off. The sales team is frustrated. Something needs to change, and you think it is time to institute process improvement… real, honest-to-God, data-driven sales process improvement. You’ve scheduled a team meeting, to gather information and ideas, and Read more

Why Is It So Hard to Create Improvements in the Sales Department?

Some people didn’t like the word “Easy” in last week’s blog post: “Six Easy Ways to Boost Your Company’s Sales Results.” For example, reader Tony Cole said:

“If it were easy then everyone would be doing it. … “Let’s address the issues of why companies, sales leaders, and salespeople fail to implement and execute basic fundamental sales processes or techniques, let alone the sophisticated process improvements you talk about here.”

I called Tony to find out more about what Read more

Six Easy Ways to Boost Your Company’s Sales Results

Recently, a reader asked: “What is the 20% of sales process improvement that generates 80% of the results?” It’s a great question, because it is the right way to think about business in general, and the sales process in particular. Here is our list of the six Read more

Are You Improving Your Selling System? (Or Repeating the Same Old Grind?)

Some people have a choice in the way they approach sales and marketing: They can work IN the production system, or ON it. Salespeople are inherently IN the system. Their job is to do the best they can to get prospects to a successful conclusion as effectively Read more

How to Double Sales Productivity by Building Nurturing into Your Sales Process

An Interview with Jim Cecil, co-founder of The Nurture Institute

Michael Webb interviews Jim Cecil on how to develop and implement nurturing campaigns. Companies suffer when they do not have enough prospects ready to buy now. Lead generation campaigns usually generate far more future prospects than current ones. The returns on these campaigns are reduced Read more

Quick Sales Productivity Boosts

If you are a salesperson and you need a productivity boost, there are lots of possibilities, such as better meeting preparation, more practice presenting, maintaining your relationships, and working to become more organized. However, what if your entire organization needs a sales productivity boost? What can an Read more

How to Increase Margin 1% to 10% and Lower Your Risk:

Build a Negotiation Strategy into Your Sales Process

Michael Webb and Brian Dietmeyer present the means of incorporating effective negotiation strategies into a company’s sales process. Rather than being unpredictable and difficult to control, 97% of verbal negotiation tactics are almost entirely predictable, and your company’s way of influencing and responding to customer’s negotiation tactics can Read more

Webinar Repeat Tuesday: How to Increase Your Margins 1% to 10%

Here is what some attendees said about last week’s webinar “How to Increase Margins 1% to 10% … by Building Negotiation into Your Sales Process:”

• John, executive, Ontario, Canada: “I’ll be able to align my sales team to a proactive negotiation process.”
• May Britt, executive, Norway: “I can incorporate new learnings into the all-Nordic Process Improvement training we are running this spring.”
• Cory, consultant, Los Angeles area: “I’ll evaluate and strategize the negotiation process more from a tactical perspective now.”
• David, consultant, San Francisco Bay area: “It was very helpful in terms of (1) Brian’s specific suggestions on negotiation and (2) using sales kaizen to systematically improve the negotiating methods at a company.”

Unfortunately, we also had some technical issues with the sound and phone number. So, even though the webinar was completed and will be up on the website Sunday evening (making over 9 hours of videos!) we’re planning a live redo for members and registered attendees only:

“How to Increase Margin 1% to 10%

Read more

How to Develop Qualification Criteria Guidebook Launch

Make Salespeople 25% More Productive in 90 Days or Less

Michael Webb and Bill Bentley explain their discoveries around sales qualification criteria. It turns out that the concept of sales qualification has a lot in common with the concept of quality – if you define your qualification criteria in terms of observable characteristics. This presentation outlines the foundation Read more

How to Make Salespeople 25% More Productive in 90 Days or Less

You probably have salespeople working overtime right now on deals that will be:

• bad business if you win them (too much trouble, not worth the revenue)
• lost to a competitor
• lost to no decision

If you’ve been around professional sales organizations for a long time, you already know that poor salespeople ignore qualification criteria; good salespeople, and Read more