How Do You Fix Sales Ineffectiveness?

What’s going on here?

Sales training has been around for more than 100 years.  Yet every year, new approaches appear with the promise of being “The Silver Bullet.”  Old approaches—even those that are relevant to fixing the proble—are labeled “old-school,” and rejected.
On Amazon.com there are 29, 469 books under the category of “How to Sell.”  In [...]

Holden International: Moving In The Right Direction

Followers of this blog are familiar with the high value I place on planning, competitive selling strategies, and political leverage for winning complex sales situations as well as for effectively managing strategic accounts.  I was first introduced to Holden many years ago by Steve Slaughter, a salesrep who worked for me who had been through [...]

Strategic Account Management: It’s Not Just A Sales Job.

One of the top firms among the 26 sales performance improvement providers ESR covers is Performance Methods, Inc. (PMI).  Founder and managing partner Steve Andersen is recognized as a thought-leader in the demanding and often misunderstood area of strategic account management. (Listen to Steve in an ESR/Podcast.)
To understanding what a strategic account management methodology is [...]

Premium Sales and Service, On Rye. Hold the Baloney.

At party I started chatting with a nice guy, late 20’s or so, neatly dressed, with bright, intense eyes. We talked weather, current events, the usual stuff, and then I popped the question. “So, what do you do?”
He smiled. He said he recently bought a route in his area selling cold cuts and other provisions [...]

Delivering Bad News (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1.
7.  Explain the reason this happened. “This happened because I didn’t double check the release dates on what I believed to be the latest copy of our development schedule. I was looking at an outdated copy.”
8.  Explain why this will never happen again. “Our VP of Development was upset to hear that [...]

Sales 101 Doesn’t Get The Job Done

Part of what ESR does is to identify, size, and prioritize the gaps that exist between our clients’ sales teams’ skill sets and what is required for them to win more business, sooner, and at higher contract values.
There are different ways to categorize those gaps.  For the purposes of this post, let’s look at basic versus [...]

Selling Through the Customer’s Organization (Chart)

An org chart is invaluable in a complex sale.  When I was coaching sales teams, I refused to help a rep with a deal unless they had an up-to-date org chart.  If a rep can’t get someone in the account to give them an org chart, they should be able to build one with help from their contacts.
Org [...]