Selling Lessons From A Trumpet Lesson

It was an exciting week. I started out in St. Paul on Sunday afternoon. I was there Monday and Tuesday to attend a few meetings with a special client, deliver a few presentations, facilitate some discussions and attend their annual sales awards dinner. It was two of the best [...]

8 Tips For Saving Money On Sales Training

Sales training is more important now than during any time I can remember.  I’ve written again and again about the right approach to training.  So long as you are following those guidelines, here are some tips to reduce the typical cost of sales training:

Employ a blended-learning or distance-learning-only approach. Not every situation requires classroom [...]

The Brooks Group: Getting A (Second) Life.

The Brooks Group surprised ESR when we commenced coverage of them for our last Sales Training Vendor Guide.  They scored very well in both solution breadth and solution effectiveness, even against many of the bigger, more well-known training companies.
Al Case, Vivian and I did an analyst briefing call with the Brooks Group management team earlier [...]

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 [...]

Chops

Having been a professional trumpeter, early on I learned the word “chops” as it is used to describe a player who has a powerful embouchure (the use of the muscles surrounding the mouth in order to create a sound on a wind instrument).  Here is Japanese trumpeter Eric Miyashiro providing a dazzling rendition of Over [...]

A Few Good Sales Coaching Blog Posts

If you’re in sales (or general) management, two consecutive posts on Bill Caskey’s Inside the Sales Mind blog are really worth reading:

Sales Training Q&A #12: How to Maintain a High Performance Sales Team.  During my years as a sales consultant this was one of the coaching exercises I did with every sales manager.  It is [...]

The Sandler Sales Training Story, From A Franchisee

I got caught up a few weeks ago with Rich Geise, a friend and former colleague.  With 30 or so years in sales and sales management, Rich is a Sandler franchisee, based in Villanova, PA.
Rich told me Sandler’s appeal is growing.  He described that what most salespeople feel coming out of traditional training classes is frustration, having been [...]

Early Failure is Better Than Late Failure

Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group, wrote a great post (Early failure is better than late failure) on his company’s blog that is more than worthy of your consideration. (Disclosure: The TAS Group is a subscriber to ESR’s research.)
In the post Donal discusses the not-often-enough-overcome challenge of effective qualification.  From the post:
When budgets are [...]

Business Acumen: A Critical Selling Capability

When I wrote How Winners Sell one of the most important messages I needed to communicate to my readers was this:  The timeless truth about sales is it’s all about money.  B2B sales is not about selling software or strategic advice or capital equipment.  It’s about your products and services improving your customer’s business.  I was very [...]