Dave Stein's Blog for Sales Leaders

I had to leave the training session shortly after lunch on the second day (out of three).  More on the program in a minute…
Last week I had an interesting discussion with Barry Trailor from CSO Insights about how old-style classroom sales training often doesn’t get the job done these days.  We agreed that some classroom training [...]

Filed under: Sales Training Companies, Technology | No Comments »

I’m in Boston today and tomorrow observing a sales training program that is being delivered to one of ESR’s smaller clients.  This is not something we typically do at ESR, but these circumstances are special:  Our client is in the midst of a textbook-perfect deployment of a new sales methodology, training and the implementation of [...]

Filed under: Methodology, Sales Training Companies, Technology | 3 Comments »

We are presently in a recession* in the U.S.  Here are some positive actions that our clients are taking:

Reducing their SG&A (Sales, General and Administrative income statement expense item) buy cutting the bottom 10 to 20% of their sales team.  It’s very unlikely that sales people who aren’t productive in a good economy will be productive [...]

Filed under: Economy | No Comments »

I spent some time today on the phone with Grainne Rothery, who writes for the Ireland-based Marketing Age magazine.  I was being interview for an upcoming article on competitive selling.
It didn’t take long before we were discussing the U.S. presidential race.  They are not only very interested in our politics in Ireland, but very well [...]

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I was on the phone today with an associate from a private equity firm. 
He found ESR on the web and was interested in our opinion on a number of topics
as a foundation for his firm acquiring one or more sales training companies.  He
asked how sales training companies were generally doing during this
recession.  He pondered how a services-based company could weather these types
of [...]

Filed under: Methodology, Sales Training Companies | 6 Comments »

There have been some dismal statistics put forth by firms such as CSO Insights and Sales Benchmark Index about two related subjects: (1) the lack of performance by, and (2) the tenure of, salespeople.  HR Chally has done research in this area as well. The fact is a lot of money is being spent on tools, [...]

Filed under: Hiring | 2 Comments »

Geoffrey James writes a great blog.  I enjoy reading it, plus I most often learn something. 
Although it’s more targeted to sales people than sales leaders, Geoffrey knows a lot about selling, is very well informed about a lot of things, and is a really good writer.
Last week he wrote a seriously gutsy post about whether the U.S. should bail out of Iraq.  A [...]

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I had the opportunity to interview Jill Konrath last week for an ESR podcast. (Here is ESR’s list of podcasts.)
Most of the top tier sales training companies have little to say about how to fill the pipeline. They typically focus on sales opportunity and account management. If a company’s marketing department isn’t doing its job, [...]

Filed under: Pipeline, Technology | No Comments »

At ESR, we’re proud of the fact that we can see our influence take hold within certain companies and industries.
We founded ESR with critical guiding principles. One is to be straight with our customers, clients and subscribers. So we built a “To the Point” into the template for our ESR/Insight Briefs. If you tend to [...]

Filed under: Measurement, Methodology | No Comments »