What's The Half-Life of Sales Training?

TweetAt one point during one of the workshops I facilitated in Ireland two weeks ago, a CEO said, matter-of-factly, “… and you know what the half-life of sales training is…”  He was discussing how his company took a more formal approach to sales effectiveness than just sales training, and the benefits that structure and process was delivering to his company.  [...]

Assigning Sales Territories by Personality Traits?

TweetOne of our clients from Minnesota told me about a fascinating Wall Street Journal article about regional personality traits across America.   From the article: “Certain regional stereotypes have long since become cliches: The stressed-out New Yorker. The laid-back Californian. But the conscientious Floridian? The neurotic Kentuckian? You bet — at least, according to new research on [...]

A New Approach to Leadership Development

TweetI enjoyed breakfast earlier in the week with Art DeLorenzo, retired group vice president at American Express and co-founder of MYT Group, LLC.  Art came up through the financial services industry and, over the years, leveraged his training and mentoring skills to maximize the selling capabilities of the advisors who reported to him. MYT provides clients’ executives emotional intelligence [...]

Innovation in Sales Training

TweetTraining Magazine recently published an article I wrote.  It’s about innovation in sales training.  There are a couple of points in the article I’d like to comment on.  The first: “Innovation has been slow to come to some of the larger training companies, as well. There are two major reasons for that. First, some of [...]

Coaching Salespeople :: Avitage Webinar Archive

TweetLast week I participated in a webinar hosted by Avitage.  I wrote about their product, PrivateSalesCoach, in a previous post. My contribution to the webinar was a 15-minute section about coaching salespeople.  Here is a link to the archive. Hide Sites

What If Your CEO Gets Hit By A Bus?

TweetAn interesting exchange transpired during the CEO workshop I facilitated in Dublin last Thursday.  The subject was qualifying what could be potentially be very large opportunities with Fortune 100 companies.  The CEOs and Managing Directors that attended the workshops represent small to mid-size Irish companies. Bernie Cullinan, CEO of Clarigen, was one of the participants.  At one point [...]

Irish International Selling CEO Workshops

TweetI finished up my second CEO workshop this afternoon in Limerick as part of The Dublin Institute of Technology/Enterprise Ireland International Selling Programme.  We covered three critical success factors for building and scaling a sales capability for international trade: Hiring, Compensation, and Qualification and Prioritization (as it applies to the pipeline and forecast at the CEO-level). The [...]

CanDoGo: STaaS (Sales Tips as a Service)

TweetI’ve been speaking with Larry McClymonds, VP Corporate Sales & Co-Founder of CanDoGo.  Been in touch with his customers as well. In case you’re not aware of CanDoGo, it’s an new Internet destination that hosts articles, audio and video clips from 140 sales expert content providers (and counting).   The list is impressive:  Dr. Tony Alessandra, [...]

Industry-Focused Sales Training Is More Than Buzzwords

TweetA strategic and comprehensive approach to sales effectiveness must include, among other programs: New hire training Product training  Sales skills training (basic to advanced, as appropriate) Sales-enablement tools and technology training (CRM, Sales 2.0 tools, podcasts, internal knowledge management systems, etc.) Other specialized training (business training, creating proposals, cold-calling, working with business partners, as examples) Technical training [...]

The Upcoming Election: Competitive Selling Strategies

TweetFor those of us who are students of competitive selling, every day of this presidential race is a crash course in competitive strategies and tactics.  As I write this, the polls (right or wrong) say that the Republicans have closed the lead the Democrats had been holding.  McCain slowed Obama’s momentum and has created some of his own. [...]