Huthwaite’s CEO Has A Few Questions For Me

Last week I was interviewed for a podcast by John Golden, CEO and President of Huthwaite. John had some great questions for me about a number of topics around sales effectiveness: Changes in the buyer/seller relationship, in buyer behavior, and the role of technology such as social/professional networking. The relevance of sales training given the [...]

Kadient Is Serious About Sales Effectiveness

The more I know about them, the more I’ve been impressed with Kadient.  I really like their playbook approach, the people I’ve met on their team, and their straightforward, no B.S. approach to sales effectiveness.  After receiving an email from Rich Berkman, Vice President, Sales Enablement Strategy, about his new eBook, Dive Deeper into Your [...]

Industry Analysts: Like Having Your Book Recommended By Oprah

The sector that’s probably most familiar with industry analysts is technology.  If you play in that space, you’ll know Gartner, Forrester, and Aberdeen, among others. You’ll find industry analysts in other markets as well.  Depending your industry, you may recognize the names Frost & Sullivan, KLAS, Bersin and Associates, JD Powers, Jane’s, and of course [...]

One-on-One With Imparta’s CEO, Richard Barkey

Imparta Ltd. is a Tier 1 global sales effectiveness organization based in the U.K. with presence in 32 countries including the U.S.  They have many strengths, especially in the areas of creating customer value and methodology.  Imparta’s sales training programs encompass sales, marketing, and leadership training. ESR commenced formal coverage of Imparta last year.  They [...]

Enough With The Shortcuts And Quick Solutions, Already.

Fortunately, it’s a busy time for us at ESR.  Right now, we’re providing advice and guidance to a number of companies that are actively evaluating strategies and solutions for sales performance improvement, but based on the economy, the state of the sales training industry, and the mistakes they’ve made in the past, have to finally [...]

Incorporating Twitter Into My Media Mix

I’ve been seeing more and more business contacts coming up on Twitter. They’re following me. Nice. I follow them. No question this is a fast-moving phenonemon—like Susan Boyle (with, as of today: 52,532,400 views on YouTube) and YouTube’s parent, Google itself, during its first few years of growth. I presented today on a webinar sponsored [...]

ESR's Survey On Social Media Use in B2B Selling

With the assistance of The TAS Group, ESR recently surveyed nearly 400 users of the following technologies to determine the effects that these new technologies in helping them win B2B sales opportunities: Jigsaw; LinkedIn; Twitter; Plaxo; Facebook; Hoover’s or OneSource. The pace of technology development today is dizzying. It seems as though a new sales-related [...]

An Important Message About An Important Message

A while back messaging and branding expert Maureen Blandford asked me to lend an endorsement to what was then her new book, Branding Doesn’t Work in Business to Business. I had not met Maureen.  I was skeptical. By the time I got through with the book, I was a Maureen Blandford fan.  Why?  Maureen provides [...]

My 2009 Word of The Year, So Far

One of my most-used words these days is “scrutinize.”  Merriam-Webster says it means “to examine closely and minutely.” At ESR, we find ourselves using the word fairly often: VPs have been asking us about how to determine which sales reps to keep and which to redeploy.  In this current economic situation some of what salesreps [...]

My Interview with SMT

I was recently interviewed by Lori Champion from SMT (The Professional Society for Sales & Marketing Training) as part of the ramp-up for their annual conference in Orlando October 14 – 16, 2009.  I’ll be keynoting at the event.  The topic will be Sales Excellence 2012: Overcoming Tough Obstacles,  Achieving Measurable Results. Lori’s interview begins: [...]