Posted on July 25th, 2011 by Dave Stein
Why don’t sales reps don’t utilize org charts for complex opportunities they’re pursuing? Why don’t their sales managers insist that they do? Those graphic representations of a company/division structure are invaluable in a complex sale. The most effective sales coaches I know refuse to help a rep with a deal unless they have an up-to-date [...]
Filed under: Account Management, Opportunity Management | 5 Comments »
Posted on April 18th, 2011 by Dave Stein
This post is for all my new colleagues in Ireland—sales executives and directors, VPs, MDs, and CEOs who have been attending Enterprise Ireland and The Dublin Institute of Technology’s International Selling Programme. I’ve facilitated seven days of programmes with just one left to go. We’ve discussed sales effectiveness-building processes and strategies for building a sales [...]
Filed under: Big Wins, Buyers, Competition, Opportunity Management, Presentations, Relationships, RFP, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics | 6 Comments »
Posted on February 16th, 2011 by Dave Stein
Yesterday I had the pleasure of hosting an sales expert round table hosted by Focus.com entitled, What Advanced Selling Capabilities are Required to Win Today? Focus.com came to me asking what topic I’d like to discuss. The list is always long, but it occurred to me that a discussion among five experts in advanced selling [...]
Filed under: Account Management, Big Wins, Channel Management, coaching, Hiring, Interview, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Sales Strategy, Sales Training Companies, social media | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 29th, 2010 by Dave Stein
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 [...]
Filed under: CRM, Interview, Marketing, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, sales process | No Comments »
Posted on March 8th, 2010 by Dave Stein
Prior to our briefing last week by The TAS Group executives in advance of today’s announcement, we were somewhat skeptical. We thought claims they made in their YouTube videos were more than a bit outrageous, like this one from their press release: “Dealmaker Genius uses over 20,000 core knowledge elements and more than one million [...]
Filed under: CRM, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Sales 2.0, sales process, Sales Training Companies, Technology | No Comments »
Posted on December 16th, 2009 by Dave Stein
Back in October I delivered the keynote at SMT‘s conference. I shared with the audience ESR’s list of 12 obstacles that must be overcome for sales training to begin to have the degree of impact that a few the leading sales training companies are having with every client. Sales training is most often reactive. We [...]
Filed under: Hiring, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Sales 2.0, Sales 2.0, sales process, Sales Training Companies | 5 Comments »
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 by Dave Stein
Dave Brock wrote a terrific post about sales process. It sparked me to write about an issue that has been troubling me. I’m not going to put forward any more arguments on the subject of whether or not process important in selling. There is enough research out there—from ESR, from other research firms, and a [...]
Filed under: Methodology, Opportunity Management, Research, sales process, Sales Training Companies | 11 Comments »
Posted on November 4th, 2009 by Dave Stein
I finally got around to meeting my telephone and e-mail colleague, Tom Martin, face-to-face a few weeks ago. Tom is someone I hold in high regard for his experience, integrity and deep understanding of the sales training industry. Tom is a 20-year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry, with a diverse set of [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Interview, Methodology, Opportunity Management, sales process, Sales Training Companies | 15 Comments »
Posted on March 23rd, 2009 by Dave Stein
A few weeks ago the folks at Kadient briefed me on their approach and their sales performance improvement tools. As you would expect, I posed the chicken-and-egg question with respect to what order a company should implement Kadient’s tools versus installing and implementing a sales methodology. I liked their answers. I picked up a tweet [...]
Filed under: Big Wins, Competition, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Research, sales process | 12 Comments »
Posted on March 9th, 2009 by Dave Stein
As ESR is completing our Sales Training Vendor Guide we are updating a number of our models. Here is a presentation of our sales training approach model that we deliver to project teams tasked with finding, evaluating, and selecting sales training companies. The content is based upon work we’ve done with clients during the past [...]
Filed under: Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Presentations, Research, Sales Training Companies, Technology | No Comments »