Lack of emotional intelligence skills is the one of the biggest and overlooked reason for missed revenue goals. Often, salespeople know what to do; however, in tough selling situations, they let nonproductive emotions take over. They discount too soon, write practice proposals without proper qualification and continue to meet with non-decision makers. Their inability to execute the right selling behaviors during stressful situations lead to poor sales results. When it comes to sales, emotional intelligence skills are every bit important as hard selling skills.

Objections occur at every stage of the selling process and its vital sales leaders drive the ability to handle each one successfully. Training alone will not work; therefore, managers must facilitate specific coaching strategies to handle each type of objection.

A recent study from the Lenskold Group/Pedowitz Group identified that companies in which marketing plays a role in revenue production, these companies are outgrowing their competition.  Are you outgrowing your competition?  2013 is the year for you to forget what you think you know about the role of marketing in revenue and embrace a new concept called Revenue Marketing.  In companies in which Revenue Marketing is used, marketing contributes up to 90% of the pipeline.  So if you’re heading into 2013 and you need a little help on growing top line revenue, marketing may turn out to be your secret weapon.

The sales industry is undergoing enormous change. The evolution of the Internet as well as innovations in multi-media and technology have altered the buying journey, forcing B2B sales organizations and salespeople to change how they pursue and win business. For sales leaders who take great pride in building and leading high performing sales teams, there is no greater need that hiring talent who can thrive in these conditions.

According to CSO Insights’ 2017 Sales Manager Transformation Report:   "Sales transformation is a growing trend, but sales performance is not improving... Clearly, something is missing."  

Studies show incentive programs can significantly improve performance. But to maximize results, it’s important to understand the journey your participants will take from the time they first hear about the program to the day they receive their awards. 

You’ve seen the reports. That shifting to video-based eLearning can save the average company 50% to 70%. That IBM found up to 40% of its classroom training costs were spent just on travel. That Ernst and Young saved 35% by investing in eLearning. And that Microsoft’s move to video-based training helped reduce costs by $303 per learner, from $320 to just $17.

Management can be, well, difficult to manage. In too many organizations the term itself is a synonym for unnecessary paperwork and uninformative meetings, conjuring an image somewhere between befuddled bureaucrat and dominating parent. But the real function of management - it's highest function - is to keep the organization on track, constantly adjusting resources, activities, and priorities so that the highest priority outputs are delivered despite significant, unforeseeable changes along the way. If you're running a management team you need everyone working together on your higher-level goals, not creating silos and arguments among themselves.

Research shows that as much as 90% of professional learning is informal and experiential, taking place out in the world and not in a classroom. It's what people do every day in their personal lives when they access content from sites like Google, YouTube, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Yet companies are ignoring how employees intuitively learn and forcing them to train in the exact opposite way.

We say that our sales reps should diagnose first, then prescribe. But as sales enablement and sales effectiveness leaders, are we doing the same, internally? Are we really using a data-driven approach to determine our next performance improvement initiatives, to help our sales force move the needle? Would you like to know what levers to pull to have more reps hit quota?

Now more than ever, sales managers and company leaders must step up to better equip the sales team with more coaching and direction to lead their reps on the front line to bigger success.  In a "work from home" or even a partial remote work world, the sales team in particular needs a framework where sales reps are accountable and leaders really need to lead. It's not about taking what you did in your office and simply virtualizing it - it is about creating new best practices based on the long accepted training idea of repetition and reinforcement. 

How do you ensure installation of learning for your front-line leaders and management team?  No matter the modality, there needs to be a process of engagement in place that ensures successful implementation.  Through an engagement matrix, AMA will outline the necessary steps to ensure a successful transfer of skill development as it aligns to recognizing managerial competence within your organization.  AMA will share best practices on how to ensure the probability for success in a virtual learning environment.

70% of today’s buyers wait until they have fully defined needs, and 44% identify the best solution on their own before engaging with sellers. As modern buyers embrace self-service (via the internet, social media, etc.) for much of their buyers’ journey, traditional selling techniques just aren’t cutting it anymore.

As workplaces become more distributed, managers often find themselves managing remote or virtual team members. This geographic distance sets virtual leaders up to make five critical management mistakes that can reduce productivity, derail teamwork, undermine organizational loyalty, and increase turnover. Without team agreements about expectations and processes, working on a virtual team can feel like floating on a rudderless boat in the ocean.

Sales enablement is an emerging profession that is quickly approaching a crossroads with significant ramifications. Like our training and HR counterparts before us, practitioners of sales enablement face a choice of being viewed as an overhead expense or an essential business partner that provides value as a critical piece of the organizational growth engine.  

Be in on the discussion as The Bob Pike Group and companies all around the world prepare for a return to classroom F2F training. We’ve heard from clients and brainstormed our own solutions to make classrooms safe and attendees comfortable. This is your chance to grab tested ideas and also share what people expect in your workplace or industry as we all figure new normal out together.

How many sales are lost to the competition because they got to the real decision-maker first? How many sales stall because salespeople get stuck with individuals who ‘recommend’ but cannot ‘decide’? Probably more times than salespeople or their sales managers’ like to admit! 

Persona-based marketing has been used for decades to help craft targeted promotions and messages that appeal to prospects. Personas have a role in sales and marketing webinars as well, but they are often misused, resulting in diminished effectiveness and persuasiveness of your message.

New data privacy laws. Headlines about layoffs and economic turmoil. Distracted prospects.  You can overcome each challenge and generate qualified leads for sales if you leverage the latest, most effective marketing trends.   

Businesses need to have a successful post-purchase experience that drives product-led growth, creates new value streams, and in turn reduces churn. However, to achieve true customer growth, a differentiated customer experience mapped to the post-purchase journey is essential. Learning plays a critical role in augmenting this experience. A self-service model for learning that helps the customer acquire product knowledge to unlock more value helps foster retention, increase loyalty and transform customers into advocates.

The pundits predict a slowing economy in 2024. What does that mean for you and your sales team? Are you concerned about how to lead your team to success?  

AI is rewriting the rules of business, even as enterprises themselves struggle to implement it. Executives are intrigued by AI's potential, but they often question how AI can truly work for them. Where can AI generate real business value? Where does - and doesn’t - it have tangible use cases? How can teams be set up to effectively deploy and manage it for long-term success?

You want it this way; I want it that way. It’s been said that negotiation is the art of "letting the other side have your way." But just how skilled are we at practicing the day-to-day art of negotiation at work? Do you get sweaty palms just anticipating an interaction or blurt out a request that sounds strangely like a demand? Can you talk your way out of an impossible timeline or get that budget bump your unit desperately needs? Although there are times when we’d give just about anything to gain the upper hand on the job, what we say and how we say it can make or break us in the long run—and often, in the short run, too. As always, our communication skills are on the line.

Dr. Carmen Simon and Mike Parkinson share the latest techniques in cognitive science and design to engage and captivate your audience. Learn how to craft presentations and learning materials that not only inform but also leave a lasting impact. Discover science-based and practical techniques to improve understanding, recollection, and adoption.