Introduction When Peter McLaughlin and I first began talking about the topics of communication and feedback specifically, we quickly realized we had several things in common. We both felt that we were not particularly effective in giving feedback. In fact, we felt that we were pretty bad. We enjoyed the challenge and the positive results that come with a successful feedback conversation. We wondered why we had not naturally learned to give feedback. We agreed that if we were provided with a roadmap or model for giving feedback, we would have performed much more effectively in such situations. Looking back at particular examples, we both had a sense of delight from the positive encounters, and a sense of dread over the sessions that left us feeling discouraged, beaten down and lackluster. So why did we begin a project filled with such negative emotion? The answer—both to improve our own feedback skills and to examine what it would take to teach a new perspective and help "turn the opinion tide" that has made feedback a dreaded negative topic. Who doesn’t want to get better? Have you ever known anyone who said, "Nah, I’ll just stay mediocre and by the way, I don’t want a raise, promotion or exciting project…" Probably not. Our internal drive propels us to strive, learn and improve.

In today’s evolving workplace, employee recognition is more important than ever. While salary, benefits, and career growth are key retention factors, a strong culture of appreciation can be the difference between high engagement and high turnover. Download our latest insights on non-cash recognition programs to learn how companies are striking the perfect balance in rewarding employees—beyond just paychecks. Discover strategies to boost morale, retain top talent, and create a workplace where employees feel valued. Why recognition matters in today’s workforce How non-cash rewards drive engagement & loyalty Best practices for impactful employee appreciation Get your free download now and start building a recognition-driven workplace!

While organizations around the world are spending billions of dollars on training, most of that investment is being wasted. Here’s what you can do to make sure your sales training initiatives add up to long-term results. Have you ever observed a sales representative during a call and thought, "How can this be the same person who did so well during training? Why aren’t they doing what they were taught?" They’ve been through the training and learned the skills—intellectually they know what they should do—but now that they’re back on the job, they’ve fallen into old habits and behaviors. The fact is, this situation is more often the rule than the exception. Data collected by the consulting firm ES Research has shown that 85 to 90 percent of sales training fails to translate into a lasting improvement in productivity. So what’s keeping the training from moving sales professionals from knowing to doing? Here are 4 of the most common reasons most sales training fails.

Get A Coach | Be A Coach the authors introduce a new framework for coaching that extends the benefits of this powerful tool to the masses. You will see how everyone, at every level of the organization, can get a coach anytime they need one, anywhere they are within the organization and for anything they are doing. Why? So that people can get better results in their job, more fulfillment in the workplace and more growth and development in their careers. For the organization there are also huge benefits: Facilitating knowledge transfer Fostering collaboration Closing the skills gap Establishing real time, on-demand learning

Whether your organizational goals include acquiring new customers or retaining top talent, you need powerful rewards and incentives to motivate your recipients. In this white paper, we'll discuss how you can find the right digital gift card management partner to help you stay competitive.

DISC is a powerful tool for understanding human behavior and improving interpersonal communication. In sales, knowing your client’s DISC profile allows you to tailor your approach, build stronger connections, and ultimately close more deals. This guide will help you understand how to identify DISC styles and how to adapt your sales techniques to suit each personality type. Whether you are speaking with a dominant decision-maker, an influential enthusiast, a steady supporter, or a cautious analyzer, DISC provides the insights you need to enhance your communication and sales strategy.

Industry research shows that effective sales coaching can dramatically improve the performance of a sales team - in some cases driving up revenues by 20% or more.   The reason for such potential improvements is the significant "multiplier effect" sales organizations can achieve through sales coaching: one trained manager can coach multiple sales professionals and improve their overall performance. With such potential benefits it is no wonder that many sales organizations recommend that their frontline sales managers spend 25% - 45% of their time sales coaching.   The High Impact Sales Coaching Guide provides expert advice on essential sales coaching skills to help sales managers effectively empower their teams to reach their highest potential.

The world of business has changed — especially for salespeople. The better you are, the more likely you are to get fired or retired - especially if you’re at the very top of your profession. Robert Workman’s Hired Gun II is the sales bible used by salespeople who want proven methods to defeat industry politics and stay at the top of your game. As a #1 salesperson, sales trainer and entrepreneur for over four decades, Robert shows you step-by-step how to ensure that adversity and politics don’t destroy your high-performance salescareer. He locks and loads both barrels with invaluable tools and secrets like: The risks of being the best and how to use them to your advantage. How to choose a mentor or coach who will provide the most value. Identifying internal company changes that aren’t in your best interest and leveraging them for your benefit. Using your single greatest asset to achieve top sales status and stay there.   Hired Gun II is the ultimate resource for top performing salespeople to maximize sales, crush the competition and use today’s hardball business tactics to your advantage.

Executive Summary How do you know if your executive presentations are effective? In this white paper I am going to give you a series of tests you can use to form an objective assessment about the quality and effectiveness of your presentation. I have spent nearly fifteen years researching and reviewing literally hundreds of sales tools and presentations from big companies to small boutiques, and many in between, and believe the effectiveness of an economic impact sales tool used in (and after) the sales process boils down to these important criteria:

Soft skills play a key role in your sales reps' ability to successfully turn a prospect into a client. This eBook discusses how your sales team can put themselves in their prospects' shoes emotionally, overcome any objection thrown at them and close the sale. Click below to download this eBook.

Measuring the impact of learning and readiness initiatives on revenue is the billion dollar question. In today’s uncertain environment, the answer is even more important. Rapidly changing markets, disrupted supply chains, and increasingly knowledgeable customers mean that companies must upskill employees to compete. But the ability to optimize learning—and maximize productivity—takes deep insight into how employees think, learn, and perform, insight which many companies lack. Today, there’s a new breed of platform that combines learning, communication, and collaboration tools with analytics for a holistic view of learning and development’s impact on results. Workforce readiness technology allows organizations to move beyond assessments and scores to understand how to target activities that move the needle.

Over the past year, I have written  blog  post after blog post at my site, http://www.thesalesblog.com.  Most of what I have written was written to be published later as book.  That book is coming in the not too distant future.      Of  all  the  topics I have written on, what I have written about cold calling has always struck  a  nerve, eliciting strong opinions—either for or against. Much of the email I receive is for advice and  ideas  about  how to be more effective at cold calling, or it is to remind me that Sales 2.0 has replaced cold calling (an idea to which I am vehemently opposed with every fiber of my being).      I collected a few posts on cold calling here to serve as a guide for those who would endeavor to improve their cold calling skills.  I hope you find it useful in improving your effectiveness and that you adopt these ideas into all of your prospecting activities.  

Download this eBrief to find out how to streamline sales content management to a digital approach that solves content challenges—for sellers AND buyers.

Forrester conducted an online survey with 440 respondents and four interviews with sales enablement strategy decision-makers in North America to explore this topic. We found that organizations understand the value of agile content, but can’t always produce and use agile content across the enterprise. This recent Forrester report, Agile Content Strategies Deliver Business Results And Drive Sales Adoption, reveals how sales content has evolved and how business leaders must adapt. Download your copy today to see how you can overcome business pressures changing sales content management. You’ll learn: 3 key sales content research findings Why marketing content is an essential sales tool How lack of resources and incentives limit sales content impact 3 agile content best practices to increase buyer engagement 4 recommendations to gain significant business benefits

Before you embark on expanding your initial sales team, focus on equipping your sales team for success. Thinking about your sales organization as a machine will help you focus on the critical success factors (outlined in this e-book) needed to build a repeatable and predictable revenue stream for your company.

Work isn’t working for a large percentage of employees. If there is any hope of reversing the current challenges of recruiting and retaining skilled, productive workers across all professions, companies must get better at winning the hearts of their employees. This white paper takes a closer look at three core principles that managers should adhere to in order to increase productivity by winning the hearts of their employees. The strategies are offered by Marcus Buckingham, the head of people and performance research at ADP Research Institute (ADPRI).

At CeBIT 2014, Gary D. Burnette, VP of sales transformation at IBM, gave some insight into why and how IBM had deployed Sugar from SugarCRM to support a global sales force of more than 45,000 sellers within 12 months of a successful pilot. IBM's successful approach provides a valuable lesson for organizations embarking on major multi-country or global customer relationship management (CRM) deployments.

Improving sales performance has never been more important for major global corporations. After years of recession-induced cost cutting, leaders are putting increasing emphasis on implementing go-to-market strategies to boost both top- and bottom-line results, and expecting their sales organizations to execute them. Unfortunately, experts agree that most growth strategies fail. As competition from low-cost competitors increases, and aggressive buyers become even more demanding, it has become even harder to close the gap between go-to-market strategy as articulated by senior management, and its profitable execution, when the salesperson is face-to-face with the customer.

Download this helpful infographic as a reminder of the 4 steps for leading virtual teams.  Outcomes of using Improv techniques to manage virtual teams Greater trust within virtual teams  Speed to deliver on business outcomes  Radical collaboration = quicker turnaround  Balance accountability with autonomy  Accountability and engagement on tough projects  Practical skills to manage difficult or negative conversations in a positive way  Techniques to improve empathy and patience

Selling has grown increasingly complex and difficult. Research shows that over the past 5 years win rates have fallen and no-decision rates have grown.   Complete the form at right to download this article and learn the 3 questions that every sales leader must ask to make the best go/no-go decision.

  Several years ago, I gave a speech to about 300 businesswomen, "How to Manage your Time for Success. After the talk, I handed out a simple handout of tips and exercises. Afterward, two women came up to me and asked if they could "use" my handout packet. They were the Circulation Managers for Working Woman magazine (readership about one million) They wanted to use the booklet as a "premium" - a free gift for new subscribers. I was delighted but said that since this was my copyrighted material I couldn’t allow them to reproduce the booklets; instead, I would sell them the booklets they wanted. After some negotiating, they ordered 100,000 copies of a 12-page booklet, which I wrote, designed and had printed. Click here to see the full list of Influence "hacks" 

Several years ago, one of our Affiliates in the San Francisco Bay Area who said she had a "lead" for me from a large defense contracting company, which said they needed some training in "presentation skills". (let’s call her "C") Before going to the meeting, I learned that the division which had called was a group of elite physicists, who had not had a lot of work to do since U.S. involvement in wars had slowed down. (this was before 9/11,before our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq)

Aside from my usual training/consulting business at that time,I also had a business in what was called "premiums or "custom publishing". You have likely gotten a mailing from a magazine, offering you a subscription with a free gift - a gadget, a diary, or a book of tips or ideas. I’d come up with an idea for one of the magazines in the Time-Life group. First, they would test it by send out a mailing offering my idea as well as two other ideas to a test audience. Whichever of the 3 ideas got more responses was the winner, and that idea was then "rolled out" for a much larger project, sometimes to a million or more potential customers. Usually, they got about 5,000 affirmative responses. What this meant, to a small vendor like me, was that I’d have to create the actual 5,000 booklets (at enormous cost, usually a loss) to fulfill the first 5,000 customers.

Several years ago I got word that a large tech company was going to send a "Request for Proposals" out to several vendors for a large consulting and training contract. My advantages - I had already worked with several divisions of the company. I understood the culture - its habits, strengths, and weaknesses and "lingo". My work had gotten consistently good ratings from the groups I had worked with. My disadvantages -Would the decision-makers worry that my "lean and mean" operation could not deliver on a huge contract? Who were the decision-makers, and how would they decide? What were their decision-criteria?