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?

As many of us are all too painfully aware, we have had to adjust to "new normals" in all arenas of life; a noisy and unpredictable universe has accelerated the need for better Influence.  Of course, technology is transforming our very lives, but, even if we’re all connected, we’re losing our personal touch. Our interpersonal skills are becoming rusty. Indeed, studies by the World Economic Forum and Harvard Business Review say that Influence and Social Skills will be among the top required capabilities by the year 2023 and beyond.

Dear Reader, Give me 7 minutes of your time, and I’ll give you The essence of my bestselling book, "Seven Secrets of Influence" and the international one-day seminar Program, "Secrets of Influence™" My goal here is to give you, in just a few minutes and a few dollars, a basic understanding of the important Influence theory and skills that Fortune 100 executives pay thousands of dollars for. I’ve given you the self-assessment questionnaire "Influence Styles Inventory" at the very beginning, plus a printed (or digital) way for you to learn your own Influence Score. That, and the description of the Influence Styles, should take about 7-10 minutes. (Then, for deeper understanding, you can read the rest of the short book to enhance your awareness and skills) Here, in condensed form, for busy people like yourself, a rich and deep view of these important ideas necessary for anyone to be successful in the 21st Century! Wishing you much Success and Influence!

ASK MORE, TELL LESS Many of the skills of a great coach are equally effective for a great leader - emotional intelligence, able to provide feedback, capable of creating strong working relationships, comfortable challenging the thinking of another, willing to ‘speak the truth’ when it’s most important, and the list goes on. Of course the question is which coaching skills might a leader adopt to get the best results in these all-important human interactions. Click below to download this White Paper.

With unprecedented adoption among businesses and consumers, the iPad is quickly becoming the preferred device for mobile sales professionals. Find out how enterprise adoption of iPads gives organizations an advantage when in sales and marketing.

Good onboarding is critical for sellers—it sets them up for success or failure. Yet too often, it's overlooked or poorly conceived.   In our new guide, you'll learn how to ensure your onboarding process is efficient, engaging, and effective.   Download the guide to discover: Proven onboarding frameworks that drive results A simple checklist to build a seamless onboarding experience Real-world success stories that highlight high-impact onboarding ...and much more. Get your copy today.

Read research by Aberdeen Group on how top-performing sales teams are using contemporary technology tools to reduce their sales cycles and increase their win / loss "batting average". Learn about how to better leverage people, process and technology to optimize your sales cycles. 

A sales rep turns a corner while driving to one of the biggest calls of the year when a jolt from under his car forces a change of plans: he just ran over a pothole and now needs to swap out his tire, except he’s never actually done a tire change by himself before. There’s no time to wait for AAA so he must figure it out himself. What does he do? In 2019, he calmly pulls up YouTube and watches a user-generated video demonstration of exactly how to perform the tire change on the make, model and year of his car, before turning around, grabbing his tools, and successfully executing the task himself. Within twenty minutes he’s back on the road driving toward the meeting feeling ready for anything. This is what it feels like to be ready in a world where you can pull a device out of your pocket and extract whatever day-to-day lessons you need from somebody else’s life experiences. Sales reps already use consumer apps like Waze to learn about open routes in real time based on other drivers’ experience of current road conditions, or Duolingo so they can practice and learn new languages using friendly competition with other would-be travelers. But what about the tasks involving the actual substance of salespeople’s work? What if our rep were to hit a different kind of "pothole" that day: one in the form of a text message from his internal champion letting him know that the company’s CFO would be joining the call unexpectedly? He doesn’t normally call on CFOs, and would need a five-minute debrief with a colleague to understand the pertinent discussion points to use, but no one is available right now. Click below to download this eBook.

Introducing Making SEAMless Sales - the last frontier of sales improvement, benefiting all customer-facing roles by having a unified focus on client success, therefore increasing win rate, margins, deal sizes, revenues, and client satisfaction. Are you in a presales role struggling to work better with your sales counterpart? Are you in a sales role and wish there was a more productive way to work with the other sales roles and with presales? Are you on an account or opportunity team and find it challenging to work together more efficiently and effectively? Are you a sales manager and feel presales and sales individual contributors need to work together optimally as a team? Are you in sales enablement trying to make this all work? This book provides proven insights, methods, and tools, expanding on and refocusing the traditional disciplines of presales and sales, and explores how to work together better as a seamless team at the account and opportunity level. We'll explore and address: The challenges of traditional sales and presales roles. The importance of focusing on the buying process while still executing our sales process. The overarching need for Solution Enablement and Account Management. Why and how buyers buy, and what is needed to persuade them. How working together as a team benefits everyone.

Most sales managers I know have a love/hate relationship with the prima donnas on their sales teams. They love the star player’s passion and hard work; they hate the self-centered behaviors that demoralize or discourage the rest of the team. That leaves sales managers with a dilemma: If they come down hard on a prima donna, that salesperson may just take his/her talents elsewhere. Not good. But a sales manager can’t afford to ignore the situation, either, because prima donnas are often engaged in behaviors detrimental to the team. A simple truth in sales management is that what you don’t confront, you condone. What can you do then?

You know the old saying - great leaders are made, not born. But not all leaders are the same. Our research has found that leaders typically fall into one of three types. The first leader, known as the Pleaser wants consensus. The second type, known as the General values compliance. But the 3rd leader, known as the Creator, is different. They create clarity around what matters most. What type of leader is your organization developing? Meet the 3rd Leader. Learn more in this white paper.

It's not WHAT you do, it's HOW you think. Your Mindset Impacts Your Sales Results You've probably paid thousands for sales training, read every book on sales, and devour all the weekly tips sales gurus have to offer. You may have applied some of this knowledge fleetingly, but never achieved any results you could brag about. Deep down, you've wondered, 'I know what I should do, but why can't I seem to make myself do it?' What if you could discover what common beliefs hold you back, learned how to change them, and could create a process that would unleash better results and higher sales?   Download the eGuide: Mindset Matters and discover how certain beliefs impact your ability to be successful and improve in sales. Get actionable steps you can do now to develop a sales growth mindset and get the results you seek.

The Covid pandemic has changed our lives forever, from the way we communicate, to the way we think about mental health, and far beyond. We have reorganized our priorities, put a higher value on time with family and friends, and have a greater appreciation for some of the freedoms we used to take for granted. This is no less true in the business world and the day-to-day of our jobs. One of the biggest workforce changes brought about by the pandemic is working remotely. And while many workers have begun to return to the office, a substantial number continue to work remotely or have a hybrid schedule. For some organizations, this new distributed workforce is here to stay. So how do you motivate them appropriately? Download this white paper for insights.

Sales Enablement: How do we do it? The phrase sales enablement has become a standard term in the language of those who support sales performance. There are currently 37 LinkedIn groups with this phrase in their titles. There are software companies, products, consultancies, and all kinds of online resources that include sales enablement in their names, descriptions, or value propositions. It's a great descriptive phrase for marketing products and services, but, like many such catch phrases, means different things to different people. This free white paper from Dr. Carl Binder, originator of The Six Boxes®, will help your sales leadership team understand and implement these concepts and - yes - enable your sales team to perform at its highest potential.

THE KEY IS TO ADDRESS THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES OF SELLING OVER THE PHONE. There are two immediate challenges: Inside sales is different and selling over the phone is difficult. If you manage an inside sales or telesales team, you realize these as the unique hurdles to selling and managing customers over the phone. The purpose of this paper is to share with you experience gained from research in hundreds of organizations since 1996 that will help you respond to areas that are inhibiting the performance of your inside sales organization. By reading this white paper, you will learn: Three simple steps to tripling your success rate over the phone. The one reason a lower level of contact will sponsor you to a higher-level contact. The top two techniques for building value over the phone. Keys to leaving a highly-effective voicemail. How to overcome the five common challenges to discovering honest needs.

Not long ago it was reported that more than 12% of all U.S. jobs are full-time sales positions. That’s a lot of sales reps in need of a whole lot of training.   This demand puts a tremendous amount of pressure on B2B companies to effectively develop and enable their salespeople from the moment they first step through the door. It’s certainly not easy, as developing a high-powered, internal sales onboarding and training program requires investment, planning and, most importantly, time.   Time spent away from the phones.   Time spent out of the field.   Time spent learning instead of selling.

They say what gets measured gets done. But are managers measuring the right metrics when trying to monitor the performance of their teams? Most workplace performance management processes have multiple conflicting intentions, according to an HR expert cited in this report. Insights shared here include five common-sense dynamics that capture a large part of an employee’s performance and why collaboration should be part of every worker’s performance metrics.

Sales enablement, while useful, is ad hoc in practice, thereby neglecting to provide structure to any sales process. Without proper guidance to put your initiatives into practice, your efforts will inevitably fall short and will inadvertently lead to the opposite of structure: chaos. Similarly, many sales processes today are stuck in the why - or in the chaos of poorly defined processes, ad hoc efforts, and unrecognized returns. In other words, sales leaders continue to work overtime on enabling their salesforce with repetitive maintenance strategies, while not spending nearly enough time on executing effectively to grow and scale their sales initiatives.

Today’s buying experience is extremely challenging to navigate - with a plethora of choices, easy access to research, and competing (and often contradictory) voices. Buyers struggle with being overwhelmed, indecisive, and trusting the information that’s presented to them (among other things).   For buyer-facing teams, the struggle is also very real. How can they communicate the value of their solution in a way that meets buyers’ wants, needs, and expectations while meeting their own goals and those of the organization?   We teamed up with Heinz Marketing in a recent research study to discover the roadblocks revenue- generating teams encounter in preparing buyer-facing teams to be ready in today’s market. We did so with a vision of the future to bring you recommendations on how to invigorate sales enablement and facilitate changes for buyer-centric sales strategies to create highly personalized experiences that people and brands will love and therefore increase the bottom line.

ROI in Marketing is a comprehensive guide that empowers marketers to measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts with precision. The book introduces the ROI Methodology®, a systematic approach that helps professionals assess the impact of their campaigns, promotions, and initiatives. A chapter will be shared with all attendees seeking to justify budgets and enhance the effectiveness of their work.

Everyone seems to recognize that sales managers should be coaching. But how? What exactly should they do to maximize their limited and valuable time to get the results they need? In this eBook on Sales Coaching Excellence, Mike Kunkle of Transforming Sales result explains how to maximize results from coaching: Determine where to spend your limited coaching time Use the ROAM model to analyze gaps and know what to coach Determine how to close the gaps (the best solution) Use a behavioral model for field training that gets results Use a behavioral model for sales coaching that gets results Get into a regular cadence of coaching   Download Transforming Sales Results' eBook, "Sales Coaching Excellence" today and get started on your journey to a best-in-class sales force.

Research shows that effective sales coaching can dramatically improve the performance of sales teams - in some cases driving up revenues by 20% or more. But all too often sales organizations find it challenging to develop a sales coaching program that's embedded in a coaching culture.   Read this 5-page white paper and learn best practices and strategies for developing an effective sales coaching program for your sales organization.   In this whitepaper you will learn how to:   Implement a proven sales coaching model Create a coaching culture Use metrics to maximize the ROI on coaching Turn sales managers into great coaches