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.

Uncommunicated expectations are often unmet expectations. That won't fly when you are trying to talk with your customers' executives! With complex solutions, often it becomes clear that higher-level support is required to make the sale. What does it take to engage your customers' executives in a meaningful way? "C"-suite executives are busy and hard to reach. They are, however, willing to meet with salespeople, but with very specific expectations. In order to be effective, your sales people need to plan carefully for the call, do their homework, and, most importantly, understand those "secret" expectations. 

How well are your B2B organization’s sales and marketing behaviors, practices and processes reliably and sustainably producing required outcomes? Are you mired in chaos, spending lots of time getting little done? Are you like most companies, achieving just average results and not knowing why? Or are you among the few that are kickin’ it?

Every leader needs a framework to become and remain successful. When all is said and done, there are five critical business levers that, when used properly, turn good leaders into great ones.

According to ATD’s 2016 State of Sale Training report, organizations spend an average of $954,070 per year on sales training. One of the top three barriers to making it work is the inability to tie training to sales performance. This webinar offers steps you can take to demonstrate how your training is driving sales performance and the value that performance adds to the organization. Join Jack and Patti as they describe how the ROI Methodology is applied to sales training.

Distribution channel partners have their own priorities. Getting their time and attention can be an enormous challenge. But if your success depends on distributors, dealers, agents or retailers selling your products, engaging these channel partners is mission critical.

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.

Branded currency plays a critical role in a merchant’s marketing mix and customer retention strategy. Gift cards, points, loyalty, rewards and promotional value all help merchants expand their market share, reach new corporate customers and retain those customers. As branded currency continues to evolve and promotional and loyalty programs grow more complex, merchants are increasingly teaming up with specialized prepaid card companies to turbocharge their B2B gift card sales. From basic fulfillment to lead management and fraud prevention, this guide is designed to walk merchants through the considerations of setting up and launching a successful B2B gift card program.

At a time in the sales profession when only 50-60% of reps make quota and over 20% of opportunities end in No Decision, there is massive room for performance improvement and growth in most sales forces. In many organizations, the Pareto Principle is alive and well-meaning that 80% of the revenue is delivered by the top 20% of sales reps.

How a Sale Was Lost Ann was not happy as she left the meeting with a long-term customer—now a former customer. "Ann, we have done business together for a long time," her customer started, "but we have decided to go in a different direction this time." Her customer went on to say how ABC Company, one of Ann’s biggest competitors, worked with them to integrate ABC Company’s solution into their own systems, resulting in faster inventory turns with fewer shipping errors. And they were able to demonstrate how this will increase margins and profit for the company. ABC Company’s salesperson sold value. The Selling to Value approach requires the salesperson to develop an ever-expanding mindset and skillset—and it requires a commitment to a purpose that goes beyond self-interest to include both the interests of the individual customer and the interests of that customer’s organization.  

Sales manager and sales leader jobs are similar, overlap, and are often conducted by one person. Yet there is a huge difference between a typical sales manager and the ultimate sales leader. The sales manager’s position is largely daily management including coaching and directing the sales team. On the other hand, sales leadership is long term, focusing on strategy, planning, making future, long-range decisions. The successful sales manager must grow and eventually transform to a sales leader who can execute both jobs together.  

As a Sales Manager, your role is to manage sales AND lead people. This handy reminder includes simple models for building 2-way trust, actively listening, giving quality feedback, and coaching -- the essential ingredients for enablement and ennoblement that you'll need to lead.   Click below to download this Infographic.

Bar charts and pie charts have their place, but they only take you so far. This session will show you the secret ins and outs of Microsoft Office to create unique and highly visual charts such as Proportional Shapes, Panel Charts, Bullet Graphs, Unit Charts and more in PowerPoint and Excel.

The shift to less face-to-face interaction with customers and prospects isn’t a 2020 development. Buyers have increasingly embraced completing their own research for years. A Sales Benchmark Index survey from 2017 reported that in nearly 75% of sales situations, customers prefer not to meet in person. Though many field sales reps are already accustomed to using web meetings or phone calls to navigate some of the sales process, what is new for a large percentage of sellers is 100% reliability on virtual interaction to sell. And there are some industries that still rely on printed catalogs and handshakes to close deals — "knuckle and hand kinds of businesses" as one source we spoke with calls them. What does it mean for B2B sales managers as they strategize for 2021? Is it necessary to train sales reps on new skills? What components of an existing sales process transfer well to virtual interactions? What should sales kickoffs look like?   Download this Focus Report to learn more.

This webinar will teach a three step reverse sales coaching model that helps drive performance and results. Often, we tend to apply sales coaching and training in a very linear fashion; whereas, this webinar will teach a very unique three step methodology that will help sales leaders uncover the following:

This webinar will teach some of the most innovative ways to use feedback to drive training And talent development. During this webinar we will teach some of the most innovative ways to not only provide instruction and how to deliver feedback that is accepted yet also how to develop employee feedback acceptance strategies to maximize training serving as a training reinforcement tool.

Competencies are often talked about in HR and talent circles, but less commonly in sales. In fact, competencies seem kind of nerdy and confusing to many sales leaders. Should we be teaching sales methodology aligned with sales process, or should we focus on the sales competencies?

One-way facilitation, where virtual trainers ask one question and move on to the next subject, is like the - Hi!, Hello, and Good-bye!" - conversation. The virtual trainer signals to the learner that the learning is bound to be shallow, most likely lacking depth, expectedly boring, and possibly a total waste of time.  For virtual learners to be engaged, we need to facilitate penetrating and in-depth conversations. We want learners to be glued to your session - all ears, excited, and anticipating the end of the session so they can quickly apply ideas.

This webinar will teach conversational skills that can expand sales performance and results. Sales has so many situations that sales reps need to be ready for; therefore, it's imperative that reps are conversational ready. Often success can be attributed to product knowledge or relationships when in fact what we say, how we say things and when we say things can often deter or accelerate the sales process.

Selling is social — but onboarding new revenue professionals often lacks the social and collaborative aspects of actual sales. This is especially true in virtual learning, when new sellers are onboarded ad-hoc or with LMS-based experiences that do not equip them with the sophisticated capabilities they need to drive revenue growth. 

The real reason Q4 stresses your sales team is… Standard prospecting tactics stop working. Your sales reps quickly fall into a pattern of self-defeating thoughts like prospects don’t have budget. Or, it’s year end. Decision makers are too busy to talk.  

Getting appointments, having business qualifying conversations and selling to high-level, Executive Decision Makers is more important now than ever before! Unfortunately, it’s also more challenging than ever before! Perhaps, until now!  

In a world where nearly half of all B2B buyers would prefer a rep-free buying experience, the timeless mantra of selling - "Always Be Closing" - is, well, not so timeless. The new ABCs of selling are "Always Be Credible," says C. Lee Smith, CEO of SalesFuel, a sales intelligence and enablement firm. To get facetime with B2B purchase decision-makers, salespeople need to be viewed as trusted advisors. They can’t earn trust unless they are first perceived as having a high degree of credibility, Smith says. A new sponsored Focus Report from SalesFuel and Sales & Marketing Management examines: How sales professionals can develop the sort of credibility that opens prospects’ doors Why building credibility starts before you even meet a prospect Research on what buyers want from sellers (It goes way beyond product knowledge) 6 tips for building a strong online presence The report also features contributed articles from sales experts Anthony Iannarino on how today’s successful salespeople gain buyers’ confidence, and from Jeffrey Gitomer on the secret to getting all the referrals you could ever hope for.

Download this special report loaded with additional findings from the study. Plus, you'll get insider tips for executive leaders and middle managers.