Beyond the Sales Process focuses on the frontline of engagement with customers. It is specifically intended for salespeople, account managers, their managers, and sales leaders, as well as others who have responsibilities and pressures associated with developing and winning business, and those who are tasked with extending and expanding their relationships with customers.

Think about your most recent sales training or the last sales book you read. It was all about the sale, right? Closing the deal. Making it happen. Taking control. But things are different in 2017.

As social networks like LinkedIn have continued to grow, leveraging them to increase sales leads has become increasingly popular. It even launched the term "Social Selling". The practice involves two primary activities: 1.  Outbound Prospecting - Using a "database" of connections to find and connect with ideal prospects via introductions, referrals and research. 2.  Inbound Marketing  - Content-related engagement by salespeople in cooperation with their company’s Marketing department.

Each sales opportunity presents its own unique dilemma in terms of identifying the "real buyer". Further examination of a sales opportunity will yield additional information regarding the viability of the opportunity as it relates to the product and service offerings available from the salesperson's company. One of the most important steps in the sales process is to identify the real buyer ‐ an individual I'll call the "relevant executive" for the sales opportunity. Recent research (like that shown in my book Selling to the C‐Suite) shows that key executives typically get involved early in the buying cycle to understand the issues creating the need for a solution. They will often delegate the middle phase of the buying cycle—exploring options, setting vendor criteria and evaluating solutions—to others at lower levels of the organization. Senior executives also get involved in the project again during the final phase to help plan the implementation and measure the results. That’s why waiting to get involved with an organization when the RFP is initially received can be problematic. The better strategy is to gain access to the relevant executive early in the buying cycle, at a time when it is possible to actually influence RFP criteria by showcasing the benefits and value of your products or services. Click below to download this paper to help you and your team develop the right strategy for targeting and engaging with the right - and relevant - executive.  

It is a fact—you can’t move from a needs-based selling proposition to a value-based proposition without knowing how your customer creates value. Unfortunately, most salespeople don’t have a clue how their customers create value, or what questions to ask about the value creation process to uncover hidden needs.

Throughout this eBook, you will learn 11 key strategies that will help you position your profile to be seen as a thought leader and subject matter expert, leverage your existing network to gain access to decision makers and engage with people who are engaging with you.

If your sales team isn't producing the results expected, the pressure is on you to fix the situation fast. One option is to replace salespeople. A better option is for you to optimize your performance as a sales leader. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, sales management consultant Kevin F. Davis offers 10 proven and distinctly practical strategies, skills, and tools for overcoming the most challenging obstacles sales managers face and moving your team ahead of the... (click below to download excerpts from this eBook)

Whether you are reporting progress, leading a meeting, or giving a sales pitch your ability to present is measured in large part by how well you communicate. How you say it is just important as what you say! Becky will share simple, creative methods to capture interest, lock in attention, and communicate value clearly. You’ll learn techniques to capture attention, motivate people to action and build productive working relationships.

Everyone knows that gaining access to executives is often critical to success in B2B sales.  However, suppose your sales teams are not gaining access to the right executives in the client organization!  If your sales teams are not focused on identifying the relevant executive for the sales opportunity, they may be at a competitive disadvantage.

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."  

If your sales team isn't producing the results expected, the pressure is on you to fix the situation fast. One option is to replace salespeople. A better option is for you to optimize your performance as a sales leader. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, sales management consultant Kevin F. Davis offers 10 proven and distinctly practical strategies, skills, and tools for overcoming the most challenging obstacles sales managers face and moving your team ahead of the... (click to download excerpts from this eBook)

LinkedIn is the most powerful sales tool for today's sales professional IF you know how to use it effectively.  If you're still thinking of the old (2016) LinkedIn or you're not confident in your abilities as an expert in using the new 2017 version of LinkedIn, you're losing out to competitors who are.  

Why are most presentations so bad? Truly terrible?  Few people enjoy creating, delivering, or watching PowerPoint presentations, so let’s change that. You may recall the quick fire selection of Awesome PowerPoint tricks covered in the December webinar. This session builds on that with techniques to create mind blowing presentations. 

We all know coaching is important. We all know it can make a huge difference. So why aren’t you seeing more results from your team, for your coaching efforts?

CSO Insights’ 2017 Sales Manager Enablement Report compared the win rates on forecasted sales opportunities between companies with a formalized approach to coaching—meaning there is a standard approach used by all sales managers—to those companies where coaching strategies were entirely left up to the manager or done informally. Their findings provide proof as to why a sales coaching initiative at your company is so important: companies who had adopted a formal approach to sales coaching achieved a win-rate on forecasted deals that was 19% higher. In short, developing a strong sales coaching culture offers a great ROI. And great leverage: Each sales manager trained is then empowered to improve the win rates of every sales rep on their team. Here are seven keys that will move you in that direction.

It’s the common sales manager nightmare: your salesperson comes in with a "great opportunity," but the customer needs a massive discount. Why does this happen so often? Because your salespeople only know how to bargain ("he wanted a 20% discount, but I talked him down to accepting only 10%!"). What we really want salespeople to do is negotiate in a way that strengthens the relationship with the customer while keeping a good profit for you. In this session, you will learn how to get your salespeople to negotiate their way to success and not bargain away your profits.

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?

Coaching and leadership are about people. People are unique and to compound the situation they behave differently under varied circumstances. So is it not an overstatement to suggest that there is a framework that can be applied to achieving greater success with people and through them? I will answer with my standard mini-exercise. Assume you are a recruiter. You are asked to identify a Field Commander for a hot war zone as well as a Guidance Counsellor for an all-girls high school. Did your mind automatically paint different pictures as to who will fill the roles? Intuitively, you recognize the differences but what are the factors that brought you to that conclusion? Also, what if the roles were not so far apart, could you intuitively distinguish among candidates? That is role and the value of a reliable framework. For decades, as a member of member of the Extended DISC™ network, I have been using an approach that I call DISCerning Communication to drive healthy interpersonal relations among a cross-section of groups. When people experience others communicating with them in a manner that is comfortable for them the opportunities for positive cooperation increases exponentially. Someone referred to it as communicating from inside the head of the other person. Course after course, webinar after webinar, article after article I receive encouragement to present DISCerning Communication principles in a concise publication to a wider audience. This is your invitation to join the mission and make a positive difference in how we communicate and relate to others.

The steps in the sales cycle have remained consistent over the years. What's changed are the tools that top sellers use to win more business. More and more, digital sales tools require salespeople to think and act like marketers to attract prospects.

Self-discovery is one of the bedrocks of effectively guiding individuals to a desired outcome. Trying to move people forward without a proper appreciation of where they are can have negative consequences.   Another obstacle in the way to outstanding coaching results is the challenge of establishing rapport between coach and coachee. How we rue those painful hours when the communication just does not work. It is like you are speaking different languages.   Well in fact you may be - behaviorally, speaking a different language.

Month after month it’s the same pattern. A rep (or two) misses quota. You sit down for a 1-on-1 to discuss results and goals, to motivate the rep to sell more! Yet nothing changes. Results remain stagnant or perhaps even get worse. Your CEO is demanding growth, so now what?

Companies can provide all the fancy sales tools and training in the world, but unless each salesperson starts with the right mindset, they will not achieve peak performance. Over the past few years, neuroscience and cognitive psychology research have revealed proven methods for developing a peak performance mindset. Originally popular in sports, now the practices are being applied to B2B sales.

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.

Many sales reps struggle to make quota and many companies fail to achieve growth goals. Well-known selling methodologies no longer provide enough differentiation. Worse, even the methodologies that have been around for 50 years, like consultative selling, aren’t widely adopted (at mastery levels). We still sell transactionally and superstitiously. In this webinar on his Sales Transformation Straight Talk™ channel, sales transformation expert Mike Kunkle will share:   The consultative skills that provide differentiation Why they’re not enough and what else to do How to implement a sales methodology so it sticks