6 Tips For Sales Managers

Sometimes these quick tip articles provide little usable information.  This article at Eyes on Sales is not one of those articles – there are excellent suggestions within the 6 tips (pay special attention to number 1): Lack of Process – The cure for this problem is to take your time to document the processes associated with finding, acquiring and retaining customers. Don’t make the mistake of focusing only on sales processes, as there are sales support, customer service, operations and many other processes that need to be examined through this exercise. Lack of Proactive Funnel Management – The number one problem facing many sales managers in this area is the… Read More

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How To Size Up Candidates

ManageSmarter has a great article titled, The Ideal Job Candidate: Myth or Reality? that touches on a subject that we have posted on many times.  I cannot begin to tell you how many conversations we have around this subject with clients and prospects.  Jeff Schmitt has 3 points he writes about when it comes to hiring.  As a a hiring manager, I would recommend that you keep these points in mind as you begin a hiring process: Examine yourself. Look at your recruiting effort. Are you still reposting that same job description after another fruitless round of interviews?  Unfortunately, this doesn’t change one element: the problem is you haven’t adapted.… Read More

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What Qualifications Determine Sales Success?

Here’s what we often see from hiring managers or recruiters that focus on a wide variety of positions.  They tend to look for qualifications in their sourcing activities.  Obviously, this approach is warranted and required when sourcing for positions like accountants, medical personnel, IT, engineers and so forth. But what about sales?  What qualifications determine sales success?  A college degree?  5, 7 or 10 years tenure?  Industry experience? The difficulty in sales is that there are so few, if any, verifiable qualifications that properly filter applicants out.  The better approach is to list the skills that the sale requires.  Notice I didn’t write “position?”  The typical sale is what needs to… Read More

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Defining The Sale

Salesopedia.com offers an excellent article titled Top Salespeople Win at the Numbers Game.  The article is a bit of a promo for a specific selling system, but the author provides a list of questions that all sales managers should retain. In the last 6 months: 1. What is the average number of prospects that you attempted to call (dials per week?) 2. What percentage of those dials resulted in contact with a decision maker (not voice mail or a gatekeeper)? 3. Out of all the dialing you did in #1, what percentage resulted in talking to the person who could sign a contract, issue a purchase order, or cut a… Read More

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