Selling Power offers up Forget Market Share; Go for the Profits in their sales management newsletter and it is a compelling read. The problem with going after market share as a primary goal is that companies wind up sacrificing profitability in the process. When your whole marketing strategy is about preserving or increasing market share, it€™s easy to get wrapped up in aggressive bidding wars. And it€™s a downward spiral: customers learn to take advantage of that aggressiveness, demanding lower prices, which further erodes profits. It is a slippery slope because in essence a discount in price immediately discounts your value distinction. Businesses that not only articulate their value differentiation… Read More
Continue ReadingCommunicating Your Sales Strategy
From Managesmarter.com’s Crystal Clear Communication: To hear Scott Glatstein tell it, as much as three quarters of American companies “do not broadly communicate their sales strategy” to their sales teams. The result, not surprisingly, is a breakdown in the sales process. Aligning the sales compensation plan with the desired business outcome is a critical component of sales management. One constant with salespeople – they will work the compensation plan to maximize their reward. The article contains a great example: One giant food company Glatstein worked with had lost $20 million in a year because of out-of-date products. The solution from corporate executives was to motivate sellers to avoid food spoilage… Read More
Continue ReadingGross Margin Compensation
From MarketingProfs.com’s Marketing Challenge: Gross Sales vs. Gross Profit: Our star salesman is the best closer I’ve ever seen. He sells products and services. He’s paid a salary plus commission on gross sales. He does have some pricing latitude. I’ve noticed a fairly stable gross profit percentage on products, but it’s much different on service sales. It looks like he’s “giving away” services to get more product sales. Service costs are somewhat vague and hard to accurately measure, but I need to grow the service side of our business profitably. Should I switch his commission structure to a gross profit percentage on services? In a word, yes. Gross profit is… Read More
Continue ReadingTop 10 Selling Mistakes
“Don’t Make These Top 10 Selling Mistakes!” Bet that got your attention. I found it on the Business Buyer Directory which provides a non-traditional means for business buyers to locate businesses for sale worldwide. The article is a couple of years old, but makes some excellent points, in fact ones that applicable to a hiring process. 4. NOT Looking the Part – Selling involves approaching strangers, people who have never met you before. People naturally base purchase decisions on first impressions. Look the part you are playing, or better yet, exceed the common image expectation in your industry. Always dress and groom one level above your targeted audience. It portrays… Read More
Continue ReadingMastering The Complex Sale
If you haven’t bookmarked Salesopedia.com, I suggest you do so now. It is a relatively new site but is full of excellent sales advice. Clayton authors a great sales blog over there that I highly recommend reading. His latest entry discusses an article by one of our favorite sales authors – Jeff Thull – titled Ten Timely Tips For Mastering The Complex Sale. Point number 1 is one we preach: 1. Every sale is not as good sale. About 35% of all sales are bad sales. In one way or another, they leave the customer disappointed or the seller with excess costs and diminished returns. Often salespeople are so concerned… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Management Primer
Selling Power is covering topics near to our hearts this Valentine’s Day. A Primer for New Pharmaceutical Sales Managers discusses some of the challenges facing new sales managers and provides 5 key tips. Obviously the context is the pharmaceutical industry, but these challenges are consistent throughout industries. I couldn’t agree more with this statement from the article: “The biggest mistake new pharmaceutical managers make,” Williams says, “is failing to properly evaluate the sales team’s strengths and weaknesses prior to developing and implementing a firm plan of action for the team’s sales improvement and increased goal attainment.” Amen to that statement. In fact, we see this error play out amongst existing… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Manage Gen X and Gen Y
CareerBuilder.com’s latest newsletter features Managing Outside Your Generation which discusses the differences in managing Gen X employees vs. Gen Y employees. The article is a good, hands-on read for any manager. To cut to the summary statement of the article: Generation X requires more training, whether on-the-job or through continued education, and feedback on a regular basis. Generation Y also requires a higher amount of feedback than what you may be used to, but they also desire greater flexibility and the freedom to run with a project once it is assigned to them. Good advice and insight. Then there is this specific suggestion: If you are not doing so already,… Read More
Continue ReadingDealing With The Insufferably Arrogant
No, I’m not talking about Trump. Selling Power has an article titled How to Handle the Devil without Getting Burned. We’ve blogged often about the most insufferable salesperson we have encountered in our years of working with sales departments. Now that I have read this quick article, I have found the perfect description of him. Often there’s a rep who is good, who knows he is good, and who repeatedly lets others know about it. This is a person who is arrogant, abrasive, and obnoxious with co-workers, and who sometimes bullies those beneath him or her on the totem pole, says Graham Scott. Yet when the person is a top… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Recover From A Big Mistake
Yahoo Hot Jobs offers Bounce Back After A Big Mistake. The article provides 6 steps for recovering from a significant error. This topic is of great importance in hiring strong salespeople. Sales requires people who have a unique ability to handle rejection and move on without flinching. Similarly, strong salespeople take responsibility for their actions, including failures. And let’s add one more – strong sales managers hold their salespeople accountable and do not accept excuses. You can see how interrelated all of these topics are to sales success. This article offers straight-forward advice for dealing with a big mistake. Here is the one that caught my attention: 1. Own it.… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Etiquette Of Retention
Does ‘Thank You’ Help Keep Associates? from CareerJournal.com takes a look at turnover/retention issues at a major law firm. Scary, I know. However, there is a good lesson in here in regards to retaining top employees. First the setup from the article: Faced with a surge in turnover of its associates, the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has been putting on a charm offensive to hold onto junior lawyers. The presentation showed that the New York firm, now with about 625 lawyers, lost 31% of its associates in 2004 and 30% in 2005. The average associate attrition rate for law firms of about that size or bigger for… Read More
Continue Reading