04
2015
Use It, or Lose It!
One of the biggest problems with any kind of training today is that what is learned in those training classes is lost in a very short period of time. According to findings by the International Journal of Project Management, “Around 40% of the knowledge acquired in training is lost after 1 month, rising to 90% after 6 months.” Those statistics shouldn’t be a surprise to…
28
2015
Just-In-Time Sales & Marketing Resources
Most of us will relate to the term “Just In Time” to Supply Chain Management of resources and goods for manufacturing. The concept is designed to eliminate companies ordering and storing all of the items they need in inventory in order to reduce the cost of warehouse space and reduce overhead. So they work with their suppliers to provide the items they need just when…
16
2014
Do you use Sales Performance Management?
In his latest research for Aberdeen, Peter Ostrow has uncovered some interesting insights into some key problems around sales management and their attempt to deal with sales performance. Simply managing a sales team today has changed dramatically over the years and the old “carrot and stick” method no longer works like before. Today’s sales managers need to be more creative and use concepts like “Gamification”…
16
2013
Sales Enablement brings about Sales & Marketing Alignment
I just finished a great research brief “Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Last Frontier of Marketing-Sales Alignment”, from Peter Ostrow and Trip Kucera of the Aberdeen Group. In it they make some excellent points around the value of having a Sales Enablement process to better align Marketing and Sales. The relationship between B2B marketing and sales teams is more than just about leads and lead management….
24
2013
Is your company message on target?
This week’s blog post was influenced by a couple of different resources and both came from two different LinkedIn discussions. The first came from a link that Michael Cannon provided from some research that his Silver Bullet Group did called “Customer Communication Effectiveness Index” (www.silverbulletgroup.com/research). The second came from a link in a discussion that I currently have running in the Sales / Marketing Executives…
02
2013
Great Things Happen When People Collaborate
I’m not sure whether you have noticed the number of discussions, articles, webinars and postings around the whole concept of collaborating. Obviously, there is a lot of value in being able to do just that and it comes out in a number of different ways. One of the ways that we see collaboration working a lot is through the creation of something. That something could…
08
2012
Why your sales people need knowledge NOT information
Salespeople are inundated with information. The problem is that they will very often waste a tremendous amount of time sifting through masses of content to find exactly what they need. Clearly, that is a very inefficient process. What salespeople really need and want is just-in-time sales knowledge that is specific to their company, customers, competitors and products. Information alone simply isn’t nearly as valuable as…
11
2012The Top-20 challenges salespeople face
Sales directors and managers spend much of their time thinking about what types of advice, tools and support they can give to their teams in order to improve productivity and performance. That got me thinking. To provide the most effective support for salespeople, you first need a detailed understanding of what challenges, problems and issues they face on a regular basis. So I made a…