I’ve been writing a lot about our Sales Execution Framework and a “Back To Basics” approach to sales management and selling. These articles have generated some interesting calls and reactions. A lot of the discussion has been around sales training programs, new approaches, or new tools that companies have implemented—or tried to implement. I had […]
Dave Brock
Sales Pipeline: Quantity or Quality?
You probably think this is a trick question, the answer is obvious, isn’t it? Be careful before you respond too quickly…… Now, I’ve got you worried and wondering, particularly long time readers. Many of you would say, Quality. You would be partly right. “Aha,” you think, “It’s both!” You would be partly right. Now you […]
Sales Coaching, One Size Never Fits All
Too often, our sales coaching, if we do it, really misses the mark. We tend to look at things the same way, coaching our people the same way—when what they really need may be very different. Let me use an example. It is actually based on a real customer situation, but provides a great illustration […]
Sales Performance Improvement, Where to Start
I wrote, “Improving Sales Performance Without Changing How You Sell.” Readers started responding, “This is great, where do we start?” Here are some thoughts: “One size fits all:” Too often, we have a “one size fits all” approach to performance improvement. We focus on one thing, for example prospecting or pipeline coverage, and inflict this on the entire […]
Building Your Personal Brand—Again
There’s a lot of discussion about how important it is for salespeople to “build their personal brands.” I’ve written about this topic several times before, even using the same title before. But it’s a topic, as much as I wish would go away, doesn’t. But what does it mean to build our personal brands? Many […]
Building on Shaky Foundations
It was an interesting conversation. I was meeting with a very thoughtful sales executive. He was about to make some pretty big investments in training and in technology tools. I asked him why he was making those investments, he replied, “We really need to raise the skills and productivity of the sales people. They aren’t […]
Coaching Has a Shelf Life
We are most effective in coaching when we are focused on an observable behavior. That is, “I observed you doing this…” “When this happens, you tend to do…” “What would happen if…” Observable behaviors critical to effective coaching. They provide the context for the conversation. But observable behaviors have a shelf life, or use by […]
Do Just This One Thing!
Imagine coaching a basketball player, “All you have to do is master your foul shots, they are the single most important thing to win games.” All of us, even those who don’t play basketball, would say this is ridiculous coaching. We would argue you have to master everything—dribbling, passing, inside and outside shots, defense, playmaking, […]
What is Networking?
In the “old days,” networking seemed to be about meeting people, learning about them, building a bit of a relationship. There was value in networking. Often, our networking may have been a passing meeting, a chance to get to know someone for a few moments, have an interesting conversation, only to move on in our […]
“What Could Go Wrong?”
It seems to be human nature that we don’t want to think about what could go wrong. Particularly in sales, we are continually optimistic, we want to be positive, particularly with our customers. So why would we ever want to talk about what could go wrong? Particularly when we are in the middle of the […]
