Archive

12 Reasons Your Sales Force Will Fail to Make Quota

This post originally appeared here on the Selling Power blog. 2018 is well under way, and sales teams are working to ensure a successful year. Sales leaders have prepared their teams to reach this year’s goals, and the emphasis now is on successful execution. Even if you’ve hired and retained the best people, you may […]

2 Enemies of Improved Sales Management: Inertia and Gravity

This post originally appeared here int he Sales and Marketing Management blog. Frontline sales managers have a difficult job. In fact, we think they have the hardest job in any sales organization. Unfortunately, they’re also a neglected role in most of the companies we know. Despite the varied and intense demands put on sales managers, […]

Top Sales World Article: Research Reveals Why Your Best Sellers Ignore Your Sales Process

8 Really Good Ideas for Salespeople Looking to 2018

#1. Slow Down. You’re operating at an abnormally frenetic pace: daily call reports, weekly conference calls, monthly quotas. Selling is no longer about being the fastest runner—it’s about running the smartest race. If you’re running too fast, you will overshoot your target. Slow down. Slow. Down. #2. Think.  If you slow down, you’ll be able […]

Who Wants Realistic Sales Objectives? Your Salespeople Do

At a recent engagement with a major US company, a senior sales leader posed a question we hear a great deal: How many sales objectives should my sales reps have? It’s an interesting and important question, so I’m going to explore it here. One of the basic beliefs we hold dear at Vantage Point is […]

Sales Ops: Treat Sales Managers as Customers to Drive CRM Usage

In the 1980s, there was a popular cartoon depicting a knight charging into battle. Under a hail of arrows, he ignores a waiting salesperson with a dismissive cry: “I have no time for salesmen! Can’t you see I’ve got a battle to fight?” The rejected seller’s offer: a machine gun. Sellers have long appreciated the […]

How Do You Measure Sales Management?

This post originally appeared here in the ATD blog. In some ways, the sales force is the most measured function in any company. All salespeople have a number (a quota) assigned to them, and progress toward that number is tracked maniacally. However, anyone who has ever tried to measure the ability of a sales team […]

2017 Sales Quotas – How to Have One Heck of a Year!

As a sales leader, you naturally want to get the most out of 2017 and have a good year. If you’re unsure of your path to action, I’d like offer you a chance to do something radically different in 2017, by suggesting you follow these steps. First, identify company strategies currently yielding only marginal improvements, […]

How One Conversation Elevates Sales Results

What separates a great manager from a mediocre one? While there are lots of little actions that divide wheat from chaff, there is one activity that elevates a manager’s performance to the top tier: time spent with reps in meaningful pipeline discussions. Vantage Point conducted research into the practices of high-performing sales teams over the […]