Sales Management / Leadership

Having a successful sales strategy and deploying the correct tactics to execute it is the province of your sales management and leadership team. These posts can help you carry out that mission.

Best strategies to manage your sales team remotely

by Michele McGovern

Who better to lead a remote team than a sales manager?

Probably no one!

After all, many sales leaders have managed a small army of Seldom-Seen-Sarahs and Not-Around-Nates for years.

But nothing is business as usual – including managing a sales team remotely in the coronavirus era.

Sales leaders want to rethink their remote management approaches and try new strategies to help salespeople in an environment where they sell virtually more than ever.

Here are nine tactics, tools and strategies sales leaders will want to adopt when managing a team remotely. Even better, they’re all helpful when you’re working together, too.

Sales leaders’ top challenges – and how to beat them

by Michele McGovern

You were a great salesperson. Now you’re a good sales leader.

Wouldn’t it be good to be great again?

Whether you’re a new sales leader or a veteran, you likely face the same struggles.

Yep, the same.

Why? Because the leadership part of the job is what keeps managers up at night. The people and process issues dig deeper and linger longer than any sales slump.

15 tips to help new sales managers rock the job

by Michele McGovern

Congratulations – you’re the new sales manager! Excited? Scared? You should probably be a little of both. New sales managers have the potential to rock the job – hitting all-time records and propelling the team to new heights. Exciting! On the other hand, about half of new managers fail at the job within two…

10 of the best female motivational speakers

by Michele McGovern

Nearly everyone in sales could use motivation from time to time.

After all, sales is the most demanding, stressful job. And sometimes the rewards – closing a deal, satisfying a customer or building a new relationship – aren’t enough to stay motivated.

That’s when an inspirational word from some of the best speakers can help.

Here’s that help for days you need to be inspired from 10 of the best female motivational speakers.

When personalized pricing works – and when it doesn’t

by Michele McGovern

Smart sales professionals are in prime position to offer personalized pricing. But how do you know when personalized pricing is the smart move?

With personalized pricing, you can take a detailed look at their customers – everything you know about needs, revenue, demands, behaviors and influencers. Then use that information to offer at a price you think will close the deal, benefiting customers and you.

Effective pricing gives loyal customers better deals than customers with no history or relation to the salesperson or company. Plus, you can change terms when needs, demands and the industry shifts.

Companies agree there’s value in personalized pricing: Nearly one-third say there are maximizing opportunities in personalized pricing, a study in Retail Systems Research found.

Truth behind 12 big (and very believable) sales myths

by Michele McGovern

Cold calling is useless. Social selling is the only way. The more leads, the better. Buyers know everything.

Hogwash!

Chalk those claims up to some of worst myths in sales.

They may seem true at times – especially when no one answers your cold calls or buyers say they’ve already researched you.

But research and experience prove the biggest and most believable sales myths wrong.

Here are 12 myths and the research that debunks them:

16 ways AI is changing Sales – and how you can adapt

by Michele McGovern

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed nearly everything – and Sales is no exception.

It affects how customers buy – and how salespeople need to sell.

AI fuels buying choices we make every day – from the shows we watch and the routes our driver takes to the next item we order online.

Recommendation, location and association algorithms are our behind-the-scene buying influencers – and they make AI creepy and cool: Creepy that our devices know and connect so much about us. Cool that what it does is actually helpful.

“The power of selling is moving away from the individual and toward the machine – machines that can now prospect, follow up, present, and propose without human intervention,” says Victor Antonio, author of Sales Ex Machina: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the World of Selling. “In some cases, the machine will obliterate sales functions, while in others it will dramatically shift the locus of the focus further into the sales cycle.”

As with any industry evolution, some changes are good. Some will have a negative impact.

Here are 16 ways AI is changing sales – and how you can adapt with it.

Your ultimate guide to writing kick-butt sales proposals

by Michele McGovern

Sales proposals are essentially paperwork. And next-to-no-one likes paperwork.

But sales proposals must be. Terms, numbers, promises, guarantees, specs and all the other details need to be spelled out and agreed upon – especially in big or complex deals.

So if salespeople must do the proposal, they might as well kick butt doing it.

The best way: Approach sales proposals as a strategic tool to close the sale faster, instead of a don’t think of a final administrative task to get to the sale.

Let’s get down to what a sales proposal should be and how to make it more effective at convincing prospects to sign.

15 sales leadership lessons from top experts

by Michele McGovern

No matter how long you’ve been in sales – from a hot minute to a cool eternity – you can learn something new.

And why not? You don’t need to make all mistakes to learn from them. You don’t have to feel blindfolded as a first-time leader. And you don’t need to live every sales experience to understand all of them.

Instead, you can learn from what some of the top sales experts have gathered in their careers. We’ve compiled many of their best lessons – some learned the hard way, some learned through mentors and others learned through trial and error.

Here’s what our gurus have to say:

13 clues that a prospect’s ‘No’ is close to becoming a ‘Yes’

by Michele McGovern

“We just aren’t making a decision.”

Discouraging words from a prospect. But just the beginning of good things to come.

For sales professionals, a “no decision” isn’t a “no.”

In fact, when prospects say they aren’t ready to decide, they probably are a lot closer to a “yes” than you suspect. They give a lot of clues in what they otherwise do and say. And that’s when you want to shift strategies to get in line with where they are.

Here are 13 signs a prospect is close to a yes (despite claiming it’s a no):

Sales Management / Leadership

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