How many of you want to get off the wheel and do something for yourself? Who would like to pick with whom you work and invoke the “no @#$hole” rule? Being an entrepreneur is unbelievably hard and under appreciated work. That said, in the season of giving and resolutions, I…
I have spent the past 5 weeks running Strategic Planning sessions for Corporations across North America. I credit these organizations for understanding the opportunity to create alignment, consistency and simplicity by actually having a Plan. There are a couple of realities that I would like to discuss. The first is…
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a conference populated with C-Level executives. Their company size ranged from $20M to $1B+. I was fortunate to be able to interview 10 executives on the subject of sales and how they prefer to be contacted/engaged by sales people. The answers themselves were…
According to recent studies by CEB and others, when your reps get invited into an opportunity [lead, RFP, etc.], the prospect is already 57% of the way through their purchasing process. The implications are significant on your cost of sale and your win rate. Chances are pretty good that the…
I saw this headline the other day and I was intrigued by this concept given the work we do with executives and sales leaders in the area of sales strategy and effectiveness. It was heightened by an inquiry we received from a rep from billion dollar plus organization. She was…
We have talked previously that the concept of strategy is all about growth. Virtually every executive that we speak with has organic revenue growth as one of his or her top priorities. As corporate balance sheets have continued to improve, the volume of acquisitions has continued to accelerate and multipliers…
If Sales Training budgets are diminishing, then Training for Sales Leadership is even further evaporating down the priority list. As the trend continues to hire “Just Add Water” Sales Leaders [domain expertise, worked for larger brands, and other things that don’t actually work], then the corresponding consequence is to rationalize…
This statement sounds obvious. When you think about your respective corporate strategy, the choices you make are about driving sustainable revenue growth. For most corporations [large and small], the concept of strategic planning tends to feel more like the annual budget process. Correspondingly, budgets project revenues, but by their nature…
If you are in a managerial or executive role within your organization, then you wear different hats every day as it pertains to the role within your teams. Let me give you three common roles: Leader, Manager, Coach. This is a balancing act and I would ask you this question.
As someone trained in Lean Six Sigma, I see a lot of content focused on the concept of “Lean”. Eric Ries has had success with “The Lean Startup” and we are proponents of the concept of a Minimum Viable Product, which we used with the launch of our INK Sales…