Jim Eberlin is founder of TopOPPS.  Jim posted this blog on Linkedin.  It was just a few weeks ago that I was preaching that in order to stay on top of things to give my team and customers what they needed, solve problems and make sure things don't fall through the cracks - I had to be in person.  Obviously that has changed - like it or not. ...

Maximizing Reps Sales performance is the number one objective for Sales Leaders. We have published a step-by-step guidebook that does just this - Maximize Sales Performance. But in short, the following details what every Sales Leader needs to know like the back of their hand. ...

Most sales leaders analyze their pipeline the same way they’ve done it for years - this is why sales is still a grind, forecasting is still a struggle, and there are still surprises and disappointments at the end of the sales period. Your pipeline analytics should answer these questions with precision: ...

Frontline sales managers have to coach, manage, be engaged with and sell alongside the sales team. They need to understand the analytics of how a deal moves through the sales funnel to be more effective in coaching. ...

One of the most valuable qualities in life is your ability to maximize the value of anything you buy, acquire, or are given. You have to know when you’re leaving money on the table, paying too much or not getting enough value out of something. ...

Do you "trust" your forecast? For many, it’s that time again…..It’s time to forecast for next quarter.  For serious sales leaders, this is no trivial task. ...

A sure-fire method to extend the sales cycle, add confusion to the forecast, and lose more deals is to have an informal sales process.  Having a B2B sales process that’s too simplistic leads to inconsistency and confusion. Imagine if a recipe just listed “add ingredients, mix, then heat”. Or a football running play, like the counter, was described as “run, fake, handoff”.  You would not have much success in the outcome of either of those scenarios.  So, don’t expect much sales growth when you have a few general sales stages that leaves a lot to the imagination.  Your reps will be all over the place when they strategize on next steps, report deal status or provide a forecast.  Your sales process has to be well aligned with the activity that goes into a successful sale - that is based on how your customers buy.  It should also help in making decisions on next steps and be consistently understood by the entire sales team (sales rep, sales ops, sales management). ...

Business Intelligence software for sales reporting is missing the mark.  It makes it easier to build a report with elegant looking graphs - but the substance of the reports doesn’t provide real information.  Most often, sales analytics produced from BI tools is just a roll up of numbers called out in a forecast call.  So the sales leader and the sales rep have a lot of work to do to make these reports provide any value. ...

A modern approach to consistency in the sales process. A sure-fire method to extend the sales cycle, add confusion to the forecast, and lose more deals is to have an inconsistent sales process. ...

The TopOPPS Dashboard tells the complete story of your current pipeline. Will I hit my number? The dashboard is used to show if we are going to hit our number - and if not, options to fill the gap. ...

Step 1: Coaching on Sales Techniques and Process ...

Step 1: Coaching on Sales Techniques & Process ...

Step 1: Coaching on Sales Techniques & Process ...

Flawed thinking has it that there’s nothing important or exciting about the “middle.”  Just ask Jan Brady or any nose tackle on a defensive line.  But the middle of your sales funnel is really important – opportunities have to be watched and decisions made based on status and progress.  Which ones will make it?  Which ones will fall out? What’s my next step?  The decisions we make on opportunities in the middle of the pipeline will prevent surprises later and will help us to put the right resources on the right deals at the right time.  If we don’t make the right decisions, or worse, neglect these deals, it usually results in fallout, or what I call “zombie” deals that linger around cluttering up the pipeline. These zombie deals steal time away from us on thought process, manager conversations and important resources.  If we do go about it the right way though, more closes, faster cycles and accurate forecasts happen. ...

What information can you extract from your sales forecast or sales pipeline? Does it help management understand which deals will close? Can management and the sales team rely on it? How confident does management feel when they discuss with senior management or the board about deals that are closing? ...

Usually when I hear the word “share”, it’s in a positive connotation and it’s in a sentence declaring something we should do. “We should share” is something we’ve heard since we were kids.  So, what if we completely shared our sales process with our prospects and existing customers that we have opportunities with? Could it be that we could engage more, drive deals quicker and be more predictive of which will close as a result? ...

Inaccurate sales forecasts are a great way to kill the board’s confidence in you.  So, let me tell you a personal narrative having to do with that. Right after getting out of a board meeting once, I found out that my sales forecast was way off.  A few of my bigger deals fell out that really changed the outlook.  It was one of my first board meetings with this particular group of investors, and I was hoping to gain a lot of confidence out of the gate. This did not help. ...

Overview As founder of two market-leading tech startups, and now a third company that is well on its way to be, I have a lot of experience in building sales teams. One thing that I’ve picked up along the way is that you have to be extremely aware of your company’s stage to determine the best time for adding to the team. Below are three stages typically experienced, and the strategies implemented based on where we were at as a company. This is my personal account of what we did and why. ...

Overview In the previous post of this three-part series, we talked about the importance of sales management’s role in optimizing the pipeline.  This second part of the series talks about the impact of various roles of a sales team in the creation of an accelerated pipeline.  We will specifically look at the focus areas of sales representatives and sales operations and how they should interact. ...