Clinton McDaniel, Enterprise Business Development and Channel Sales Leader at GENBAND, posted this article on LinkedIn on January 28th, and graciously gave us permission to post it on our blog. ...

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). ...

Sales reps don't always give their managers the ability to forecast in one general way. No matter how much a manager will try to promote certain behaviors throughout their sales team, some sales teams will just have a variety of sales personalities that can forecasting an ordeal. However, there are optimal forecasting methodologies for different types of sales reps and knowing the different methods could make or break your quota this quarter. ...

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. ...

Selling is just as much of a science as it is an art. The days of having great sales reps that you just trust to get the job done are coming to an end. The modern sales process is one that prides itself on being repeatable for any opportunity, scalable for any growing sales team regardless of the type of sales reps, and measurable to evaluate effectiveness. To get to the core, sales processes need to be rigorously laid out and be designed to be adaptable to morphing buyer journeys. A critical component for tailoring your sales process are milestones. Once you understand them, your sales process will come to life. ...

Sales leaders know that sales processes are critical for their sales organizations. They add a much-needed layer of quantitative data to a process that can seem non-linear and chaotic at times. Sales processes help map the buyer's journey as the buying paradigm continues to shift more and more into the buyer's control. With the breadth of information produced by a well-constructed sales process, it can often be difficult to focus on the parts of the sales process that tell you about your reps and not about your pipeline. By looking at these 3 parts of your sales process, you can get a better idea of how your reps perform. ...

We talk a lot about the metrics and activities that great sales managers focus on but there is more to it than just quota attainment and metrics. The sales blogging world has created a ton of high-value content on what it takes to be a great sales manager and we would like to highlight a few of ourfavorite gems from the SalesHacker blog. ...

The rise to prominence of sales technology has created a bittersweet market for sales management to work with. The upside is that there are now many different vendors that aim to take data-driven approaches to solving practically anyproblem that sales organizations face. From lead generation to social selling to performance management to sales forecasting, if you have a sales problem there is probably a sales automation tool available for you to implement. However, the downside is that a bountiful market also comes with a lot of noise and shiny objects to distract you from just trying to find the best tool for your team. When you are being demoed the many features that modern sales analytics provides, you should make sure that you can confidently check off these 4 boxes. ...

As the modern world begins to incorporate technology into most of our routine activities, the sales world is beginning to embrace that reality. Many sales organizations are keen to embrace this advantages of new technology, but some are still hesitant because they don't see how technology and analytics seamlessly fit into their current processes. In reality, some things will change with the addition of sales technology, but the changes usually just decrease the time it takes to complete these everyday activities. To go into detail, we can view how sales technology improves the standard sales meeting. ...

Sales forecasting is one of the most frustrating and also important responsibilities of being a sales manager. In many, if not most, organizations, forecasting rolls up to the top executives in the company and goes into the projections for a company's worth and the impact that it will have on the shareholders. This knowledge tends to add extra stress on managers as they try to nail down what their sales reps will actually close in their pipelines. The real issue with modern sales forecasting is that all the stress is completely avoidable and sales forecasting could be much simpler. ...

Managing sales reps in order to see continuous improvement requires establishing a solid sales process. An established sales process serves as a rock-solid foundation that a sales manager can use to compare and coach all the reps.When it comes to managing sales reps within an established sales process, the three major components that matter when it comes to sales performance are messaging, competition, and buying team alignment. ...

Sales meetings - Every sales team have them, but not all sales teams love them. In fact, since CSO Insights reports that sales reps spend just 33% of their time selling, it's very feasible to guess that most sales teams hate their sales meetings. Unfortunately, these meetings are very important for team alignment, sales process feedback, coaching, and management's ability to forecast accurately. If you think your sales meetings are not as productive as you should be, here are 3 signs to check for to be sure that it's time to invest resources in improving your sales meetings. ...

Sales managers have one of the most high-pressure jobs on the market. That's why a top sales manager is such a valuable asset to their company. It's tough enough to have to be in charge of creating and hitting a sales forecasteverysales period, but the best sales managers also must have strong relationships and understandings of their sales reps. Here are ways to crack some of the toughest challenges when it comes to managing your team of sales reps. ...

You made it through another grueling week in the world of sales. If you did it right, you and your sales team are probably wiped out and are ready for the weekend. However, a lot probably happened this week and you willwant to make sure that when Monday comes again, you're ready to go. If you want to put yourself at an advantage next week, you should really make it a point to wrap up your week properly. Here are 3 things that we've found the most successful sales managers do to end their week. ...

  By the sheer number of blogs written on the topic, we can confirm that running an effective sales meeting is a tough accomplishment. According to ToutApp, most salespeople already think they spend too much of their time entering data into the CRM. Add on another non-selling commitment and they now have even less time to actually sell. The good news is that with predictive analytics sales technology, you don't have to sacrifice effective meetings in exchange for shorter ones. ...

Gartner Research reports that Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics tools, such as prescriptive analytics solutions, have been the number one priority for CIOs for the past 3 years and running. The appeal to prescriptive analytics lies in its ability to automate feedback based on the data you've accumulated as a sales team. It standardizes the behaviors of your sales rep by taking out the 'gut-feeling' decisions. As a decision maker when it comes to buying tools, the three best benefits of prescriptive analytics sales tools are: ...

"Find a tool that presents your data in an easy to read dashboard" - That's it. That is the worse advice we've heard when it comes to picking out a sales forecasting tool. The reason is because a dashboard will never solve your true problem. If you're a sales manager with an underperforming sales team or a disorganized sales pipeline, you can look at dashboards all day and not have the information that you need to be successful. ...

Data analysis is nothing new to the sales world. Ever since CRMs, sales teams have found ways to improve their performance by studying their historical data. The introduction of big data and business intelligence tools only catalyzed the need for sales people to have the ability to make sense of their data without completely relying on a sales operations team. ...

As a sales manager, you strive to always get the most out of your team. You find ways to promote their strengths and give them resources to work on their areas for improvement. However, as a sales manager, you want to make sure that you are making the most of your time when it comes to making your reps better. CSO Insights found that only 33% of a sales rep's time is spent actively selling. Imagine how much better your reps could perform if they could get that addition 67% back. What if we told you that you don't need to focus on a bunch of things and that just spending your time on 3 crucial components could significantly improve your sales reps performance? ...

CRMs may be one of the most frustrating and yet crucial components for running a successful sales team. Without a CRM, information about your sales process would be dispersed, unorganized, and incomplete.A world without a CRM would be difficult for sales reps to keep track of how a deal is going and would force them to work fewer deals, much slower. However, using a CRM requires a lot of resources. You must pay for the licenses and the implementation, then you must take time away from your usual revenue-driving behaviors to make sure the CRM is properly set up to your liking, then you must make sure everyone is trained and using it, and then you have to take more time to analyze the data you now have because you have a CRM. So even after going through all of the necessary steps to make sure you CRM works, it is frustrating to realize that your CRM is still very limiting! Here's how to know if your sales CRM is enough. ...