This blog focuses on the fourth part of the Sales Management Process, the quarterly business review[QBR].  These meetings are held at the beginning of each quarter and in lieu of the monthly sales strategy meeting discussed in the last blog.  These meetings are an integral part of the sales management cadence described by this blog series..  The QBR meetings are individual presentations by the sales rep.  Each rep is given 30 to 60 minutes to review their performance for the previous quarter and their game plan for the new quarter.  The previous quarter review should include a few opportunity postmortems of both close-won and close-lost opportunities.  The QBR meetings are usually done within the first two weeks of the new quarter and set the stage for hitting the current quarter goals.  ...

This blog focuses on the third part of the Sales Management Process, the monthly strategy review.  These meetings are held on a monthly basis, usually twice a quarter, at the beginning of the months when the quarterly business review[QBR] is not being held.  This is a team call with the sales manager and his/her sales team, plus sales support and marketing.  While it may not be feasible to invite marketing to all the one on one’s and sales forecast calls, they should attend the monthly sales meetings and the QBRs.  This will help align marketing and sales. ...

This is a continuation of the previous blog on sales rep coaching.  The prior blog reviewed how sales rep coaching fits within the sales management process and outlined best practices related to “call coaching”, one aspect of sales rep coaching.  This blog focuses another aspect of sales rep coaching --  sales pipeline reviews and detail opportunity reviews.  The next blog will focus on the third aspect of sales rep coaching, sales rep performance one-on-ones.   ...

In my original blog in this series “Best Practices for B-2-B Sales,  I outlined five categories of best practices: The previous five blogs in this series, reviewed the best practices related to data.  The next three categories, Sales Process, Opportunity Management and Pipeline Analytics all are driven off of the sales pipeline. This blog introduces 6 different best practices related to the sales pipeline.  These best practices cut across all  three areas. ...

I’d have to say I agree with 99.9% of the insights in Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson’s book, “The Challenger”, but not all of it. ...

Identifying a sales process for a new business can be difficult. We are a perfect example of how matching your sales process with your customer’s buying habits is extremely important. As we’ve evolved our process and matched it with our customer’s habits, it’s become evident that gaining buy-in from all stakeholders is the most painful part. We came to a realization that getting buy-in from an entire team meant a few things, and one of those things was that we needed to be more transparent with our sales process. Who knew transparency can set expectations without causing an awkward moment? ...

This may seem like a silly question - everyone knows what a sales process is, right? ...

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. ...

The search for the perfect balance between what your sales people say and what the data in your CRM reflects reminds me of reading about Ponce de Leon’s 16th century search for the Fountain of Youth. Expeditions were provisioned and  ships set sail for the new world, but despite great effort and expense, the fountain remained elusive and ultimately undiscovered. ...

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July 3, 2014 ...