Geoffrey James at the Sales Machine recently interviewed Michael Dell and posted his interview. I have included some of the most interesting comments from Dell. On Competition: “Sometimes it’s a battle, but sometimes we’re clearly working with a number of companies to grow an industry. I think the leading companies tend to be able to
Selling Power Interview with Dave Stein discussing approaches to sales training. His company, ES Research, helps sales management and corporate training organizations evaluate, select and implement sales training and productivity improvement programs. Some interesting notes from the interview: US companies spend $4B per year on sales training only 20% of companies measure the effectiveness of
Our friend Brian Jeffrey, President of Salesforce Assessments, recently sent out this articles on hiring superior sales people and we thought you would be interested in reading it as well. ================ Nobody deliberately sets out to hire salespeople who can’t or won’t perform. But it happens, and it happens more than you might expect.
I love quarter end. Having spent many years selling myself, I remember the rush of the countdown and closing everything you can to hit your quota and get into accelerated commissions. I also enjoyed the competition amongst all the reps hustling hard and getting super creative to not only hit their own numbers, but to
There is a cliché that sales people don’t typically have the best resumes, so there is a tendency to dismiss or reduce the importance of the resume in sales hiring. And good selling is about the personal interaction anyway, right? Well, most of us don’t have time to meet everyone to find our whether they
How are your numbers looking one month into the quarter? We polled our network of VP Sales to see what is at the top of their dashboard for evaluating the health of the sales effort running towards quarter end. Here are the top responses: 1. Pipeline – is it above or below the target multiple
Right now with a lagging economy, there are more sales reps on the street or looking for work. Many companies with open sales positions have a deluge of applicants, desperate to secure a job. Successfully screening sales applicants is one of the toughest jobs at the best of times, but when there is intense competition
A colleague pointed me to a great Seth Godin post this morning on hiring (thanks G): “It only takes 10% as much effort to hire someone in the bottom 90% of the class. And it takes the other 90% to find and cajole and retain the top 10%.” Many companies are lackadaisical about hiring, so
Spending on marketing vs. spending on sales in B2B companies? The debate over which path yields higher results will continue into perpetuity. In a recent SoftwareCEO.com article, author Maureen Blandford asks some good questions about how marketing investments actually benefit B2B sales: “what happens if you stop producing marcom material, for a year? And most
Great short post about how many recruiters fear sales assessments –> (Many Recruiters Fear Sales Assessments, by the Objective Management Group, a sales assessment company so it’s a bit of an advertorial). He is right that most recruiters, are not inclined to use assessments – and it should be no surprise, whether they are internal
