How to convince customers to buy what you’re selling — even if you’re the “little guy”

Often a company uses dealers or resellers to get their products to market. Enabling the seller in this situation means influencing someone who does not work for you to deliver your message and sell your product. This makes it more complex for the person responsible for supporting the sales team. Continental Tire has found a way to engage their dealers. Read more

Delivering and measuring customer service: This isn’t rocket science!

Sales professionals are unique animals, but typically very competitive and passionate about their roles in organizations. They impart insights to potential customers and steer the prospect towards a decision in favor of their employer. Read more

Free PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #063: Three Categories

Each week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This template will help you organize text so the audience can better remember many items. Read more

New Sales Enablement Ideas – SAVO’s AMPs, Part 8 – First-Line Sales Leadership

The first-line sales manager arguably has the most important role in any organization. Key performance indicators such as percent to plan, growth, close ratios and employee engagement can almost always be linked to the leadership, coaching and mentoring provided by the sales manager. Read more

Failing Forward Step Five: Why

Specific tools for performing root-cause analysis can be applied to get past the symptom and focus on the disease. The root-cause analysis concept originated in manufacturing and is often referred to as “the five whys” because Toyota discovered that, on average, it took on average of five “whys” to get to the root cause. Read more

Free PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #062: Needle in a Haystack

Each week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This template will help you communicate that tough to find solution. Using the “needle in a haystack” reference goes way back. This is simple take on that statement. Read more

Failing Forward Step Four: Let Go and Move On

Conscientious professionals always want to learn more, but the amount of useful knowledge that can be gleaned from revisiting the same ground over again diminishes after a certain point. Strong leaders know when to stop. It will be easier to move on if the analytical work of figuring out what happened and the follow-up work of changing whatever needs improvement are completed. Read more

Failing Forward Step Three: Take Action

The next in our series (see below for links to previous posts) builds on the work entailed in Steps One and Two, and is demanding on many levels. Yet it is not worth doing unless the organization is prepared to follow through on the remaining steps. Read more

Free PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #061: Organize

Each week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This template will help you communicate a “before and after” vision. On the left you have the confusion of many street signs that may represent your current state. On the right, you have a fast moving expressway to convey your future state. Read more

Failing Forward Step Two: Determine Causality

In a continuation of a series on learning from failure (start from the beginning), the second step is to determine the underlying reason or reasons for the loss. This means going through the long list of events assembled in Step One and determining which actually caused the loss. Determining causality is not the same as conducting root-cause analysis. Read more