Top five practices of exemplary leadership“Describe a time when you were at your best as a leader.” That was the first assignment we received from Barry Possner, co-author of The Leadership Challenge, at a recent leadership workshop. It set the foundation for a rich conversation about how leadership is personal and reinforced the need to create a relationship if you want to entice others to want to follow you. Read more
New Sales Enablement Ideas – SAVO’s AMPs, Part 7 – Customer Focused ContentYour brand is the key to your success; it’s what differentiates your organization from your competitors. It’s critical for all customer-facing employees to project the brand your organization has worked so hard to establish; everyone must consistently deliver the same message. Yet, it is crucial for your sellers to be able to customize and target messages based on specific selling situations. Read more
How to find the right sales coachThe Sales Playbook is one of my favorite topics. So, when the Corporate Executive Board and their Sales Executive Council (SEC) announced their most recent research was entitled Rewriting the Playbook, How High Performers Win the Consensus-Based Sale, I was one of the first to register for the event highlighting their findings. Read more
What leadership has to do with loveLast time, I wrote about hearing Howard Schultz speak during his book tour for launching Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. It was an eye-opening interview. He spoke about the word “love” and what it means for someone to love what they do, to love the company they work for and to love a brand and what it stands for. Read more
Don’t serve the founder of Starbucks Peet’s CoffeeI had a chance to attend the Los Angeles leg of Howard Schultz’s national book tour launching Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. I’m a big admirer of Schultz’s leadership style and corporate vision. Read more
New Sales Enablement Ideas – SAVO’s AMPs, Part 6 – Subject Matter Expertise PromotionWho are the critical Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) inside your organization? If you’re like most companies, there are far more than you think. Leveraging this army of expert insights can make the difference between success and failure. Identifying and promoting their knowledge isn’t easy – but it is critical to your sales team’s success. Read more
New Sales Enablement Ideas – SAVO’s AMPs, Part 5 – Guided SellingIn the fifth of an eight-part series on SAVO’s new consulting services, titled AMPs, we discuss guided selling. Many of us would call this a sales playbook that provides prescriptive sales guidance based on specific selling situations. But the term sales playbook is a little overused and misunderstood. Read more
New Sales Enablement Ideas – SAVO’s AMPs, Part 4 – Sales IntelligenceThe topic of sales intelligence is our fourth installment in a series about the SAVO AMPs, a group of sales enablement services. One hot topic: How to improve pre-call prep to maximize the impact of every sales conversation and improve post-call follow-up’s efficiency and effectiveness. Face-to-face selling is not inexpensive, therefore we must equip our sales teams for the all-important meeting. Read more