Is your organization customer-driven, or driven from the top-down? Here are quotes from two business books, “In Search of Excellence” (Tom Peters, Robert Waterman, Harper-Row, 1982) and “Best Laid Plans” (Alan Weiss, Las Brisas, 1990) Read more

Sales 2.0. That’s the latest buzzword for sales management. It’s the next silver bullet. It’s going to solve all of our problems we have managing and directing a sales force. Or will it? Read more

 “Fake Work”, Brent D. Peterson, Gaylan W. Nielson; Simon Spotlight Entertainment (Simon and Schuster), 2009. Read more

It’s uncanny how large business organizations have the ability to beat employee excellence into compliant, blind, mind-numbing submission. It’s equally uncanny how organizations can reward mediocrity, poor performance, and bad behavior because they don’t want to confront the issue for fear of hurting the perpetrator’s feelings. Read more

The question is often asked, “Are salespeople born or made?” With few academic institutions offering curriculums in sales, and fewer and fewer corporations investing in the development of their salespeople, it appears that successful salespeople today are born. In the very least, they are self-taught. Isn’t the same true of sales managers? Managing salespeople requires an entirely different management/ executive skill set than is taught in MBA programs. While the title of the subject matter is “Are Sales Managers Born or Made?”, maybe the question ought to be “What are the attributes of an effective sales manager?” Read more

Trust- The following comment was published in the September 2009 Harvard Business Review: Read more

When it comes to understanding the role of sales and how to maximize sales performance, not too many business cultures “get it”.  Read more

The cover of the Harvard Business Review is titled, “Rebuilding Trust”, and is chock full of articles about what executives have to do to learn and earn trust. In Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, the (then) new General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, and some of his old school scouts disagreed about whether or not to pick a baseball prospect because the player had great athletic ability, but wasn’t a good hitter. The discussion went like this: Read more

How do we know our salespeople are out there selling everyday for us?
In the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, J.A. Sexauer used to require that his salespeople fill out a daily call report log and mail it in to his office in New York. Then, he expected a weekly summary report.
In the late 60’s, he stopped requiring the daily reports because his 75 salespeople were apparently out selling- and he could tell by the continuously growing sales numbers. Read more