Friday January 27, 2012
When I was running a Public Storage property in a college town, early September was our busiest time of year by far. I often had five or six families in the office lined up and waiting to rent units. And then in June, all those students would empty their units and leave... and since I was partly comped on occupancy rates, my commission check would take a sharp and depressing dive.
Most salespeople notice a similar rhythm in their sales. During certain weeks or months of the year, customers pour in and salespeople find themselves taking orders rather than selling. And during other weeks, the sales seem to stop altogether. This ebb and flow is most pronounced in certain industries - especially retail stores - but most products have some seasonal aspect.
Seasonal Selling
Related Reading
Managing Your Sales Pipeline
Keeping Confidence Up Even When Sales Are Down
Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto
Wednesday January 25, 2012
Webinar Wednesday is a celebration of all things webinar. You will find upcoming webinars, links to recorded webinars for those who missed them on the first go-round, and occasional recaps of webinars I recently attended.
New Webinars:
"Boost Email Relevance: 8 Steps That Drive Results" (Thursday, January 26th 2:00 pm ET) - hosted by Lyris. How to develop compelling emails and subject lines, particularly for smartphone users.
"Sales Effectiveness Best Practices For 2012" (Thursday, February 2nd 2:00 pm ET) - hosted by Callidus. Using in-the-cloud tools to bump up sales. Warning: Callidus makes in-the-cloud sales tools, so expect a heavy pitch.
"Practical Sales Management" (Tuesday, February 7th 12:00 pm ET) - hosted by Selling Power. Best practices on how to create a sales strategy and build a productive culture for the sales team(s).
"Right Compensation Plan + Wrong Sales Talent = DECLINING REVENUE RESULTS" (Wednesday, March 7th 12:00 pm ET) - hosted by Chally Group. Create a database to track future candidates and align existing salespeople with the appropriate compensation plans.
Recorded Webinars:
"Successful Business by Phone" - hosted by Wendy Weiss, "The Queen of Cold Calling."
Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto
Tuesday January 24, 2012
As the alliterative title suggests, a survey conducted by Towers Watson shows that the highest-performing sales managers are by and large the ones that spend more time selling and less time on management and administrative tasks. It's interesting to think that sales managers who manage less do better, although the fact that they don't define "high-performing" in the survey highlights makes it harder to decide whether they have a good point.
The other interesting point that the highlights mention is that successful sales managers are three times more likely to spend time with all the members of their team, as opposed to focusing on a few members. While it's tempting for managers to work with the best and worst salespeople and ignore the ones in the middle, giving equal time to everyone can help the whole team produce to the best of their ability.
Duh! Highest performing sales managers spend more time selling
Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto
Sunday January 22, 2012
An article posted on Sales Training Connection argues that "change is the new normal." Ruff says that doing things the way they've always been done isn't enough to keep up with the competition, even if you keep getting better at those strategies. Sales teams need to deploy entirely new strategies to thrive.
Ruff also cites a McKinsey study that found the first place to institute change is the front-line sales manager. Sales managers are pivotal because sales teams tends to take the lead from them. If a sales manager is promoting a new strategy, not just handing it down from on high, the team is more likely to respond.
Selling in the new normal marketplace
Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto
