Ideas and perspectives on sales productivity

Forecasting accuracy is the lifeblood of a growing business. Reliable visibility of orders that will hit the books, cash that will hit the bank, and the costs of building and servicing the order book drive the timing and prioritisation of key decisions that make it possible to profitably keep customers, add new customers, and both attract and retain the best people.

If you’ve been in B2B IT services sales for any length of time you’ll know that technology has fundamentally changed the roles of both buyer and seller. It’s an environment I know well having spent most of my career alongside business leaders, innovators, and clients who have delivered this transformation.

Read about the benefits of a well planned garden office. The right work space can support home and hybrid workers to maintain a meaningful boundary between work and personal lives.

A step by step guide for managing the challenges of brainstorming with teams that consist of remote and hybrid members.

Five key building blocks for anyone tasked with building sales momentum and growing sales with a team consisiting of remote and hybride members.

Before committing to the costs of a bespoke project we recommend posing yourself these five questions about your business to help frame your precise needs.

In this post we focus solely on the importance of the desk and its’ ergonomic credentials in relation to its’ surroundings and your physical needs.

A summary of topics to think with each decision offering an aesthetic benefit as well as a positive impact on your working environment. 

cDon’t rely on product knowledge and a smile to grow sales.Is it realistic to forecast sales growth based on the willingness of your brightest, most ambitious, marketing or pre-sales head to accept a target? It’s not so unusual to find early stage businesses winning customers without a recognisable sales team. The Founder will most likely be a force of nature and an early stage team will respond positively to the collective energy created by the challenges and obstacles of proving out the business plan.

Once a Head of Sales is hired the CEO must focus on creating the conditions for repeatable sales success. The CEO is typically the original salesperson, go to market lead and sales manager in an early stage business; the focus for all sales and customer related decision making. The stories of their success will be legendary and charged with emotion. The arrival and impact of a new Head of Sales can be a challenging time for the business, often requiring a change of focus and behaviour from the leadership team.

Made it! Successful, capable, highly regarded individual contributors (or team leaders) get promoted and take on a challenge that looks like the next rung on the ladder but quickly find relationship dynamics are now bent out of shape, ambiguity is a persistent shadow, jeopardy lurks at every turn, and best of all, there is no playbook. No wonder so many texts citeMcKinsey research and tell us that 40% of new executives fail within the first 18 months.

Here are the seven exterior design topics which help to match your vision with the practical realities of your dream workspace.

The first sales hire is critical in an early stage business. There is no vocational test or industry template to adopt, and despite the immense time and energy spent implementing hiring and onboarding processes, no guarantee of success. So, how do you know when a salesperson is underperforming?

We consider the pros and cons of aluminium and uPVC windows to help you visualise your own home workspace design.

We shine a light on the security implications of hybrid or fully remote working practices for small and micro businesses.

A step by step guide to negating the causes of video fatique and getting the most out of the available technology.

A bespoke project is an opportunity to express what creativity means to you. You've fought hard for that opportunity, don't miss it!

Five personal considerations to get the discussion going but there will be many more that are unique to you.

Sales forecasting gets more subjective as a business grows.Here are 6 questions a CEO should ask to test the integrity of the numbers. As the business scales up the list of considerations grows; more reps, higher costs, new territories, new products and increasing expectations of repeatability and predictability.The impact of the sales forecast grows too. It is a critical input to decisions about staffing levels, funding requirements, product development and output capacity. It also has a direct impact on staff morale, senior management credibility and the management of expectations among investors, partners and customers themselves.

Sales is a contact sport so prepare for battle.The biggest step change in sales performance I’ve experienced came with adoption of competitor playbooks.It’s easy to find books, articles, webinars or threads that will tell you the one thing you need to do to ‘crush it’ every single day in sales. Luck and hard work rarely get a mention, but I guess you can’t sell those as a service!

Nine nudges, reminders and prompts for wrestling with the challenge of managing teams remotely.

An inspirational mentor of mine insisted that it was important not to have a comfortable workspace at home. He argued that human instinct would see people recline into soft cushions, develop a daytime TV or extended browsing habit, and, meanwhile, the office energy and productivity would be depleted just enough to degrade not only performance but also the collective experience of office life. But the world of work has changed at an uncomfortable speed leaving managers and teams with no choice but to embrace home and hybrid working.

Repetitive Tales of the very much Expected won’t work in our new World of Change

Ideas and considerations to help simplify how to decide the right time to invest in a bespoke garden workspace.

Are you standing open mouthed at the bottom of the AI pipe? Automated everything, unlimited data, ‘zero touch’ sales cycles, what took weeks can now take seconds. Let’s park for a moment (1700 words anyway) our desire to differentiate, to have fun, to engage fully with other human beings, to add value. Undoubtedly, technology continues to create new, often transformational, opportunities.

Read how adopting and supporting the qualities of a connector manager help businesses more effectively manage remote teams and networks.

Understanding behavioural preferences in others can enrich the experience of remote work. The DISC model is a mainstay of the sales toolkit.