There is nothing more exciting, or more dangerous, than a sales professional who can attack the game of selling with the strategic mind of a golfer. I am a lifer in sales who, somewhere along the way, fell in love with golf. These may seem like two unconnected occurrences in anyone’s life, but with time I realized that there are too many similarities between the game of golf and the game of sales to ignore.

Essentially, sales onboarding is defined by activities like inducting, training, upskilling, and providing resources to new hires to perform well as fast as possible. A key metric sales managers can use to assess sales rep performance as a result of onboarding is the new sales rep’s time to first sale. The other critical measures of the exercise are achieving ideal sales behaviors and being able to especially engage with smart customers successfully.

Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in the past two decades. Companies must focus on 10 areas of the customer experience to improve satisfaction without sacrificing revenue. The authors base their findings on research at the ACSI — analyzing millions of customer data points — and research that we conducted for The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction.

There’s no better feeling than positive feedback for your business. When a customer leaves a great review or emails to tell you how much they love the product, it’s a great morale boost for the entire team–but does that happiness actually translate into more sales? Customer satisfaction is a great starting point, but it’s not enough to turn someone into an advocate for your business.

An occupational hazard of being a psychologist is that I watch people a lot. I’m also a vice provost at UT Austin and, as we reach the end of the fall semester, there are a lot of holiday parties that I attend at work. I’ve noticed that a lot of people who go to these parties find a few others they know and engage in conversations. But others seem to be great connectors: They engage with many of the people in attendance, generate conversations, and make them feel welcome.

You would be amazed at how many people go into a negotiation without any pre-planning regarding their strategy. These folks go in hoping they'll land the maximum price, and they'll jump in, and use their gut and intuition to reach their goal. I'm sure some people have had success approaching negotiations this way. Typically, the better-prepared party wins in a negotiation.

Most companies analyze financial performance by looking at geographic segments, product lines, or channels. These perspectives overlook the fact that aggregate revenues are dependent on individual customers, and that’s why analyzing the business by looking at its customers can provide managers with useful insights. This process, called a customer-base audit, can be a tool for businesses as they seek to answer five questions.

What is at the heart of being a successful salesperson? The answer is simple: meeting the needs and wants of the other person at their level. The "how" is the important part. In many cases, salespeople get a bad rap. And the number one reason most people state for not liking salespeople is that they push their agenda without listening to, acknowledging or meeting the needs and wants of the consumer.

This is a real question and answer from Teaching Startup, where members (startup leaders) ask questions about building and growing their business, and the answers are published in a members-only newsletter so that all members can benefit.

Another sales kickoff season is upon us, and for the first time since 2019, these annual sales events are like kickoffs from pre-pandemic days. But not quite. The virus hasn’t gone away, sales teams are dispersed around the globe, and remote work is here to stay.

If you could tell your exact buyer motives, you'd have no problem tailoring an effective sales strategy to suit their interests and inclinations. If you could always understand your buyer's motivations, you'd never lose out on a deal. Even though you cannot read people’s minds, there are still ways to get a feel for the underlying buying motives that drive most purchases.

Like it or not, we’re already in Q4. For me, that means doubling down on my efforts to lead my team to meet our sales goals for the year. And I’m not the only one. This is when leaders focus on how their organization can gain the competitive edge and drive performance in this final stretch of the year. That’s why I advise my colleagues to go back to the basics.

Prospective buyers are generally reluctant to speak to sellers, which is one of the most considerable roadblocks salespeople face. And there are many factors that contribute to this reluctance beyond simple disinterest. For one thing, the sales landscape has dramatically and rapidly shifted in recent years. Since the late twenty-tens and accelerating through COVID-19, the sales process has become much more complex.

Should you invest in coaching for your sales team or hire an external sales development rep (SDR) service? When it comes time to scale your sales team, there are two main options: invest in your current team or outsource to a sales development company. In this blog post, we’ll break down the pros and cons of each and how to choose the best option for your business.

A trip to the supermarket this week left me shocked—and a bit worried—at the price of groceries. It isn’t just food, though. The cost of energy, clothing, and even my Netflix subscription has been inching up. At the same time, my household budget has remained the same. It hasn’t dropped, which is good, but my dollars definitely don’t go as far as they used to.

If you look at Commitment and Motivation by sales proficiency or percentile, Commitment and Motivation become even clearer. 100% of the top 10% of all salespeople are both committed and motivated. Compare that to the bottom 10% where only 13% are committed and only 20% are motivated. The top 10% are 606% more committed and motivated than the bottom 10%! When we look at the weakest 50%, we learn that only 39% are committed and 76% are motivated.

We’re all familiar with the aphorism that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But just because the economy ticks down, doesn’t mean your business has to do the same. Plenty of organizations increase revenue, expand margins, and launch new products successfully in challenging economic times. In this piece, the author offers three strategies to help your sales organization succeed during a downturn

After their initial 90 days, your new sales reps likely feel ready to interact with buyers and lead sales calls. But ongoing training beyond this initial period is critical for their capacity to learn and improve. According to the Ebinghaus Learning Curve, tasks will require less time and resources the more they are performed. An employee takes time to learn to perform a certain task, and as they repeat it they learn to complete it quickly and more efficiently.

Even with staff that are capable of self-starting the learning process, no sales organization can afford to take sales training for granted — and it doesn’t stop when onboarding ends. When training is built to correlate with the sales process and pipeline, it makes a direct impact on results. To keep this training-results-training feedback loop flowing, we need to make training an ever-present practice with a culture of learning that permeates the organization through and through.

Dartmouth College’s Nailya Ordabayeva and two colleagues—Lisa Cavanaugh and Darren Dahl of the University of British Columbia—showed 300 NFL fans a description of a league-branded hoodie and either a one-star or a five-star review of it by a Cleveland Browns fan. The participants answered questions about their similarity to the reviewer and their interest in buying the garment.