What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

Though they might look like the same people, those who left the office at the start of the pandemic have dramatically different priorities, expectations, and needs than those who are returning today, according to Microsoft’s second annual Work Trend Index.

On the surface, it’s easy to see products as the center of your sales strategy. After all, products and services are the things you sell. It’s natural to build a strategy around them. You want to highlight their best features, compare to the competition, and price to make a profit. However, as easy as this sounds, it’s just not realistic.

Think about the last time you received service that was exceptional. And by exceptional, I mean exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. How you were communicated with is often what shapes your impression — good or bad.

Anytime you're selling, you're trying to balance the price you're asking for with the amount of value you're providing your customer. If you want to get the highest price possible, for instance, your goal is to convince your customer of the amount of value they're getting in exchange.

The fact is, better customer experiences are better for business. Great CX means your customers are happier, feel taken care of, and are more loyal—all of which leads to more profits. It takes the right tools and data to fuel those experiences, and a lot of it is already at your fingertips.

The old proverb says, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”

But too often, managers fall into a habit of simply giving their employees a fish — or in this case, all the answers. “Do as I say, and you will succeed” is, unfortunately, not an uncommon approach to management.

Matt Dailey, a software engineer for a data management company, was managing a team with an engineer who wasn’t performing well. This was clear to Dailey—and to the employee. Yet, as I describe in my new book Mastering Community, Dailey said he “wasn’t bridging the gap of how to make the situation better.” His team missed their deadline.

DISC is an incredibly popular assessment tool for a reason; it’s comprehensive, actionable, and easy to understand. But what happens when your DISC profile reveals that your current position isn’t a great fit?

One of the ways that you can determine this through a DISC profile is by looking at both your Natural and Adapted scores.

During the early stages of the pandemic, many B2B companies considered remote interactions as a temporary patch, a way to stay in touch with customers while sales reps were confined to their home offices. Now, it’s becoming clear that omnichannel is here to stay, and many businesses aren’t prepared for this permanent change.

My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed? Games take longer, there is role specialization, starting pitchers rarely complete games, hitters are stronger, pitchers routinely throw in the mid 90's and there is a trend towards either hitting a home run or striking out. But it's still baseball. It is still played the same way. The changes are superficial.

And in the context of how it affects salespeople, has buying really changed?

Channel sales represents 75% of the world’s commerce, according to Forrester’s Jay McBain. That being the case, there is a huge need for sales enablement to ensure those sellers can perform effectively for their partner companies. If your company is among that 75%, you know channel sellers—partners, distributors, indirect sellers, or independent agents—have different needs than inside sales reps.

I am about to show you that most managers have some mistaken beliefs about the best kind of feedback to give their direct reports. In a survey we shared on Harvard Business Review of 7,631 managers, my colleague Joe Folkman and I asked whether they believed that giving negative feedback was stressful or difficult, and 44% agreed. When talking with managers about giving feedback, we often hear comments such as, “I did not sleep the night before,” “I just wanted to get it over quickly,” “My hands were sweating, and I was nervous,”

Your friend is devastated. She’s just lost her job and looks like she’s about to burst into tears in the middle of the busy coffee shop. You don’t know what to do. You want to help her, but what do you say in this horrible situation? How do you make her feel better right now, and how can you help her get through the tough time to come?

If this year’s resolutions reflect previous years’ resolutions, 80% of people will fail. Why such little success? Unfortunately, the seeds of failure are built into the resolutions themselves. Though crafted with good intentions, these resolutions are all framed as outcomes. For example, losing weight isn’t something you do; it’s an outcome of other things you do (e.g., change your diet, exercise).

Empathy has always been a critical skill for leaders, but it is taking on a new level of meaning and priority. Far from a soft approach it can drive significant business results.

You always knew demonstrating empathy is positive for people, but new research demonstrates its importance for everything from innovation to retention.

Any salesperson will tell you that what they do is part science and part art — part hard skills (the actual knowledge of the product and the market) and part soft skills (the interpersonal aspect of sales).

Today’s sales training paradigms take a divide-and-conquer approach to developing the hybrid of soft/hard skills that drive direct sales interactions

In-person meetings between customers and salespeople were once at the heart of B2B buying and selling. Now digital communication is embedding itself in every aspect of business. This had led some organizations to look at the future and ask a simple question: Will we still need salespeople?

The struggle to create content that sales loves is real. For some marketing teams, in fact, their story is a tragedy, with sales using only 30% of the enablement content that marketing creates. Sometimes it’s a matter of sales and marketing not being in alignment. And other times, the two might agree on the goal, but content misses the mark, can’t be found, or can’t scale.