Over my 30 plus years of consulting on sales productivity and training sales teams, I have observed over and over that the top performing sales managers have positive attitudes that motivate sales teams to meet and exceed revenue or customer retention goals. Gone are the days where sales managers can just “sit in their chairs.” Today’s younger salespeople require a sales manager that is active in supporting their achievement of exceeding their sales KPI’s.

Mike’s Holiday Note: An interesting comparison of three Gen AI answers to the prompt from ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. I have added two other Gen AI prompts called “Perplexity” and, “Gemini”: from Google. As you read these prompts, choose which strategies you find useful to keep your sales organization competitive. 7 minutes read.

Over the past 30 years I have observed and coached very successful B2B salespeople. Here are my observations on what characteristics, or competence, a world class B2B salesperson has to have to consistently win and exceed sales revenue targets.

Mike’s Note: I am on holiday through May and will reduce my workload by giving you sales blogs from authors that I have found to provide good solid sales productivity research. This blog by Rain Group is a comprehensive checklist to prepare you for advancing your key accounts. I have added my input to make this checklist more effective. Use this menu of questions to drive your strategy and planning around growing key accounts.

Mike’s note: With all the hype around AI, it can be difficult to discern how to move forward to employ it for greater sales team productivity. This blog from Insight clearly outlines the strategy and actions to take if you are using MS Dynamics 365 sales. I also believe Copilot can be linked to the competing Salesforce platform. I salute Anna and Joe for their blog clarity! May it help you to create your company’s path to becoming more efficient using AI and Copilot.

Who is your “Revenue Team?” It is the alignment and collaboration of your Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service teams who unified to enhance customer loyalty and drive revenue. Sadly, these three departments many times act as independent silos. Marketing many times thinks they are above and superior to the sales team, and customer service teams avoid any activity that may label them as connected to sales.

We are all a bit overwhelmed by the hype of AI and this seminar may be a good opportunity for you to sift through the hype and gain insights on how you can use AI in sales and business productivity. This seminar is on March 14th 2024 in Singapore. The value to you as an attendee.

Mike’s Intro Note: Recently, I consulted with a Japanese multinational to help them set up a Win – Loss report and process. Transparent win–loss reporting can assist marketing to analyze wins and losses to better formulate effective marketing support for sales managers to coach their salespeople to win more deals. This recent article from Tim Riesterer is very informative on how to coach your salespeople win more deals. Read on!

This week’s ELAvate sales blog is a departure from normal. I thought I would share with you two overviews on the spread and impact of AI across the world. You have probably garnered that you as a sales manager or salesperson need to upskill yourself on using AI to up your personal productivity and for sales and marketing research purposes. The first infographic I want to share is the usage of different AI platforms across the world.

Mike’s Note: A good article to set your 2024 on a solid, positive foundation. We salespeople tend to be a bit unbalanced always focusing on our need to achieve our sales targets. This can lead to a stressful life and less than ideal relationships with family, friends and community. This year try getting back to basics as Dr. Mark Berin outlines in this refreshing blog from “Greater Good Magazine.” I have added some of my insights to this blog.

B2B Sales managers across Asia have one of the toughest jobs in any organization. You and I need to motivate, coach and manage the performance of very valuable individualistic self-starting people who can make or break your organization’s revenue goals in 2024. Let me give you some simple yet practical ideas to boost your own leadership and sales coaching to inspire your salespeople to new levels of performance.

How was your life in 2023? What did you achieve? Did you grow and nurture healthy relationships? How was your stress and enjoyment levels in your daily life? Were you leading a balanced life? Any failing forward? I have found most salespeople try to balance their lives by placing their sales target on one end of life see saw and on the other end family, health, hobbies, and what appear to be less important aspects of life.

Jeffrey Gitomer says “If you can’t ask good questions, you will never be successful in sales!” Salespeople need not be just good talkers, but good communicators. This means their ability to ask good insightful, relevant questions to listen to the customer is crucial. Most companies train salespeople in product knowledge and basic selling skills but brush over their ability to ask questions/ probes in a structured way to fully understand customer problems, and needs that link to your solutions.

My years as a Global Sales Manager/Coach Trainer at Xerox Learning Systems and AchieveGlobal have also enriched me with the process to conduct a discussion and development plan for each of your salespersons. This “Development Checklist” gives a robust structure to have a discussion with your salespeople to support their success in 2024 by improving their knowledge, skills, and process when selling.

Most sales organizations fail to train up sales managers to effectively interview potential sales talent. This can result in hiring salespeople that can't sell, don't align with your sales culture, or worse, your sales managers mis-read talent and don't hire top performers. I just read a excellent list of 125+ sales hiring questions from Rain Group. It is thorough. You can download these sales interview questions at the end of this blog.

Your sales managers are either the strongest or weakest link in your sales revenue-producing process. How effective they are directly impacts the revenue growth of your organization and it’s long term competitiveness. There are three major components of a sales manager to produce sales revenue through his/her team. Recently, I discovered that the Rain Group has produced an insightful research report on what makes a Top Performing Sales Manager.

Research by Chally Assessments and other sales productivity consultants identify a top competency of successful sales managers is to regularly participate in joint sales meetings with salespeople. Attending joint sales meetings with your salespeople offers excellent opportunities to observe and coach your salespeople to be more skillful and knowledgeable when meeting customers. .

I regularly scour the internet for well researched reports on the current views and advice on world class B2B sales productivity management, processes, methods and skills. As I do not have the resources to carry out such global sales research, I look for reputable organizations that do have the deep pockets to do this.

Prospecting B2B customers involves the systematic research, identification, preparation, and engagement of potential clients who could benefit from your products or services. It's a critical step and sometimes the most stressful in the B2B sales process. It is an unavoidable part of selling but crucial for growing our sales pipeline.

This blog gives you a “checklist” for selecting the right Sales Training Provider. It was originally developed by Brooks Group. I edited the key criteria and have added my key insights for each item to provide you with why each of these 16 criteria is important. There is one question you can ask each sales training provider for each of the criteria as well.