Business Development

Many business leaders make costly errors as they put together their plan for the year to come – errors that make it harder than it should be for their teams to implement the plan and attain the goals it identifies. Here are five of the most expensive mistakes we see. Avoid all five, and you will write a better business plan!

Here are three proven, painless strategies for starting and completing the right plan for the coming year – a plan that will help you make the best possible decisions over the next twelve months and keep your business humming.

You’re a business owner. That’s a wonderful thing! But stop and think for a moment. Is that all you are?

Setting clear expectations is an important part of any sales leader’s working day. Unfortunately, it’s something that doesn’t always happen as effectively or as consistently as we might like. Here are five simple steps you can take to get better at this critical part of the job.

If you’re a sales leader, you are tasked with striking a delicate balance. Your job is not to sell for the members of your team – selling is what you hire, train, and retain good salespeople to do, after all. Yet your job is to help shape the business development strategies that make the most sense for your business, for the salespeople who report to you, and of course for your customers.

Leadership is more than learning the characteristics and habits of effective leaders. Truly effective leaders ensure the organization has clear direction and an infrastructure which will enhance the probability of the organization successfully achieving their vision.

One of the main goals of an L&D strategy is to improve employees’ performance. Your training sessions must result in a motivated and resourceful staff, one able to close more sales. But how do you create a strategy that actually improves employee’s performance?

Have you ever wondered why a once-promising new hire is performing far below your initial expectations? From one perspective, what’s happening here is pretty simple: the person you hired is not the person you interviewed. The dynamic at work in an interview situation is similar to the dynamic at work on a first date./blog/how-succeed-onboarding-new-hires-podcast

Give our podcast a listen to learn the right steps you need to take in order to create a sales playbook for your team.

Discover the secrets and benefits of coaching top performers within your sales organization from Tom Ziglar.

There’s a wise saying popularly attributed to baseball legend Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Here’s how I unpack that wisdom: We have to know what our goals are, and we also have to know the specific behaviors that support those goals… otherwise, we may end up supporting someone else’s plan, rather than our own. With that sobering thought in mind, consider this list of five behaviors that are essential the achievement of any worthwhile personal goal.

Mike Montague interviews Karl Schaphorst on how to succeed at being a purpose-driven salesperson In this episode:

• What it means to be a purpose-driven salesperson
• Attitudes to adopt and avoid
• Embrace pain and suffering

In his book Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell contends that people make their best and most accurate decisions in the first two seconds of facing a situation—in other words, in the blink of an eye. It seems inherently suspect, though, this notion that people can make correct decisions quickly. Is it? You were probably taught from an early age that haste makes waste; don’t judge a book by its cover; and look before you leap.

Selling for a living in the twenty-first century requires coming to terms with a dizzying array of interconnected, hard-to-anticipate changes in the areas of technology, marketplace trends, and client agendas. Falling behind in any one of these areas means losing relevance and with it, your competitive edge.

Collectively over the years I've heard every excuse as to why people don't need to track metrics. "You don't understand I'm just too busy to track that type of thing," or "what is that really going to do for me in the long run."  Well, in the long run, if you truly understand what the outcomes are statistically every time you pick up the phone or attend a networking event, couldn't you predict the future?  Wouldn’t that make life a little less stressful?

Read Time: 6 Minutes

I love sales!  It is a career where you, the sales professional, determine your income based on how skillful you execute the duty.  It has a feel of independence, ownership and entrepreneurship and it can be extremely rewarding.  Professional selling is regarded as one of the top earning careers on the face of the planet.  Note to you business owners out there: If your salespeople are making more money than you, don’t be jealous, be excited because they are building your business and increasing its value!

Read Time: 5 MInutes

In sales, we all bundle our accounts, clients and prospects, into logical groupings to add clarity and understanding to our efforts. We use vertical categories, assembling together our healthcare, consumer products, technology accounts, and others. We also differentiate by geography, adding efficiency in territory management by bundling accounts based on physical locations. 

Read Time: 10 Minutes

Retail champions, the subject of my book RETAIL SUCCESS IN AN ONLINE WORLD, outlines not only how to connect with customers face-to-face but also a long-term engagement strategy for after the customer leaves the store. 

Read Time: 6 Minutes

In the business world it’s often been said, “Our strongest asset is our people.” But how often is it stated that they are also your greatest weakness? Every business can benefit from a reality check. If you use a systematic strategy for developing the people in your key roles, that reality will likely reveal the valuable human assets on your team.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

In the past couple of decades, our workplaces have gone from the office to mostly virtual spaces. We get our jobs done and we communicate in the cloud. However, we still struggle with the same issues in communication which we had decades ago. Here are a few effective ways to overcome communication barriers in the workplace which you can apply right now.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Cal Thomas, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at sticking with your goals and achieving them. Get the best practices for goal setting collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 24 Minutes

Just like we need food and nourishment for our physical self, so does our business.  However, while our body tells us we are hungry and it is time to eat, our business doesn’t necessarily do the same.  Therefore, it is critical that we put plans in to place to make time to ‘feed’ our business. 

Read Time: 5 Minutes

It's common for people to mistake sales management for sales coaching. In fact, these are two very different roles. The table highlights some of the most notable differences.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

I’m often asked to identify a single “blind spot” that keeps leaders from growing their businesses aggressively. There are actually a number of these … but one that’s particularly common is the failure to collect best practices and assemble them in a regularly updated “playbook.”

Read Time: 6 Minutes

The hot labor market is stressing hiring managers and their organizations like no other job cycle in the last 20 years. Despite the mounting pressure of filling an open role, organizations that remain true to their hiring standards will win in the long term.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Welcome to the How to Succeed podcast, the show that helps you get to the top and stay there... This is How to Succeed at setting yourself up for a breakthrough.

Listen Time: 12 Minute

Happy New Year!

Not only is it important to set goals for the New Year, but it also makes sense to take some time to reflect on the successes and setbacks from 2018. Below are four suggestions on how leaders can use insights and learnings from the year just past to shape their organizational growth plan for 2019.

Antonio Garrido, Sandler trainer and author of Asking Questions the Sandler Way, joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques of building better habits. Learn how to find and replace negative habits with better ones that lead to more success and better productivity. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Clint Babcock, Sandler trainer from Tampa, joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques of negotiations. Learn how to find, understand and use sources of leverage in your sales negotiations. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of salespeople in final negotiations.

Mike Crandall joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors and techniques of transitioning the ownership of your business to the next generation of leaders. This is always a tough subject, but the future is coming and how you plan now will determine how bright that future will be. Learn how to succeed at transitioning your business to the next generation.

Lori Logue, Manager of Customer Success at Evernote, talks about how Evernote business can help you share notes with Salesforce and collaborate across the sales and delivery teams. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of successful notetaking in business.

A lack of confidence when interacting with potential buyers is a sure way to sabotage a sales discussion. Here are four ways salespeople can improve upon their interpersonal skills and become more confident when dealing with prospects.

When you’re growing a small business, it’s important to put an emphasis on best utilizing the tools at your disposal. Regardless of your industry or experience, one of those tools should be social media. While there are endless uses for social media and I have previously discussed social selling tactics, below I have identified five tips that you can bring back to your business and begin to implement today for social media marketing.

Most people who spend a little time searching on the Internet or in a bookstore can quickly find a guide on how to write a business plan. However, just following these templates doesn’t guarantee that the business plan produce will be successful or even good. A successful business plan needs quite a bit more to actually be useful and even more to be functional and successful. As the elements come together, if done correctly, the most important component of success will come from the business owner and leadership versus the company itself.

The business world is not immune to change. Companies grow, and they shrink in size. They expand their market reach, sometimes, and contract it at other times. They introduce new products and services and discontinue products and services. And, they change the ways in which they create, promote, price, and deliver their products and services.

As organizations grow, they realize that there are numerous different ways to define success. A new business, for example, will be immensely satisfied the first year the operation returns a profit. On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year. Defining what success means to you and establishing goals based upon these criteria can be an important step in monitoring your business’s development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you.

Like any new generation, there are differences in how Millennials interact with those around them, and what their expectations are in the workplace. What intuitive business leaders are noticing, however, is that there are tremendous benefits that members of this generation bring to the workforce. Their unique generational experiences and the skills they have gained can help them, and the organizations that hire them, excel.

The traditional corporate structure in the workplace is ready for a change. With Millennials entering the workforce, there is a resounding call for a structural shakeup. These young professionals have a lot to say and they want to have their voices heard. Successful companies are noticing this. Instead of paying attention to only GPA's, they are looking for critical thinking and problem-solving skills in new hires.

It's a fact: most organizations need a killer sales force. Business development, marketing, must-have products or services – these are all essential to meaningful revenue growth. But your sales team is the heart of production. Your salespeople are the ones championing your offer and driving precious profit. Your team should be the best it can. Period. But how do you build a successful sales team? Buckle up, because it's no easy task. As long as you follow these seven essential steps, however, you'll have a team of sales all-stars under your belt.

Are lawyers also salespeople? If you asked one of them directly, they'd likely scrunch up their face as if they'd just heard an awful verdict from the bench. But the truth is in this day and age the legal profession is as competitive as any other (if not more so) for new business. Why do you think that every non-profit board contains at least one lawyer. It's likely just not out of the goodness of their collective hearts

Quick poll: When was the last time you stepped foot in your bank? From drive-through bank windows to more recent banking amenities like online banking and mobile apps, banks have practically been encouraging customers to stay away for years. Along with the conveniences for the customers, banks benefitted from less overhead and an increased focus on compliance. So after years of being told there's no need to come inside, it was as if everyone saw the light and stopped entering their bricks-and-mortar bank. Problem solved, right? Not so fast

The most common complaint we hear from the heads of professional services firms (lawyers, accountants, engineers, marketing or PR agencies) is that their people are technically brilliant, but have a serious aversion to business development. Totally understandable considering the training the majority of professionals receive relates directly to delivering services they provide (e.g. how to conduct a better audit or how to create a crisis communications plan)

People from all walks of life can be technically brilliant and do a great job if someone would "just give them the project." Many consultants become consultants because they believe they can provide a better product or service and make more money than if they stayed working for a company.  It's great to dream big and recognize your aspirations however I run into more and more of these "technically brilliant" people who look me in the face and tell me they do not sell, so why would they need sales training? This leads to an interesting discussion as to where they get their business from.