Sales incentives are an essential tool for shaping salesperson priorities and directing desired salesperson behavior, but incorrectly applied incentives can undermine firm strategy and work against the sales force’s long term success. Firms often realize this when using incentives to stimulate growth. In this session, professor Michael Ahearne offers research based insights into why growth...
Research shows effective sales coaching has a dramatic impact on overall performance. It raises the percentage of successful salespeople in the sales force, enhances salesperson engagement and retention, and improves overall sales productivity. But many firms do not coach salespeople enough – and when they do, do not coach well. In this presentation Factor 8...
Execution, urgency, and accountability are often stressed in results-focused sales organizations. But managers today may be more reluctant to lean into these traditional aspects of performance culture. The Great Resignation and a highly competitive labor market have made salesperson retention more important than ever. Add in the uncertainty surrounding return-to-office transitions, and many managers may...
There’s good reason for sales leaders today to be focused on sales content optimization. Leading technology solutions are touting the ability to tie content usage to sales outcomes, with direct integrations into your CRM. Content analytics have come a long way in a short time. And it’s not that understanding content’s impact on revenue is...
Today’s sales forces are constantly asked to change. In fact, a majority of sales leaders have three or more change initiatives underway at any given time. Yet, most sales teams have a poor track record in making substantive progress. Why? Here, professor Ryan Mullins draws upon case studies and research findings to isolate key challenges...
Large firms often have multi-solution offerings, matrixed sales roles and teams, and layers of channels and go-to-market routes. When growth falters in one part of such firms, it’s often difficult to diagnose where the problem lies and how to address it. This session focuses on diagnosing growth bottlenecks and capability gaps in complex selling organizations....
Sales organizations are quick to invest in sales recruiting, especially given the competitive labor market. Yet many of the same firms have no organized approach to filling sales manager positions. In fact, even though one out of every six sales manager positions cokes open each year on average, most sales organizations are caught flat-footed when...
This session advances a framework for reconsidering the corporate SFE function’s purpose and impact. It presents emerging practices and trends indicative of the sales function’s rapidly changing operating context. Session presenters make the case for establishing (or reestablishing) a new corporate charter for corporate SFE, as a way of incorporating best practices and optimal impact....
Measuring sales training effectiveness is notoriously tricky. In the past, sales trainers used activity or completion statistics as weak substitutes for training outcomes. These offer unconvincing arguments for sales training’s ROI. Today, much about sales training is changing, beginning with a shift away from classroom training. And, most firms now embrace “learning and development” as...
Many sales leaders aren’t familiar with academic sales centers. They’ve been growing quickly on college campuses worldwide, where they educate business students on professional selling, and prepare graduates to succeed in entry level sales careers. A few elite level academic sales centers are also educating managers in their MBA and executive education offerings, contributing to...
Sales Performance Management (SPM) is a fast-growing technology that tackles salesperson assignments and territories, quota management, incentive compensation administration, and sales and incentive performance reporting. (Notable providers are Xactly, Varicent, SAP, Oracle, and Anaplan). SPM promises management greater control, richer insight, and faster decision making. But SPM solutions are sometimes marketed with vague descriptions, confusing...
Sales managers don’t really manage “sales.” Sales are outcomes, determined by many different inputs and variables – the things that sales managers can in fact manage. Effective managers understand the inputs that determine success, and focus their efforts on influencing the right ones. This session provides managers with a model for identifying the inputs that...
Developments in artificial intelligence follow in quick succession. But how can sales executives leverage this novel technology to make better decisions and build a competitive advantage? This talk will discuss what artificial intelligence actually is, how it works, and how far technology has progressed already. We will then look at best practice use cases from...