Barbara Giamanco

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Leveraging Behavioral Intelligence to Grow Revenue with Mary Grothe, Sales BQ

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

I talked with Mary Grothe, Sales BQ CEO & Founder to better understand how behavioral intelligence plays into the success of salespeople and the sales managers leading their teams. As a top performing individual sales contributor herself before starting her own business, Mary knows a thing or two about over achieving sales quota.

We start by talking about what BQ – Behavioral Intelligence is and how a keen understanding of BQ impacts sales success.

As beneficial as understanding BQ can be, there are circumstances where BQ has a negative effect on sellers. Learn what those things are when you listen to the interview.

Mary talks us through how to identify and remove barriers that lower a sales team’s BQ overall.

Next, we tackled the topic of motivation. Lots of opinions about what that means and whether or not sales leaders can motivate their team members. Mary shares her thoughts on how to motivate a sales team to perform at higher level.

Finally, we closed by talking about how once a once a culture of high BQ is created, the ways in which you maintain it.

Listen and enjoy the interview!

Subscribe on iTunes and never miss a podcast episode! If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review and a 5-star rating. Also listen on Spotify, Stitcher

Or listen to the interview on the podcast page.

About Mary – Connect on LinkedIn, Twitter
Sales BQ Website

Mary Grothe, CEO and Founder of Sales BQ. She is a former #1 rep in the MidMarket B2B SaaS Payroll / HR industry. After 8 years and millions in revenue sold, she founded Sales BQ, and leads a team of fractional VPs of Sales across the country as they rebuild their clients’ sales departments, all while focusing on the behavioral quotient.

Feature header blog post photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

Filed Under: blog, Women In Sales Tagged With: b2b, behavior, behavioral intelligence, execution, process, revenue, sales, sales management, success

Your Sales Kick-Off Meetings Are a Waste of Time!

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

As sales teams mount their final push to finish 2019 strong, someone in a sales enablement, marketing or sales support role is planning what has become status quo in sales. The annual sales kick off (SKO) meeting.

As the term implies, a sales kick-off meeting is meant to be a sales reset. An opportunity to review what worked and what didn’t in the prior year while also creating the positive momentum needed to achieve sales goals for the year ahead.

But let’s get real. Most SKO’s are a complete waste of time and money.

Throughout my sales career, I’ve attended plenty of these meetings and usually left them feeling ticked off that 3-5 days of my selling time was wasted, and I was away from my family to boot.

Though the “goal” is to set the stage for sales success, SKO agendas are dominated with things that do not help salespeople be better at the craft of selling. That includes new product announcements, product feature training, product demos, reviews of marketing materials, or execs who feel their title justifies air time with the sales force when it doesn’t.

Use your SKO time to train your sellers how to be better at selling; otherwise scrap the meeting.

SKO’s are expensive! Studies suggest that the average per head cost is between $1,500-$3,000. Conservatively, it can cost $75,000+ for a 50-person sales team to attend your SKO plus the cost of other people in your company who attend too. That doesn’t even account for event planning costs, or the lost opportunity cost due to non-selling time while salespeople attend the event.

Companies are literally burning cash on SKO activities that do not advance sales performance.

Given the expense of these meetings, it is a huge miss to waste time on anything that does not directly impact a salesperson’s ability to sell more effectively to today’s modern buyer. As Salesforce reported in the 3rd annual State of Sales research, “winning deals still requires human to human interaction.”

And, it isn’t just any human interaction that will get the job done. It must be the right interaction that happens at the right time and in the right way.

Buyer expectations keep rising. How does your SKO prepare salespeople for this ongoing reality?

The surprising thing is that this is NOT a new revelation. What is surprising is how many companies remain mired in their own status quo, and as a result, they fail to adapt and act on what B2B buyers keep making clear. The salespeople they will give their time and attention to are the rare ones who demonstrate that they operate differently from other salespeople.

Nowhere on this list does it say that buyers want sellers coming at them with generic, product feature driven sales pitches. They certainly don’t care if you redesigned your marketing materials.

Buyers do say they have higher standards for salespeople, can take their business anywhere, expect vendors to personalize their approach, and that they will work with sellers who act as trusted advisors.

Use your SKO as an opportunity to train salespeople to be what buyers want them to be!

If buyers want to work with salespeople who are trusted advisors, what does that mean?

Trusted advisor defines the salesperson who has exceptional, targeted knowledge about specific business problems that decision makers in certain roles and industries face. These salespeople solve problems and put the needs of the buyer FIRST. Sales reps don’t become trusted advisors without help and that means training.

With that in mind, how is your SKO agenda training your salespeople to:

  • Engage rather than repel buyer interest with sales messaging and approach?
  • Conduct sales meetings using business acumen & insight vs. feature dumps & demos?
  • Manage multiple relationships with “buying teams”?
  • Compete with buyer status quo?
  • Reduce the sales cycle length and close deals more often?

A better playbook for designing that sales kick-off meeting.

  1. Planning beyond the event. Your plan must include what happens prior to the SKO, during the event, and how the training you deliver will be adopted and acted upon after the event.
  2. Clearly define the behavior you want to change. Be specific. After the SKO we want our sales reps to demonstrate competency in the 3 key traits of a trusted advisor. Then go deeper. What specifically does or will hinder our ability to evolve our salespeople into trusted advisors? Lack of training? The activity KPI’s we set today, which incent the wrong behavior? Are there internal systems, processes or even management biases getting in the way of the objective too?
  3. Plan pre-work prior to your kick-off event. Brainshark’s research found that “more than six out of 10 organizations (62%) don’t deliver pre-work to sales representatives in advance of their SKO, and 84% don’t conduct training in advance – neglecting to provide a foundation on the skills and topics that will be covered.”
  4. Create and block plenty of time for role plays at the event. Sports teams don’t show up on the field once a week expecting to win the game. They run plays and practice possible game day scenarios every day. Sales teams should operate the same way. Practice improves skills, turns them into ingrained habits and builds confidence.
  5. Reinforce. Your SKO sales training establishes the foundation for better sales results, and behavior will not change after one training. For salespeople to embrace and act-on the new skills they’ve just learned, coaching and management reinforcement must happen consistently after the event concludes.

Conduct your SKO with the right “end in mind” or don’t bother to do it all.

A sales kick-off meeting has huge potential if done in the right way.

The end goal should be that salespeople leave the event having improved their selling skills. The skills that decision makers expect of them. The skills that position your sellers to achieve their quota and deal profitability objectives in year ahead.

Everything else is a waste of money and time that can be better spent elsewhere!

Filed Under: blog, sales Tagged With: b2b, leadership, meetings, productivity, sales, sales kickoffs, sales management, training

How Does Your Sales Experience Stack Up?

By Barbara Giamanco 2 Comments

Creating differentiated, personalized customer experiences is a top business initiative for most organizations. Executives know that when exceptional experiences are delivered, they distance themselves from their competitors. The reverse is also true. When things don’t go well, the negative brand impact on your company has greater potential for damage that goes far beyond losing a sale or a current customer.

Every interaction someone has with your company matters. That is especially true when it is your salespeople.

The term “customer experience” is misleading. The use of the word customer suggests that your experience strategy begins once someone becomes a paying customer. But that’s not the case at all. The experience begins with the very first interaction someone has with your company. It could be a marketing interaction, and more often, that first touch starts with someone on the front lines of your sales organization. That touch could be a phone call, email, an in-person meeting at a business event or a LinkedIn connection request.

When companies are designing their experience strategy, that strategy must include the salesforce.

To me, that seems an obvious suggestion; however, I don’t believe that organizations are doing enough analysis to understand how ALL buyer interactions with their salespeople – starting with the first ones – are either helping or hurting pipeline and revenue objectives.

Gartner has defined Customer Experience Management as “the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.”

I would revise Gartner’s definition slightly to say, “designing and reacting to prospect and customer interactions to meet or exceed their expectations and, thus, increase pipeline, revenue, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.”

So, let’s talk about “aligning to the buyers’ journey”.

The most common strategy to engage new prospects starts with content. A lot of it. The idea is to deliver the right articles, white papers, case studies, videos or webinars at the right time in the buyers’ decision-making process.

Conventional wisdom says provide educational content that informs during stages when buyers are looking for products to solve their problems. Or, use content to provide insights into problems buyers’ may not know they have yet but are bound too, and they are more likely to book a sales meeting. Unfortunately, that may no longer be the case.

Content overload is creating a backlash to the buying experience.

Analyst reports indicate that buyers are inundated with so much content that the information overload is leading to the exact opposite reaction companies want. Rather than creating an experience that inspires buyers to more quickly engage with sales, they are opting to do nothing!

In a recent report from Gartner about how sellers can help buyers “make sense” of the overwhelming availability of high quality content; albeit, often with conflicting points of view, authors Neha Ahuja and Benjamin Hooker confirm that “when customers encounter too much information — even trustworthy, evidence-based information — they may stop learning. In such a scenario, customers reach a point of information saturation after which they can’t process new information.”

This leads to a point of diminishing return in the perceived value that information has to purchasing decisions. Rather than decisions being based on “quality data”, decision making becomes reminiscent of the days before the internet with buyers’ making decisions based on best guesses and gut feelings as opposed to rational, fact-based choices.

Which brings me back to the sales force. The people paid to sell to your products.

Information overload is causing problems. But so are salespeople with their messaging and approach, whether meaning too or not. Your sales team members are typically the first human exposure that someone has with your company.

What do you know about the experience those interactions are creating?

Unless what you sell requires little more than an order taker to seal the deal, evaluating what’s happening throughout the selling cycle when those interpersonal – people to people – sales interactions are taking place is a must. Often your salespeople are losing out on sales opportunities with the message they convey in the first email they send or phone call they make.

Another day we can debate why sales organizations spend an inordinate amount of time and money constantly chasing new logos. The reality is that they do. Empty pipeline phobia puts more pressure on salespeople to surface new sales opportunities any way that they can often without enough training and coaching to help them succeed.

Leaders own the fault here. When the default command is to do “more activity” to try and meet objectives, quality is bound to suffer and it does.

Banish magical thinking.

As I often do, I recently wrote another LinkedIn article about the need for salespeople and sales leaders to banish magical thinking and stop looking for short-cuts to engaging buyers. Cheap tricks in the form of subject lines, break up emails and other such nonsense simply reinforces that buyers don’t need sellers to help them in their purchasing decisions at all. There is a reason why 90% of the time buyers simply hit delete to rid themselves of constant deluge of sales spam.

Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes. Do you know what it is like to try and buy from you?

Go through every step of the journey as a buyer would. Download white papers or attend a webinar, and then experience what it feels like to be hounded by a salesperson through email, phone calls or LinkedIn connection requests. Evaluate the messaging that salespeople are using to try to book sales meetings. Are the messages focused on the issues relevant to the buyer or simply another attempt to sell with your product pitch? Engage directly with a salesperson and experience what it feels like to have features, benefits and a product demo pushed on you. Record sales calls and listen carefully to how your salespeople are representing your offering.

It is easy to toss around phrases like “improve the customer experience” or map your processes to the “buyers’ journey”, but in truth, the effort to transform existing processes isn’t easy.

But that doesn’t mean the transformation effort shouldn’t be undertaken. In fact, I believe it must be a strategic imperative!

We are about to enter the 4th and final sales quarter for most companies, and I can guarantee that the “do more” mantra will reach a fevered pitch with the end result being largely the same. As it has been for the past decade, roughly half of all sales teams will still not meet quota goals. Same activity = same results. Denial doesn’t change reality!

Filed Under: blog, sales Tagged With: customer experience, experience, Prospecting, quota, sales, sales leadership, sales management

Tis the Season for Sales Kick-Offs

By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

This the time of year when many sales organizations hold their annual or bi-annual sales kick-off meetings. The idea is to bring all sales team members together using the kick-off as an opportunity to rally the troops in support of new sales goals, priorities and strategies, product launches and to deliver training of some sort.

I think kick-offs are a good idea if done the right way.

As the term implies, a sales kick-off (SKO) is – or should be – the springboard that sets the tone and foundation for sales priorities in the new fiscal mid-year or annual sales year. Unfortunately, most SKO’s totally miss the mark.

Here are a few ways, I believe, you can improve the success of your sales kick-off meeting.

Shift thinking to long-term versus just what will happen at the event. In the SKO’s I’ve participated in during my corporate days or the ones that I’ve spoken at since then, the plan is often focused on the SKO “event” and not what comes before and after the actual meeting takes place. The SKO is the launch point for achieving sales success all throughout the year. Your plan must include what happens prior to the SKO and how the learning will be carried forward and acted upon after the event. That plan should be clearly communicated to sales management because they will have roles to play in the before and after the kick-off activities. If they aren’t bought in and committed to making it happen, it won’t happen.

Be selective with the content you deliver. Many sales kick-offs tend to focus on delivering “product” information versus spending time on the development of the selling skills of their salespeople. This is a BIG missed opportunity. Product training can be done prior to the meeting using sales enablement tools or online sessions to get reps up to speed.

The importance of business acumen and strong consultative problem solving and selling skills has never been more important. That’s what buyers want. Yet, too much of the time, there isn’t enough investment made in training your salespeople to be the kind of seller that buyers want to help them. Buyers want sellers who help them solve business problems. Yes, I know, you have a great product. But products don’t sell themselves, as a rule. If you can’t sell to the problem, a sale is unlikely to materialize. Selling is a problem-solving business. It is less important what your salespeople sell and more important HOW they sell it.

You are trying to cram too much information into the agenda. SKO meetings are typically time compressed because it is expensive to bring the entire sales organization together in one place. As a result, meeting planners try to pack so much into the meeting time that people leave these events feeling as if they were forced to drink from a fire hose. You can bet that most of that information wasn’t absorbed and probably forgotten about within days. Even if you are conducting virtual sales kick-off meetings, which present other unique challenges, don’t overstuff the agenda.

As it relates back to my first point, plan for pre-work prior to your kick-off event. Brainshark’s recent research found that “more than six out of 10 organizations (62%) don’t deliver pre-work to sales representatives in advance of their SKO, and 84% don’t conduct training in advance – neglecting to provide a foundation on the skills and topics that will be covered.”

Retain and reinforce. Behavior rarely changes after one meeting. You can have the most motivational speaker of all time leading off or closing your event, and the euphoria of that rah rah session won’t last long, nor will it affect lasting behavior change. Change is a process. If you want people to embrace the new skills they’ve just learned, coaching, training and management reinforcement must happen consistently after the event concludes. If you don’t plan for the reinforcement work that must happen after the meeting, not much is going to change at all.

Bringing it home.

I believe in the power of the sales kick-off meeting when thought about from a longer term more strategic point of view. Your kick-off is the launch pad to greater success throughout the entire sales year but if your only focus is on what happens during that meeting, and not what also needs to happen before and after the event, your investment in time and money could probably be better spent elsewhere.

Filed Under: blog, sales Tagged With: meetings, sales, sales kickoffs, sales management, social selling, training

B2B Sales Success with Ken Lundin

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

In this episode, I talked with Ken Lundin. Ken is hosting the B2B Sales Summit, which we discussed in the interview. He was gracious enough to collect 28 of the top speakers to supercharge your sales activities by bringing you the whole experience free of charge. No pitches just pure content – it’s an irresistible opportunity. Remember, learners are earners so take advantage of this incredible chance to jumpstart your B2B Sales Success. REGISTER NOW.

Here is what you will learn about in my interview with Ken.

For most listeners, their sales year has just kicked off, and for those listeners who are half-way through their sales year, Ken’s nuggets of advice apply to you too.

Ken started off by sharing his actionable advice about the steps that salespeople both individual contributors and their managers do to set themselves up for success.

For anyone looking to fill their pipeline with more qualified sales opportunities, Ken shares his thoughts on the top priorities to focus on to get you there.

The sales cycle is often misunderstood, and Ken and I talked about the most misunderstood aspect of the selling process.

Learn what a salesperson or their sales manager do today to improve their sales in the coming year.

Hear from Ken about why he decided to create The B2B Sales Summit kicking off on February 6, 2018.

Ken told me what surprised him most when interviewing some of the top sales influencers around the world.

Enjoy the interview AND REGISTER NOW for the B2B Sales Summit for FREE!!

Event Dates: February 6, 2018, to February 14, 2018

  • There will be 3-4 interviews made available each day.
  • Daily sessions will be live for 24 hours and then the next set of videos will be released.

About Ken Lundin:

Ken made his sales bones by delivering $26,000,000 in contracts in under 9 months and being a part of a management team recognized as 1 of INC 500 Magazine’s fastest growing companies for 3 years in a row driving sales from under #2 million to $77 million in just 4 years.  Today, he is a consultant for Span the Chasm, helping deliver sustainable sales growth for companies under $100 million in revenue and the Host of The B2B Sales Summit.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: 2018, b2b, lead generation, referrals, sales, sales management, sales process, Sales Summit, social selling

Discover The Amazing Key to Rapid Pipeline Growth with Chris Bennett

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

This episode is all about building rapid pipeline growth, a challenge facing many salespeople today. My guest, Chris Bennett shared his strategies for building the sales pipeline that delivers sales results.

We talked about:

Why so many salespeople struggle to build the proper sized sales pipeline/ funnel.

The one type of question that is designed to fuel the funnel with the right kinds of sales opportunities.

The characteristics of a good challenge question that you need to be asking.

Chris shares examples of what a good challenge question sounds like.

Through his examples, Chris reveals that it is relatively easy to ask the right kind of question and yet, he talked about why more reps don’t do it.

You’ll learn what happens when salespeople are trained to use these questions properly. And Chris shared examples of actual sales results.

Finally, we discussed what sales managers can do to support their salespeople in this process.

Enjoy the interview!

About Chris:

Chris Bennett heads up Chris Bennett Sales Training. Chris has been helping businesses increase pipeline and crush quota for 24 years. He always measures for hard financial results.  He has worked with companies like Dimension Data, CDW, SHI, Bell Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, TELUS, Cisco, AT&T, and others. The core of his teachings are built upon the foundation of; understanding, helpfulness and creating real measurable business impact.  He believes in relentless follow up. He is happily married and loves recreation such as; fishing, skiing, golf, tennis, squash and mixed martial arts.  He is an avid Chicago Bears fan and listens to classic rock turned up loud.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: funnel, inside sales, lead generation, pipeline, sales, sales management, sales training

The Myth of More

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

Today, I’m writing specifically to sales leaders, though the myth of more applies to anyone in sales. For many of you, your sales teams are reaching the half-way mark in your revenue year. Is your team on track to hit their revenue goals with 6-months to go? If your answer is yes, congratulations!

If your answer is no, or you have concerns about whether your team will get there, then we need to talk. If you are keeping up with sales trends, and I’m sure you are, then you know that roughly half of salespeople are not going to hit their quota objectives this year. This problem isn’t new news. It has been a disturbing trend for some years now.

Now you might be thinking, that isn’t going to happen to my team, but statistically speaking, it is quite likely that half your salespeople aren’t going to hit their numbers. If I’m you, I’m worried.

Why with all the advances in sales training, sales performance and productivity approaches and tools is the problem still a pervasive one? One big reason is due to what I’m calling the myth of more. It is a serious problem worth talking about.

To prepare for a podcast interview that will go live on July 10th, I read Jeff Koser’s book Selling to Zebras. A book I highly recommend you read. From the books beginning, I was grabbed by this hard-hitting fact: “The most competitive company in an industry closes about 15 percent of its forecasted sales, and its competitors close another 15 percent. 70 percent of the prospects in an industry—the sales everybody is fighting for—will never buy from anyone.”

Let that sink in for just a moment.

Precious resources are being stretched thin to support activity after activity. Think about the time and energy drain being placed on pre-sales support, sales, marketing, management or finance. And, think about the hard dollar costs associated with all of that effort.

Why are time and energy continually spent on opportunities that are never going to go anywhere? The answer is quite simple. Most sales organizations follow an activity-driven sales approach and the thinking is that all activity is the right activity, which will lead to the right results. And when the going gets tough, as in sales objectives aren’t being met, a large majority of sales leaders subscribe to the philosophy that more activity is even better. Um. No. More isn’t necessarily better.

The battle cry goes like this… we need to get our sales back on track so…

  • Prospect more.
  • Make more dials.
  • Send more emails.
  • Network more.
  • Talk to more people.
  • Get more appointments.
  • Deliver more demos.
  • Do more proposals.

If you just do more, then the sales will follow, right? Wrong.

The problem with this approach is that energy expended chasing people who aren’t the right prospect for what your company sells isn’t going to lead to more positive results. It will result in resources being stretched to the breaking point, burnout and turnover among your sales ranks, and quota numbers continuing to go south.

A better approach is focusing on the right prospects, which includes going deeper into current customer accounts, and stop insisting that your salespeople chase anyone with a pulse. Even if you think that’s not what you are communicating to your salespeople, when you insist on more activity, invariably people will focus on any activity to satisfy your request.

Instead of chasing anyone who might be able to buy from you, your salespeople should be focusing all of their attention on only going after your ideal prospect.

The concept of focusing on your ideal prospect profile isn’t new. It is certainly one of the core tenets of an account based selling and marketing approach. The problem is that even if your team has spent the time to clearly identify the characteristics of your ideal prospect, the only prospects that your salespeople should pursue, it takes real discipline and commitment to see this through. Unfortunately, the moment numbers look questionable, all reason flies out the window and the reflexive action is to fall back on activity for activities sake. The thinking is that more will solve the problem. It rarely does.

As a sales leader, what can you do?

First, acknowledge that more isn’t necessarily the answer. Pressuring your salespeople to do more of what already isn’t working, expecting that somehow the results will be different, is how Einstein defined insanity.

Second, it all begins with a commitment and the discipline to focus all your sales resources on the right prospects. Spending time with the prospects who fall outside your ideal prospect profile are simply burning time and money that can and should be invested somewhere else.

Third, resist the urge to ask salespeople to push harder and do more when numbers are off. Instead, evaluate carefully where your team members are spending time. Are they pursuing the right companies? Are they talking to the right buyers? Are they demoing to the right people? Are they booking the right sales meetings? Are they responding to the right proposals?

More isn’t the answer because it is the quality of sales activities that matter. If you are going to ask your people to do more, it should be more of the RIGHT activity; otherwise, you’ll keep spinning your wheels.

P.S.

Buy the book Selling to Zebra’s. Everything the authors talk about is both strategic and actionable. They literally walk you through the steps it takes to get your sales team off the more activity, any activity hamster wheel and onto an approach that helps salespeople close more profitable business easier and faster.

Filed Under: blog, sales Tagged With: account based selling, productivity, sales, sales management, zebras

Sales Leaders Must Measure What Matters with Rob Kall, CEO of Cien

By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

I talked with Rob Kall, CEO of Cien about the deeper impact that artificial intelligence can have on the sales process. Cien’s application helps sales leaders answer difficult questions with better accuracy. Questions such as:

  • What sales numbers and budget should I plan for next year?
  • Why do teams make or miss their sales targets?
  • What leads and opportunities should my reps be focused on?
  • Which items in my playbook have the most impact on sales?

I asked Rob about his thoughts about whether sales leaders are measuring what matters most to the business.

The impetus behind starting Cien.

The specific business problems that Cien is solving.

What he thinks about Salesforce Einstein.

And the benefits that artificial intelligence brings to salespeople.

Enjoy the interview! And don’t forget to take the global survey that Rob mentioned during the interview. Find it HERE.

About Rob:

Rob Kall is Swedish American serial entrepreneur, known for his data-driven approach to sales management and performance. His latest start up, Cien, is a new artificial intelligence app focused on helping teams increase their sales productivity by answering their most difficult questions.

Connect with Rob on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: artificial intelligence, productivity, sales, sales management

More Than Mediocrity with Samantha McKenna, ON24

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

In this Women in Sales Leadership episode, I talked with Samantha McKenna from ON24. We talked about:

  • What led Samantha into sales and what she loves about the profession.
  • How she set herself apart with prospects and clients from the other reps she competed against. Think going bigger, stretching further and getting creative.
  • The core values that enabled Samantha’s sales success.
  • Her advice for women in sales who want to move into leadership roles, and what she did to get herself promoted into leadership positions.

And more.

Enjoy the interview.

This episode is sponsored by Hubspot.

Don’t miss out HubSpot’s annual sales event – Inbound Sales Day – on June 6th! 30 leading sales experts will be sharing their knowledge and expertise. Register now for FREE at hubspot.com/inbound-sales-day

About Samantha:

Samantha McKenna is an award-winning leader, who serves as a Regional Vice President of Sales for ON24, and has worked within the SaaS sales and marketing space for ten years.  She is a thought leader in the demand generation and content marketing space, having spoken across the US regarding webinars, the use of technology in the marketing stack, the use of analytics for business development and lead generation, and how leading law firms and professional services organizations are leveraging technology to drive revenue.  Samantha served four years as a board member of the Legal Marketing Association’s Capital Chapter and actively volunteers with financial literacy initiatives in Washington, D.C.

Connect with Samantha on LinkedIn and Twitter

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: crm, Hubspot, leadership, ON24, sales management, selling, women in sales

The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top with Kevin F. Davis

By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

Being a rock star sales rep doesn’t necessarily mean that the transition to becoming a sales managers is going to be easy. Sales managers need training to help them transition because the skills that led to individual contributor success, sales rock star greatness aren’t the same skills needed to be great in leading sales teams.

Kevin and I talked about:

  1. The biggest problem facing sales managers and VPs of Sales today.
  2. Some of the most important lessons that Kevin learned in his time as a sales leader.
  3. Why Kevin decided to write “The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness”.
  4. How organizations can better prepare their managers to be great leaders.
  5. The one piece of advice that sales managers never get but desperately need.
  6. Kevin’s favorite insight he included in the book? In other words, Kevin shares with listeners the most important thing he learned while researching and writing.

About Kevin:

Kevin is the president of TopLine Leadership, which provides customized sales training and sales management development programs. His 3rd book, “The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top” is now available in hard cover, ebook and audiobook from Amazon.com. Early in his career, he worked for a Fortune 200 company in sales management and general management responsibilities. He, therefore, understands the unique challenges faced during the transition from sales to managing salespeople and the transition from managing salespeople to managing sales managers. Kevin is also the author of two sales books, “Getting Into Your Customer’s Head and “Slow Down, Sell Faster!” He lives in the Reno-Tahoe area.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn  Twitter

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: lead generation sales management, sales, sales management, training

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