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Perhaps this scenario is familiar: a group of sales-marketing colleagues settle in for an interdepartmental meeting. The marketing department is giddy with excitement and a fresh morning coffee buzz. The sales reps are watching the clock and cringing each time they hear their office phone ring through to voice mail.

Meeting quota is a valuable talent, but there are a handful of other performance signposts to consider when diagnosing sales team problems. With the time and resources it takes to onboard and acclimate a new rep, sales team managers learn to view team members with a holistic approach rather than firing at the first sign of a missed quota.

Human lives are carefully constructed around a hardwired inclination to avoid pain and suffering. If we’re lucky enough to have the resources, we stay indoors during tornados and we don’t drive during ice storms. We lock our doors when a madman is on the loose, and our countries build up national security. We earn paychecks and keep savings accounts. We visit doctors for regular checkups, buy food to eat, keep clean water to drink, and the list goes on.

In this 5 part series, you'll find a lighthearted guide to enabling sales reps to close more deals.

Blog #5 of #5 in our Peter Ostrow Guest Blog Series

Here, There, and Everywhere: 21^st Century Selling Comes of Age

Answer this question:  is your sales team inside or outside?  If you hesitate before mentally responding, you’re in good company.  

Over the years, my Sales Effectiveness research has seen a steady blurring of these traditional job roles, as work/life balance employment trends, ever-cooler handheld devices, and lightning-fast connectivity have dramatically changed the landscape of B2B selling.  Traditionally, enterprises employed low-cost or entry-level staff to smile-and-dial their way toward qualifying leads for the field, and showered their high-flying outside reps with all the goodies that accrued to coffee-drinking closers.  The line between the personas was clear, although proactive sales leaders were wise enough to build a dues-paying, promotional path between them for the strongest inside sellers to graduate to the field. 

Technology has greased the wheel and has exponentially accelerated the business process in the last several decades, and more so - in the last several years. Yet, in an ever-evolving environment, what has remained the same is the vital role that the marketing exec plays in the successes of both the marketing and sales teams.

When a sales rep shouts from the cubicle tops about his or her busyness, it’s time for a performance review. The busy body rep is likely mistaking movement for progress, and performance is suffering. When focused on the amount of activity rather than the quality of activity, a rep is sure to miss marks on the sales pipeline, which is driven by focus, clarity, and a flawless delivery of the right message at the right time. A tête-à-tête can realign, and the following sales enablement aids can help to give reps the tools to abandon busyness for real productivity.

Blog #4 of 5 in our Peter Ostrow guest blog series

Which Half of YOUR Marketing Budget is Working?

It's time to retire the classic mantra of ROI-hungry CMOs: “I know that half of my marketing dollars are effective, just not which half." 

Today's savvy B2B marketers have plenty of tools at their disposal to overcome this traditional lack of visibility, which legitimately plagued their communications and business development efforts for generations. While the next Super Bowl will undoubtedly set new records for mass media advertising costs, few CMO budgets are spent nowadays on anything but laser-focused, personalized marketing content that approaches one-to-one messaging as closely as possible.  

Likely, your sales department is falling short in at least one of two sales rep onboarding areas: either uptake or ongoing education.  Perhaps it takes new reps months of ramp-up to sell accurately. That’s bad onboarding. Or, perhaps you invest heavily on rep education on the front end, then stop. That resulting lazy rep mentality also points to an onboarding problem.