BLOG

Sales Weekly Roundup: What Pisses Inside Sales Managers Off?

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

sales-managers-pissed-off.jpg

Welcome to your sales weekly roundup for December 11 – 17th. This week we’ve got what pisses inside sales managers off, how salespeople work differently across the U.S., 5 ways to better challenge your customers and the benefits of sales operations and sales force collaboration. Enjoy.

Top Five Things that Piss Off Inside Sales Managers the Most (Research)

Inside sales expert Gabe Larsen reveals, as the title suggests, the top challenges of sales management. The results are based on InsideSales.com’s latest research report. What’s staggering is that for the past three years, the results have stayed pretty much the same.

Screen Shot 2016-12-15 at 11.50.45 AM.pngTheir responses to fix these problems, respectively, have also stayed fairly consistent.

  • Training and Development: use external sales training firms or accreditations.

  • Lead Quantity and Quality: push for new marketing leadership.

  • Recruiting and Hiring: hire headhunters and employment firms.

Conclusion: Try something different; give managers better coaching, training and hire with them.

Salespeople Work Differently in Different Parts of the U.S., in 6 Charts

Well-regarded sales author Steve W. Martin surveyed more than 250 business-to-business field salespeople who completed a 43-part salesperson survey on subjects including, “sales strategy preferences, quota performance history, and personal beliefs.” Here are 6 key findings:

  • B2B reps in the West lead the pack when it comes to quota attainment.

  • Midwestern reps are in B2B sales to control their destiny, while Northeastern reps are in it for the money.

  • Reps in the West and South were more likely to report having a role model compared to reps in other U.S. regions.

  • Those in the West are more likely to bond with clients.

  • Most reps agree Tuesday is the best day to get a response to a cold call or email.

  • Northeastern and Western reps are more likely to give their careers an “A.”

5 Things Every Salesperson Should Know About Their Customers

Executive Vice President & General Manager of training solutions company Advantexe Learning Solutions, outlines 5 strategic insights that will help salespeople better challenge their customers with more business-acumen.

  • Business strategy and value proposition. The first thing your sales team must do is determine what your customer’s business strategy is—low cost, customer-focus, innovative—and build a line of questioning around that into challenges and opportunities.

  • The “value dashboard”. After discovering the customer’s value prop, your sales team should determine the reasons your customer’s buy.

  • Financial goals and objections. Your sales team should know how to integrate your customer’s financial goals and hurdles into their selling strategy.

  • Drivers of the cost system. Your sales team will be able to stand out if they are aware of the variable costs of the business: the cost of acquiring a new customer and/or the cost attached to producing a service raw material.

  • Drivers of shareholder value. The best salespeople do their research and ask questions about shareholder value (which vary by industry and company), so that they can position their products and services to bolster that value.

For Sales Force Enablement And Sales Ops, Collaboration Is Crucial

Research Director at CSO Insights Tamara Schenk further unveils some key findings from CSO Insights Sales Enablement 2016 study, which has been a favorite of our roundups before. In this article she likens the results of a properly aligned team with a well-laid out home: success starts with design.

  • Mature, disciplined sales operations provide a foundation for a scalable platform of productivity and performance.

  • Sales force enablement cannot exist in a vacuum. It functions best in collaboration with a solid and scalable platform for sales productivity maintained by sales operations.

  • Collaborate with sales ops to:

    • Ensure that your requirements such as, for instance, a customer-core oriented process landscape, will be implemented.

    • Design and improve the interfaces with the marketing and the service processes.

    • Adjust your enablement services to this customer-core foundation to ensure consistency and connectedness. Salespeople sense immediately whether all the different elements and services that are provided to them are consistent and connected to each other or not.

{{cta(‘ec55a9f6-f4e1-449d-870d-899a003e60a8’)}}

Follow Us

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Get our latest blogs direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive more sales insights, analysis, and perspectives from Sales For Life.

The Ultimate Guide to Social Selling