The perfect sales enablement cocktail: one part product knowledge, one part sales skills, shake well

Shaken not stirred - the best sales training has two key ingredients

I believe that most sales skills training doesn't work. Why? Most salespeople struggle to apply new sales skills, unless they get to try them out during the training - on real products, and if possible, on real customers. Then they need to be coached. A lot. So why does this almost never happen?

Sales enablement project collaboration in the global organisation

What has ship building got to do with global sales enablement?

What are the challenges for sales enablement in a global organisation that is very large, dynamic and complex? In an organisation like this, it’s difficult to get things done unless you can collaborate and build a trusted network.

How to use LX to deliver sales enablement that hits the mark

Sales enablement should be about learning experiences

If Customer Experience is CX, and Employee Experience is EX, then Learning Experience is LX. If the customer experience is right, we buy more. If the employee experience is right, we engage more. Similarly, if the learning experience is right, we learn more. Here are some tips for creating a great learning experience...

How does social media make sales enablement easier?

Social media is great for sales enablement

Sales enablement used to get messy: collaboration, education, project management, content sharing and promotion across multiple channels. Then social media came along and made it a whole lot easier...

Sales skills training doesn't work for most salespeople

For many salespeople, sales skills training gets them nowhere

I often hear from sales leaders that their salespeople need to improve their sales skills. They tell me they'd like to put all their people on a sales skills training course, except that last time they tried this it didn't really work. What's going on here?

Cloud software – computing different means selling different

Selling cloud is different

For the past 12 months I've been working with successful Cloud software salespeople to help hundreds of other salespeople make the transition to selling Cloud software. Recently someone asked me to summarise the key differences in the selling approaches. Here’s what I told them...

Recruit for attitude, train for experience

Recruit fresh talent with the right attitude

Recruiting great salespeople from outside your industry can be a winning strategy. But there’s an obvious problem: they have no experience of your industry. How do you help new hires to learn the knowledge they need to be effective quickly?

How can you predict success in sales? The holy grail of sales recruitment and management

There's no crystal ball for predicting success in sales

Suppose there was a consistent way of predicting what personality traits will lead to success in a sales role. Not just any sales role. The sales roles in your business...

Align learning with business strategy

Learning must aim for the same goals as the rest of the business

I believe L&D leadership should be about generating rapid improvement and lasting change. It’s about supporting overall business goals by motivating immediate performance growth and sustaining it long-term with the right learning and development strategies.

The 80:20 leadership rule

Alex Ferguson - the best coach in the world?

Most of us would probably agree that we need great leaders to inspire people to perform at their best. So why isn't every organisation full of people who can do this? The honest answer is that many managers don't know where to start.

Case study: business transformed via better learning

Better learning strategy can produce business metamorphosis

I believe that any sales organisation can improve performance. And I believe that any organisation can change, in a way that not only brings rapid improvement, but lasting change.