| Home | My Account | Directories |
Leadership and Teamwork – Pull the Oars …
Published on 2013-05-20 07:16:28
Leadership and Teamwork – Pull the Oars … Count the Beats Another guest blog today, from Patti Grimm. Great message on working together for everyone’s benefit. Analogies and stories are powerful ways to communicate a message which peo
Important Grammar in Business Presentations
Published on 2013-05-14 11:51:54
Just How Important Is Proper Grammar When it Comes to Business Presentations? Ken; We have a guest blog this week, a topic that is absolutely key in emails, presentations and meetings. Hope you enjoy! It takes more than just good speaking skills to g
Programs to Increase Your Professionalism
Published on 2013-05-06 18:39:06
Programs to Increase Your Professionalism This week I thought I would use this forum to let my readers know of Two Sales Leadership training programs in May that you should plan to attend. The first is Friday May 10th, Building Predicta
Old Ways of Doing Business, No Longer Work
Published on 2013-04-28 13:37:45
Old Ways of Doing Business No Longer Work I am honored to have this week’s blog prepared by Jonathan Farrington, he is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author and sales thought leader. He is the Senior Partner of Jonathan Farring
Earn Your Success, Pay the Price
Published on 2013-04-21 16:17:25
Earn Your Success Pay the Price A good friend of mine always told me that you “earned success” and you had to accept the fact that their normally was price to pay for that success. When I work with my client’s sales teams I always inqui
Sales Mgmt: Achieving Balance: Fear vs Respect
Published on 2013-04-16 09:47:51
Achieving the Balance Between Having Your Sales Team Respect You But Not Fear You Ken: This week we have a guest blog. The topic is extremely important for all levels of sales leadership, especially in challenging situations/times. Every good sales t
Sales Leadership: Learning by Observing
Published on 2013-04-08 07:07:13
Learning by Observing This past week I had the opportunity to participate in what is called a Speakers Showcase, 10 professional speakers had an opportunity to stand up in front of 100+ Association managers and give a 15 minute program based upon you
Sales Mgmt: Mowing Your Lawn
Published on 2013-04-01 09:33:48
Sales Management and Mowing Your Lawn The first quarter is over and sales leaders are capturing forecasts for the next two months and hopefully celebrating the achievement of their first quarter results. I am sure not everything has been smooth, af
Sales Mgmt: Training; Learn from Disney U
Published on 2013-03-24 12:19:28
Sales Leadership: What is your training plan? Learn from “Disney U” As a sales manager one of your responsibilities is to develop the professionalism of your sales team. After reading “Disney U”, How the Disney University Develops the Wor
Sales Leadership: Has your team watched Pawn Stars?
Published on 2013-03-17 18:19:16
Sales Leaders: Has Your Team Watched Pawn Stars? Recently during several coaching calls I heard a common theme and the trend of hearing these comments always occurs during the last month of each quarter. What were those comments? Either the p
Sales Mgmt: Do your team know how to prospect?
Published on 2013-03-09 08:43:17
Sales Managers: Does Your Team Know How to Prospect? It seems that every client I have worked with over the past 14 years has had a challenge in creating enough leads driven through their sales teams. Does that sound familiar? Last week I was fortu
Sales Management: Understanding “Setting the Hook”
Published on 2013-03-03 19:38:45
Sales Mgmt: Understanding “Setting the Hook” One of the main jobs of sales management is to help their salespeople see where they are in the sales opportunity. Are they early? Do they know what they need to know? Do they have an excellent str
Salespeople: Expand Your Reach and Your Income
Published on 2013-02-26 07:07:28
Increasing Your Reach and Your Income Last Tuesday I presented a web cast to a number of people on the topic of how to partner or how to work with other organizations that are “non-competitive but sell in to your existing market”. I call th
Sales Management: Make Monday Sales Meetings Easy
Published on 2013-02-10 19:42:32
Making Monday Morning Sales Meetings Easy for Remote Teams For this Making Monday’s better post I wanted to talk about what is often the most common and mundane part of the Monday routine and that is the sales team conference call. It’s har
Sales Leadership: Bringing a Sharp Focus to Your Sales Meetings
Published on 2013-01-21 19:26:47
Sales Leadership: Bringing a Sharp Focus to Your Sales Meetings During the past few months I have been consulting with several clients on a variety of issues and coaching others via our new “Acumen Project”. (more on that later), in both enviro
Sales Management: Taking Smart Risks
Published on 2013-01-14 09:39:45
Sales Management: Taking Smart Risks How Sharp Leaders WIN When Stakes are High The opening chapter had me right away, whether you are a: 1. Entrepreneur wannbe 2. Small business owner 3. New manager in a complex organ
Open 4 Doors to Sales
Published on 2013-01-06 17:29:35
Four Open Doors We offer you a Guest Blog this week:Great idea’s to open 2013: Ken Thoreson For all the confidence and poise they possess, sales reps can be paranoid individuals. Nearly every rep I’ve ever met is constantly worried that th
Rural Wisconsin and the Passion of Impact
Published on 2012-12-28 08:07:54
Holiday Reflections and the Passion of Impact I woke up in rural Wisconsin on Christmas morning, when I peeked out the window of my mother in-law’s home it was -7 degrees on the thermometer. I grew up in rural Wisconsin-that is how it is supposed
Merry Christmas: Find a Cause
Published on 2012-12-14 14:32:14
Merry Christmas: Find a Cause During most of my keynote programs I discuss my three rules to Create a Gourmet Life, in most of my client engagements I also discuss the elements for creating a culture of high performance. In both situations I like
Guest Post: Managing Salespeople: Compensation Survey!
Published on 2012-12-10 08:42:44
Guest Posts for Your Sales Management Guru Ken: We have two posts today, first How to Manage Manipulative Sales Employees and a BONUS Sales Compensation Survey to help you plan. How to Manage Manipulative Sales Employees Employees come in all sha
Sales Leadership: 2013 Sales Theme
Published on 2012-12-03 09:24:28
Sales Leadership: 2013 Sales Theme Last week I was speaking at a conference on: “Building and Maintaining Sales Motivation”, after the program several individuals came up to discuss my concept of a “Drive Statement. At this time of the year e
Sales Mgmt: 4 Steps on How to Not Get Fired!
Published on 2012-11-26 22:02:53
Sales Mgmt.: 4 Steps on how not to get fired. On my flight to Seattle I was pondering what this week’s blog might contain; it occurred to me that in reflecting on the past year and looking forward towards 2013 a quick summary of a few basic actio
Marketing can Improve Lead Quality by Owning Qualification: Guest Blog
Published on 2012-11-16 17:16:49
Marketing Can Improve Lead Quality By Owning Telephone Lead Qualification This guest post is written by Derek Singleton of Software Advice, an online resource that report on technologies, topics and trends in B2B sales and marketing. I read this
Happy Thanksgiving!
Published on 2012-11-14 11:56:12
I hope your year has had many blessings. Ken
Leadership: Creating a Great Culture
Published on 2012-11-06 08:08:55
Sales Leadership: Creating a Great Culture It’s something I seldom find in many organizations. While many companies focus on increasing communication between employees and/or building the right kind of culture to maintain a proper atmosphere many
Monday Miscellaneous
Published on 2012-10-29 07:42:28
Monday Miscellaneous There were many different thoughts for this week’s blog so I have included all of them in one batch. First: from Ken Thoreson If you are not receiving my monthly newsletter: “Why Sales Managers Succeed”: (it was sent out today) Our commitment is to provide quick insights in a brief informative format focused [...]
Sales Leadership: Nine Minutes on Monday
Published on 2012-10-22 05:24:51
Nine Minutes on Monday The Quick and Easy Way to Go from Manager to leader By James Robbins McGraw Hill My speaking and sales leadership consulting practice causes me to work with many individuals that are experiencing situations of stress that include either learning to manage a sales team for the first time or their [...]
Sprint to the Finish–It’s that time of the year…
Published on 2012-10-16 07:49:08
Sprint to the Finish—–It’s that time of year… An upcoming election. Roller-coaster days on Wall Street. Middle East issues, Budgets being cut. There are many distractions. With that economic domino effect affecting us all as 2012 begins to wind down, ending the year on a high note will be more challenging than ever. At Acumen, [...]
Sales Management: Finish Off October, Set Up November!
Published on 2012-10-08 16:34:20
Sales Management: Finish Off October, Set Up November Wow, I was shocked when October’s calendar flipped over and now it’s the 9th! During the past few days I have been suggesting to my clients several idea’s to ensure they finish off the year in a strong style. I thought I would offer them and ask [...]
Sales Management: Preparing for 2013
Published on 2012-10-01 08:48:24
Preparing for 2013 Last week I had the opportunity to participate in another conference (14th of the year), they are always great times when you can hear other speakers, learn new ideas and meet new people. During the session I lead a panel discussion on “Killer Strategies for Prospecting” and I spoke separately on “Leveraging [...]
Sales Leadership: The Impact of Creating a Sales Process
Published on 2012-09-23 19:26:35
Sales Leadership: The Impact of a Creating a Sales Process It occurs almost every time I speak or every initial client visit. Whether your organization is using CRM or not I find that most organizations have not taken the time to define, write out and train their sales team on how to use prescriptive a [...]
Sales Leadership: Finding Fresh Air
Published on 2012-09-18 09:08:34
Sales Leadership: The Need for Fresh Air Last Tuesday around 10pm I had just gotten back to my home from a neighborhood activity, sitting down on my porch, turning on the TV to catch the last news of the day, I checked my phone for email. This is not an unusual practice for me as [...]
Sales Management Guru blog rated top 50 for 20121
Published on 2012-09-11 11:57:57
Your Sales Management Guru Blog on “Top 50 Sales & Marketing Blogs” List Blog author, consultant and columnist Ken Thoreson speaking at several major conferences KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 12, 2012—Top 50 Sales/Marketing Influencer Ken Thoreson, author of articles and book series for sales leaders, renowned consultant, columnist and speaker, and Acumen Management Group Principal has [...]
Sales Growth: 5 Proven Strategies
Published on 2012-09-04 07:21:17
Sales Growth Five Proven Strategies from the Worlds Sales Leaders Over the Labor Day weekend I picked up a book with the above title, written by Thomas Baumgartner, published by John Wiley & Sons. The forward was written by Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce.com. What makes this a great read for sales leaders at ANY [...]
Sales Leadership: Focus on Focus
Published on 2012-08-27 05:55:24
Sales Leadership: Focus on Focus During an initial meeting where I was performing a business assessment with a new client several common topics re-appeared and since I seem to discover these quite often, I thought it would be a good topic for this blog. The company has been growing, not at an aggressive pace but [...]
The Power of the Influencer
Published on 2012-08-22 08:02:56
The Power of Selling the Influencer I normally don’t focus on specific sales training topics but after several sessions where I was training sales managers on creating effective sales strategies and even experiencing several sales situations within my own business I thought I might raise this topic. First, I can recall when I was selling [...]
Sales Leadership: Climbing Mount Everest
Published on 2012-08-13 08:35:27
Sales Leadership: Climbing Mount Everest Climbing Mount Everest takes skills, plans, a strong team and luck. But it’s how people work together that matters the most-just as it does in business. While I was in Hong Kong leading a 2 day sales leadership workshop, I picked up a Chinese newspaper and in the business section [...]
The End of Solution Sales
Published on 2012-08-03 19:12:04
The End of Solution Sales The Role of Sales Leadership & Management Now what does that title mean to you? Recently I spoke at a major software vendor’s partner and client conference and a few weeks later I received an email from one of the attendee’s suggesting I should comment in a future blog on [...]
Sales Leadership: Impacting Your 2013 Revenue
Published on 2012-07-30 08:47:03
Sales Leadership: Impacting Your 2013 Revenue Yes, I am fully aware it is still 2012 and there are five months left in this year to exceed your quota and hopefully you are well positioned from a pipeline, marketing and headcount to achieve your goals. This week I want you to turn your thinking towards growing [...]
A Missed Week, but alot to cover…on Sales Leadership
Published on 2012-07-16 12:16:31
A Missed Week-But A lot to Cover For the first time since I started my blog-I missed a week! It has been a busy time, last week I flew into Toronto on Sunday to speak at the weeklong Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference/WPC and after delayed flights, lost luggage and a jammed week of meetings, programs [...]
Make Monday Morning Meetings Work
Published on 2012-07-02 08:20:15
Make Monday-Morning Meetings Count Use a well-organized, performance-oriented gathering to motivate your team for the coming week. Based upon several comments/questions from various clients in the last 3 weeks, I decided to include a chapter from my latest book: “Leading High Performance Sales Teams as my blog this week. The agenda is one item included [...]
Rules of the Hunt: Book Review
Published on 2012-06-25 07:48:12
Rules of the Hunt: by Michael Johnson Over the weekend I picked up the book “Rules of the Hunt” from Michael Johnson, founder of SalesDog.com. It was a great weekend read. From the book you can tell Michael has been there and done that! It is jammed full of tips, reminders and real world stories [...]
Sales Leadership: Closing Summer Business
Published on 2012-06-19 05:01:44
Sales Leadership: Closing Summer Business Summer can be a difficult time to lock down that extra business that ensues you exceed your monthly objectives; pipelines are thinner, vacations occur and even people are less focused. This week will be about “teamwork”, everyone reading this blog should consider their tips, and idea’s and share them with [...]
Working a Trade Show is a Job
Published on 2012-06-11 12:57:27
Best Practices for Attending an Industry Conference Working a Trade Show is a Job Last week I was in Charlotte, NC, today is Orlando, and tomorrow is Chicago. I have been speaking at a variety of industry trade shows delivering keynote programs, educational breakout sessions and general networking opportunities. As I am sitting in the [...]
Sales Leadership: Salesperson Business Plans
Published on 2012-06-04 08:09:37
Sales Leadership: Planning for the Second Half of the Year Last week after meeting with a new client I started to lay out a project plan and identify the various challenges we need to address to increase the performance of the entire company. One of the first items we needed to address was the lack [...]
Sales Leadership: Compensation and Summer Fun
Published on 2012-05-30 07:38:53
Sales Compensation and Having a Fun Summer Sales Leadership Ideas At this time of year sales management must be looking at pipeline levels and goals for July/August and determining if there is the necessary level of activity to ensure targets will be exceeded. In this blog I wanted to share a few basic ideas from [...]
Cross Sell & Up Sell Strategies for Summer
Published on 2012-05-21 12:54:21
Sales Leadership: Increasing Wallet Share with Cross Sell/Up Sell Strategies During a recent meeting with a new client’s sales team we began discussing ideas to drive additional revenue, during the meeting I began to poke at what products/services they currently have to offer and then we began a discussion on the concept of cross sell [...]
Are You Facing Sales Fatigue?
Published on 2012-05-14 08:51:59
Are You Facing Sales Fatigue? The past three years have been a challenge for most partner organizations. The economy has caused sales teams to face declining prospect budgets, more competitive bidding, fewer opportunities, lower incomes and general personal stress. As someone that works with partner organizations on a daily basis we have seen all of [...]
Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers for 2012
Published on 2012-05-07 09:23:02
Top Sales Magazine Names Consultant to Cisco and Microsoft Partner Programs a Top 50 Sales/Marketing Influencer **revised Posting KNOXVILLE, Tenn., May 7, 2012—Ken Thoreson, author of the award-winning Your Sales Management Guru blog, articles and book series for sales leaders, renowned consultant, columnist and speaker, and Acumen Management Group Principal, was named to Top Sales’ [...]
Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers for 2012
Published on 2012-05-06 21:12:38
Top Sales Magazine Names Consultant to Cisco and Microsoft Partner Programs a Top 50 Sales/Marketing Influencer (this is a press release we just sent out) KNOXVILLE, Tenn., May 7, 2012—Ken Thoreson, author of the award-winning Your Sales Management Guru blog, articles and book series for sales leaders, renowned consultant, columnist and speaker, and Acumen Management [...]
Are you a Sales Manager or a Sales Leader?
Published on 2012-04-30 06:55:24
Are You a Sales Manager or a Sales Leader? By Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Today, I have a guest blogger, Mark Hunter. His new book is on my recommended list for all of you., Ken Thoreson, www.AcumenManagement.com Take a moment and answer this question: “If you are a sales manager – or when you think about [...]
Sales Leadership: “Looking Forward”
Published on 2012-04-23 09:51:12
Sales Leadership: “Looking Forward” Many individuals have commented on my Outlook signature block, before I have my personal signature and where many people say “sincerely”, I have the words “Looking Forward”. Why do I use those words? They mean several different issues to me. First, I am a positive person. Looking forward is always better [...]
Sales Leadership: Creativity is Critical
Published on 2012-04-16 08:16:12
Sales Leadership: Creativity is Critical In many of my sales leadership workshops and in my writings I have often spoken on the need to hire creative salespeople and the need for sales management to offer creative solutions to the many problems you face. The good news is “creativity” can be learned and enhanced in everyone! [...]
Sales Leadership: Work Out Time
Published on 2012-04-09 06:30:24
Your Sales Leadership Workout May 9 & 10, 2012 Atlanta, GA A Proven Regimen for Getting Your Sales Organization in Shape Build a proactive approach to sales management that creates predictive revenue and a self-managed sales team. Learn how top performing sales leaders muscle up their teams to pump up predictable revenues. Here’s what they [...]
Sales Leadership: Gaining Insight & Accountability
Published on 2012-04-02 10:46:29
Sales Leadership: Gaining Insight and Accountability Most sales leaders have a lot of confidence-which is good, but many have never experienced what many CEO’s have, that is an insights and help from other CEO’s. Also many organizations never gain real insights from their customers or even help from their customers. What can you do to [...]
No Foolin-Sales Mgmt Should be Thinking Summer
Published on 2012-03-26 08:16:49
No Foolin-Sales Leadership Should be Thinking Summer This past week during a consulting session with a client, with both the President and their sales manager we discussed several points that I thought would be good items to bring up in this week’s blog. April 1st is right around the corner and I want all of [...]
Sales Leadership and Management in a Recovering Economy
Published on 2012-03-19 22:24:49
Sales Leadership and Management in a Recovering Economy I am speaking this week in Houston on the title of this blog, it is March 19th, 2012 and during the past few months the stock market has taken off and the papers shout out about the positive economic indicators that are being recorded: rents are heading [...]
The Sales Manager that Does It All…
Published on 2012-03-12 09:09:40
The Sales Manager that Does It All First of all, the title of this blog is impossible and second of all, it wouldn’t be right. No matter what size of sales organization you manage the sales leader that assumes they are responsible for everything or solving every problem generally fails to achieve the ultimate objective. [...]
Take Advantage of the Opportunity
Published on 2012-03-05 08:28:16
Take Advantage of the Opportunity Several years ago, I was speaking in Puerto Rico at a sales conference and while I was waiting for my return flight I was relaxing and started to speak with another flyer. He was British and just finishing his holiday. We discussed mutual occupations and experiences, when he learned that [...]
Sales Management & The Impact of Social Media
Published on 2012-02-27 07:40:40
Sales Management and the Impact of Social Media Ken Thoreson While in the process of writing a future magazine column on the future of sales and social media I interviewed three people and posed several questions in order to get their view points. I thought for this week’s blog I would also introduce you to [...]
You Don’t Just Hire a Sales Team: you build it
Published on 2012-02-20 08:12:06
You Don’t Just Hire a Sales Team–You Build It Developing a great sales organization involves more than just bringing the right people on board. It requires providing the right opportunities and creating the right culture. By Ken Thoreson (This is an excerpt from my latest book: Your Sales Management Guru’s Guide to: “Leading High Performance [...]
Executive Toughness
Published on 2012-02-12 11:01:15
Executive Toughness This week’s blog is a book review: Executive Toughness: The Mental Training Program to Increase your Leadership Performance by Dr. Jason Selk published by McGraw Hill. Why am I adding this to my blog site? My objective in addressing sales leadership issues is to provide you ideas, tools and concepts to increase your [...]
Secrets of Hiring Top Performing Salespeople
Published on 2012-02-06 08:29:01
How to Take Emotion Out of the Sales Hiring Process and Hire the Best Salespeople It’s the number one job of sales management and it is the most difficult, if you hire effectively the job of sales management becomes sooooo much easier. If you are serious about building a high performance sales team I have [...]
The Future of Your Sales Team
Published on 2012-01-30 08:43:30
The Future of Your Sales Team This year, I anticipate we will see a reduction in external sales positions of around 20%: 10% will be lost for good, and the other 10% will move inside. I believe that this pattern will continue for the next three years, until we are left with less than 10% [...]
A Sales Manager’s Recipe: What is Cooking in 2012
Published on 2012-01-23 08:18:08
A Sales Manager’s Recipe: What’s Cooking in 2012? Last week after a keynote program called Gourmet Living, an attendee came up to me afterwards and discussed her challenges as a sales manager. The last three years have been tough and she was looking for new ideas for 2012 to excite her team and also to [...]
CRM: 15 Years Later, now a friend
Published on 2012-01-15 17:54:30
SFA/CRM 15 Years Later: Now It’s Every Rep’s Best Friend This week, I thought you might like to read someone else’s article and my comments regarding the article. My comments are first. As a Sales Leadership consultant, I think the article below hit on many valid points; the Cloud and CRM usability are key elements [...]
A Walk Through a Broken Organization
Published on 2012-01-10 09:46:43
A Walkthrough of a Broken Organization Strategic sales management is often a weak link in solution provider companies. Strategic sales management is often a weak link in solution provider companies. For the past 14 years I have been working all across North America and internationally, meeting, speaking and consulting with organizations of all sizes and [...]
Your 2012 Sales Plan
Published on 2012-01-03 07:08:30
Your 2012 Sales Plan It’s a little late to begin planning your 2012 Sales Plan, but in a conversation last week with a reader of this blog, I realized there maybe others who have not formalized their 2012 plan. I have included below the various “categories” you should consider in building a plan. Other questions [...]
Merry Christmas and Have a Great Holiday Season
Published on 2011-12-19 07:01:59
The Times are a Changing, Are You?
Published on 2011-12-13 07:27:59
The Times are a Changing or Are You? At the end of each year I write down my personal and business goals for the new year in seven different categories. The challenging part of that exercise is I have to review the goals that I had set from the past year and grade my performance. [...]
Make 2012 Your Best Year EVER!
Published on 2011-12-05 07:19:31
Make 2012 Your Best Year EVER! Is the market going to be better for your products/services in 2012? Or will your sales team face another tough year to achieve their sales objectives? Recently I have been writing/talking about an issue facing everyone-your salespeople, your management team and your customers/prospects=sales fatigue. After three challenging years and [...]
Gourmet Living: Your Life’s Pizza
Published on 2011-07-05 09:22:46
Gourmet Living: Your Life’s Pizza Ahh summer is here, the fourth of July was celebrated with parades, fireworks and many family and community get together’s. I hope your weekend was a terrific time to celebrate America. On Saturday, we
Building Culture to Increase Profits
Published on 2011-06-27 09:01:55
Sales Leadership: Building Culture to Increase Profits Did you know that when you lose a salesperson, it costs you 4 times what you paid that person during their employment? These costs include not only salary, but benefits, lost sales/profits, t
The Man Who Sold Hot Dogs!
Published on 2011-06-20 08:11:52
First let me state this: I did not write this week’s blog. As sales leaders we have 3 aspects to our job. We must focus on the “role” we play, we must focus on the “strategic” side of our job and we must focus on
Guidelines for Effective Management Performance
Published on 2011-06-13 10:14:24
Guidelines for Effective Management Performance Share this with your management team As I was refilling my book shelves (see previous blog) I found the following bullets from Dale Carnegie & Associates, the copyright was 1967 and updated 1
Sales Leadership: a lack of resources may limit success
Published on 2011-06-06 09:39:04
Sales Leadership: A Lack of Resources May Limit Success Date Line: Las Vegas, Nevada I have spent the last 3 days/nights in Las Vegas on vacation prior to speaking at a conference this week. During that time I toured few new hotels, saw a show, din
Sales Leadership: Cleaning Your Book Shelves
Published on 2011-05-31 10:00:18
Sales Leadership: Cleaning Out Your Book Shelves On Monday afternoon I found out the painters were coming on Wednesday! That meant I had time to clean out my office, shuffle furniture around and generally make room for them to paint the walls. On
Sales Management: benchmark you business
Published on 2011-05-23 09:14:12
Sales Management: “benchmark your business” During the past three weeks I have visited three partner organizations, each of varying sizes in revenue, products/services offered and operational effectiveness. I also had a wonderful conversation w
Sales Mgmt: How much time do you have left?
Published on 2011-05-16 08:02:19
Sales Management: How much time do you have left? Generally most sales teams have until the end of June to achieve your quarterly objectives, these objectives maybe measured as quota attainment, headcount, CRM utilization or even certain levels of tr
Sales Leadership: Why Winners Win!
Published on 2011-05-09 08:36:49
Sales Leadership Thoughts: Why Winners Win! Last week after speaking at a conference a person mentioned to me she really enjoyed the topic; Why Winners Win. It is one of my favorite parts of the keynote and the four points I make wrap up man
Sales Leadership: Be Prepared!
Published on 2011-05-02 09:53:22
Sales Leadership; Be Prepared As an Eagle Scout, I have always considered the Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” in all aspects of my life, this past week as the South felt the destructive power of massive tornadoes and rain it was a difficult ti
Sales and Sales Management Resources for Everyone
Published on 2011-04-25 07:58:26
Sales and Sales Management Resources for Everyone This week’s blog is unique; first I am excited to announce that our blog was recently rated #19 out of the top 50 sales blogs in the US. This list is a great resource any salesperson or sales mana
Sales Leadership: Ready for July & August?
Published on 2011-04-18 07:59:02
Sales Leadership: Ready for July & August? I maybe already too late, hopefully you aren’t? I often state that it is the salesperson’s responsibility to make quota not the sales managers, it is your responsibility to hire, train and put the
Leadership: High Performance Sales Management
Published on 2011-04-11 06:45:30
High-Performance Sales Management Building a strategic and effective sales management system is just like building anything else: It takes time, refinement and follow-through In the 14 years that Acumen Management Group has been consulting with partn
Creating a Vision for Your Life or How to Develop: Gourmet Living
Published on 2011-04-04 09:30:30
Creating a Vision for Your Life or How to Develop: Gourmet Living After speaking at a sales conference this past week where my title was: Gourmet Living, Creating a Menu for Life an attendee asked me a great question. She said: “you spoke about
NCAA Sales Management: Developing Winning Sales Strategy
Published on 2011-03-28 08:30:18
NCAA Sales Management: Developing Winning Sales Strategy Last week it was about golf and putting, this week after indulging in men’s and woman’s NCAA games all weekend it’s all about strategy. In my view there are several levels of strategy to
Putting for Par’s: Are you practicing properly?
Published on 2011-03-21 09:44:54
Sales Leadership: Are you practicing properly? Putting for Par’s I happen to be in Florida this weekend, taking a few days off to visit relatives, play golf and enjoy the weather. We played 36 holes the past two days, my first real golf of
Sales Management Thought Leadership: The “Linchpin” for Business Growth
Published on 2011-03-15 14:56:19
From Webster’s dictionary: Linchpin: “something that serves to hold together the elements of a situation” The reason I focus on the role of sales leadership and management is I have found where there is strong sales management there are high
The Difference between Average and Top Performers
Published on 2011-03-07 08:33:29
The Difference Between Average and Top Performers In preparation to speak at a sales award banquet this week I was thinking about what kind of message I wanted to leave with the audience and in thinking though a variety of ideas I realized it m
Sales Management is the Hardest Job in Sales.Period
Published on 2011-03-01 08:09:19
Sales Management is the Hardest Job in Sales. Period. By Jeb Blount, Author of People Buy You Ken’s Comment: This week’s blog is a guest blog: When I saw this article published I knew you would enjoy it. It hits the mark and reinf
What a Grand Week for Personal Leadership!
Published on 2011-02-21 09:26:36
What a grand week for Personal Leadership! Last week in my blog I wrote about the importance for sales leaders to focus on building belief and the need for your sales team have emotional commitment to your company and your products/services. On T
Building Belief-a key job of sales management
Published on 2011-02-14 07:49:36
Building Belief This week’s blog is an excerpt from my latest book: Your Sales Management Guru’s Guide to: Leading High Performance Sales Teams. You can purchase the book on Amazon or at http://www.yoursalesmanagementguru.salesgravy.com Are
Vince Lombardi as a Sales Manager
Published on 2011-02-07 07:56:02
Vince Lombardi as a Sales Manager I promised myself I would not do a blog on a Super Bowl theme, I promised. But since I grew up in a small town in western Wisconsin, that actually had a “packing house” or to everyone else a meat plant and live
Sales Management: January is over; how do you feel?
Published on 2011-01-31 08:17:57
Sales Management: January is over; how do you feel? On Friday I had my two year eye exam. The doctor went through the usual tests with eye charts, drops in the eyes and checks for cataracts/glaucoma-good news he said I passed and was ok for another 5
The Importance of Sales Management in a Recovering Economy
Published on 2011-01-24 11:37:22
The Importance of Sales Management in a Recovering Economy During the past two weeks I have been in Miami, Phoenix and this weekend I have been speaking in San Antonio. We have met with Sales Leaders from around the world, lead workshops, presented
Sales Management: The Need for Creativity
Published on 2011-01-17 07:26:19
Sales Management: The need for creativity!
This past week I had opportunity to work with a great client at their worldwide sales conference in Miami. During the two days, I spent several hours with their sales management team and four hours with thei