by Cheryl Powers

Lead, follow or get out of the way. That’s the sentiment I grew up with. My dad was a naval officer in WWII who served at the same time as Ronald Reagan was in the US Army. And my dad knew how to steer a ship. He was kind, consistent, and competent and he taught me a great deal about leadership.

Unfortunately, in today’s business climate I see far too many leaders turning over the helm to employees who haven’t a clue about leadership, budgets, revenue, selling, or management...

Hiring the right salespeople is crucial to developing an effective and dynamic sales force. Developing an effective sales force is the most important job a leader has because your sales force is the vehicle through which you serve the world. No sales, no company. No company, no need for employees. Poor sales, poor company. Poor companies tend to have poor service, which also leads to no customers. You get where I'm going here.

There is an ideal candidate profile for every sales role and every...

by Cheryl Powers

Sales hiring.

How hard can it be?

We just need them to sell, right?

Yet, recruiting high performing salespeople and sales leaders is one of the most difficult tasks a CEO will ever have to get right -- and keep right to stay successful.

There is much more to it than posting the ad, sifting through resumes, and hoping you picked the right one. The vast majority of ads are poorly worded, focus more on the company than on the role, and fail to attract qualified candidates.

Most sales managers are up to their eyeballs in busy work. Their days are full, for sure. But are they full of the right things? The things that move your company toward fulfilling your mission, delivering on your brand promise, adding value to your ideal customers, creating a world class sales organization with an unstoppable culture of winning. Often I find, not so much.

The role of sales leadership is to lead the sales team to their revenue goals and deliver high performance but most sales m...

HOW SMART OWNERS AND CEOs GROW

I have never met a CEO who didn't want to know the fastest and most effective way to grow revenue and create a culture of positivity through winning. The best company leaders know that culture eats strategy for breakfast and that without the right strategy, people and processes, the culture will deteriorate and mediocrity will prevail.

Aligning your strategy to your people, processes, and systems creates the engine for a winning culture to prevail. People need to...

A long time ago I realized that in the suburbs outside of Boston, new leaves reach full size each Spring on May 11.  This year, with the cold April we endured, May 11 came and went and the leaves were delayed.

That said, spring leaves on May 11 are exponentially more predictable than pipeline opportunities.  Why might an opportunity not close when it was forecast to?

Technically, there are seven possibilities:

1. Closes as forecast and you win.
2. Closes when forecast and you lose.
3. A short dela
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by Cheryl Powers

The Game is On

Facts, while indisputable, merely describe the state of something. They point to things which are real, which exist but which don't necessarily explain why or how they got that way. And which, if viewed from another vantage point, may even seem to prove something else entirely.

Sherlock Holmes knows this well. Holmes out-sleuthed the police detectives time after time. He was especially fond of showing Detective Lestrade, who always seemed confused by the facts ...

Whichever way you turn, wherever you look, and whatever you listen to there is data. Polls, surveys, metrics, analytics, analyses, white papers, graphs, charts, infographics, tables, spreadsheets and more.  There is data everywhere.  5 of my last 10 articles were based on data and I know that my regular readers love the articles that are based on data so I am writing about data again today.

Objective Management Group (OMG) recently expanded the Consultative Seller competency which represents 1 ...

Humans have been waiting for thousands of years to discover the secrets of life.  Why are we here?  Why do bad things happen?  What happens after we die?  Is Heaven real?  What is God's plan for us?

While many experts have attempted to answer all of these questions, most of us lack proof. There's no data.  If we wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly there are not only answers to these questions, but science-based proof, that would be a game-changer for us.

Likewise, every day most companies tr...

I mined Objective Management Group (OMG) data and compared salespeople who have been with their company for 10 years or more, with salespeople who have been with their company for five years or less.  Theoretically, the veteran salespeople should be better and stronger in every way.  But are they?  Let's take a look and then let's discuss exactly what we are seeing and why.

The first dashboard shows the average scores for all salespeople who have been at their companies for more than ten years....