by Cheryl Powers

In the movie Hoosiers, coach Norman Dale has led his team to the regional finals and is delivering a pre-game motivational speech. He knows these guys are excited. He knows they are nervous. He knows they are preoccupied with both hopes of winning and fears of losing. And he wants them centered, focused, and present to the game they are about to play.

Isn’t that how it is for your sales management and every salesperson on your team? Every day they are responsible for...

We have all been there. The stakes are high, the pressure is on, and we have to perform at our best. And instead, we choke. Maybe you were playing golf. Maybe it was an important meeting with your bank or an investor. You blew it and now you're kicking yourself because you knew you could have done better. It's happening to your salespeople too. They're in the middle of a selling situation, and BAM! The prospect says something or does something that catches them off-guard and they panic or...

Much has been written about the cost of low employee engagement. But keeping customers and prospects engaged in your sales process is equally important to the success of your business.

We know a great deal about the high cost of low employee engagement. We know that there are over 20 million disengaged workers in America alone and that the cost of this problem is nearly $350 billion dollars per year in lost labor and output. We know that the root cause of this disengagement is employee-job...

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 of a case, the errors...

by Cheryl Powers

Sales Leaders play a pivotal role in a company’s ability to reach targets and to satisfy the needs of their customers and their shareholders. That means their primary job is to put your products and services in the hands of more of the people who will use them to solve their biggest problems, while creating profits for the people who own the company. That’s a problem when most sales managers don’t qualify for the job.