It didn't take very long for this to happen.  When Objective Management Group (OMG) announced that it was making its findings data available to the public, we knew that it wouldn't take long for someone with a flair for analytics to dig in and come up with something cool.  Last week, John Cousineau, creator of Amacus, got me on a video conference and shared what he came up with.  Hint:  Another way to differentiate top performers.

He analyzed the average scores of OMG's 21 Sales Core Competenci...

Yesterday, the Sales & Marketing Analytics Blog ran this article on the 8 Things That the Top 1% of Sales Reps Do Differently.  Cara, the author of the article, wrote that she extracted these 8 things from a discussion on Quora, a discussion where sales leaders contributed their opinions on what they believe the top 1% of all sales reps do differently.  While the disclaimer was in the first paragraph, it is very clear to me that this discussion wasn't based on science - not by any stretch of the...

by Cheryl Powers

There are enough sales lessons in this song to fill a chapter in a book. But for today, let’s focus on why your salespeople insist on keeping prospects in the pipeline who are never going to buy from you - - and what you can do to fix it.

Your sales pipeline should be the predictive determiner of future business but month after month and quarter after miserable quarter, CEOs and their sales leaders continue to play guessing games about how much business they can actually count...

by Cheryl Powers

Despite what I see in my news feed, my experience has shown me that most humans are decent, well-meaning, and kind. And when you agree to bring someone into your company as an employee, those are important qualities to screen for throughout your recruitment process. But let's be clear: it takes more than nice people to get the job done.

"The next thing you know, this CEO or business owner and their executive team is spending precious time and costly resources interviewing ...

by Cheryl Powers

This year our company's theme is Game Changers. We started the year by asking ourselves how we can help our clients in the most game-changing and innovative ways?

One of my favorite questions to answer for a CEO client is:

What are the three or four initiatives that, if executed in the next 90 days, would have the biggest impact on revenue performance over the next 12-18 months? Then we reveal the impact number -- the opportunity in dollars for executing on those initiatives ...

What is it beyond sales skills that exceptional salespeople and sales leaders possess that make them so successful? It's not just one thing but a set of factors that create a competency that make the difference between a good salesperson and and an elite sales superstar. You can think of it as the sales equivalent of Emotional Intelligence. The more of these factors your sales team has, the better they will be at keeping cool under pressure, forging meaningful connections with prospects and cust...

by Cheryl Powers

How do you know for sure before you hire them that a salesperson or a sales leader can and will do what it takes to succeed? Their resume can't tell you. The headhunter doesn't want you to ask. The candidate will try to convince you in the interview and will likely be a more skillful interviewer than you are.

If you are serious about the success of your sales force and the success of your new hires, you simply can't wing it. You must know the specific sales skills, sales str...

by Cheryl Powers

I remember the day when my daughter and her Girl Scout friends received their awards for cookie sales. These girls were on fire and as I look at the reasons they did so well, individually and as a team, I couldn’t help but notice that the factors contributing to their success are the very same factors that will make or break your sales force.

They were motivated and goal driven.

Beyond the satisfaction of knowing their world would be a better place with more Girl Scout cook...

Most CEOs are well aware of the costs associated with generating new customers. Few, however, are able to accurately predict exactly when those potential customers will become actual customers. That’s a real problem for CEOs who want to significantly grow revenue and are faced with inaccurate, stagnant, and bloated pipelines that are less reliable than the local weather report.

There is a famous quote by John Wanamaker about half the money spent on advertising being wasted and not knowing which...

Warren Bennis, one of my teachers and one of the world's finest business scholars, said, "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." And in our lifetime we have witnessed great feats of leadership and we have benefitted greatly from it. As I sit in my Aeron chair, typing on LinkedIn's publishing platform on the Macbook Pro that sits on my desk, listening to Mozart's Requiem streaming from my iPhone, I am in awe of the vision held by the creators of each of these things I ...