By Cheryl Powers

Expanding a team is more than just adding bodies to your company—it's about finding the right kind of people who'll turbocharge your growth. As an owner, you need to be tactical and thoughtful about whom you bring into your fold. It's not just about filling positions; it's about enriching your team's dynamics and enhancing your company’s capabilities. 

The Complex Journey of Team Growth

When you're at the helm of a small or mid-market business,...

By Cheryl Powers

Your Sales Leaders play a pivotal role in a company’s ability to reach targets and 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 haven't been trained for and don’t qualify for the...

by Cheryl Powers

"Nothing happens until somebody sells something."

That makes getting sales recruitment right one of the single most important things a company must do to grow. And it's not easy - for many reasons. Not the least of which is that even a terrible salesperson is probably better at controlling the interview than you are. They've done it more and they will focus all of their energy on telling you all the things that make you want to believe that they'd be perfect for the...

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,...

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...

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.

...

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...

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...

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.