Sales & Managerial Excellence

One day I was at the mall waiting for my wife. I had recently bought a new pair of running shoes for an upcoming marathon but thought I’d kill some time in the running store. As I walked in, the store associate approached me. She didn’t ask how I was doing because I would have said fine. She didn’t ask what brought me into the store because I would have said I was just browsing...

‘Easy’ doesn’t work in Sales. Ever. Sales can be insanely tough. Especially when markets aren’t favourable. Author Jeb Blount points out – Average salespersons handle more rejections by 9 am every day than most other professions do in a year. That’s how tough it gets...

When the Federal Express courier comes to my office reception area, she is greeted by Annah Salas. When she looks at Annah, she should see $180,000 stamped on her forehead...

As a thumb rule, good Sales Managers spend up to 75% of their time with their team, either individually or collectively. They plan to do this by the following...

The observations and aphorisms that comprise Horstman’s laws, represent 30 years of professional development, leavened with a life time of leadership experiences...

Leaving things at the intuition level makes communication almost impossible. I would estimate that about 80% of top management is absorbed in firefighting...

Sales teams are under constant, almost daily, pressure to perform. So, leading a sales team calls for creating, growing and sustaining trust. Here are 10 practical ways, suggested by Robert Hurley, to create and manage trust within teams...

Back in 2008, in the year of the global financial crisis, management guru, Ram Charan made a prescient prediction about how sales professionals must train themselves in what he called Value Creation Sales (VCS). He said: “Training for Value Creation Sales (VCS) must make sales people aware of the new skills they need to acquire and help them practice those skills. PowerPoint presentation the basis of most training today is not enough...

Shopping without a store is not science fiction. But it is still speculation and a lot of hope” predicted legendary management guru Peter Drucker in one of his early books. It came true in Drucker’s own lifetime. He quoted McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc as saying “A mother with two small children does not come to our store because the hamburgers are delicious...

Sales veterans will tell you, how, like creative artists, the salesperson must treat every fresh sale as her or his first sale ever. Every customer, every customer need, even the same customer you are selling to again, is unique and deserves a fresh approach. We cook our food daily, yet every day, it is someway at least slightly different...