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Hello ToddCohen.com Sales Community! Your company has announced that it will launch a 6-Sigma program or perhaps it launched such a program a while ago. So what does this mean for Sales? How will it be different than the prior alphabet soup of process and quality improvement programs like QMS, SPC, TQM, …? Should you get involved in this and how should you participate? Fundamentally, 6-Sigma says: Make the business processes effective and efficient by making them reliable, predictable, and focused on customer recognized value. This focus and emphasis ties into several recent topics you have seen in these columns and provides opportunities for you: Sales Culture and Value Proposition. Read more in this months article by Geoff Rhine....
Todd Cohen.com Sales Community,As a sales leader we have firmly established your most important role is to develop, coach and mentor your sales team. Right? Right. You will succeed by having well trained and developed sales professionals who deliver revenue. Now, the question I want you to think about is this - do you know what motivates your people? Have you taken the time and really thought about each of your sales people and what is each individuals motivation to be at your company and be successful? Is it money? Is it challenge or the opportunity to work for a solid company? Is it for future advancement? Do you know what actually gets your people up each and every day, brings them to work and motivates them to be successful? If you do not know, then I want to suggest to you that you are accountable to know that. This ...
Todd Cohen Sales Community,From time to time I am asked to assist in a search for my clients who are building great sales culture. I have a few openings to share with you. They are with a Fortune 500 company in the Staff Augmentation and Professional Services business. They are a solid 1B plus company and we have a need for the following sales professionals:Atlanta Based Director of Sales. Responsible for the growth and development of one of THREE key hubs for the company. This is a very high profile position with aggressive compensation. You must be Atlanta based and have a knowledge of that local market.Sales Executives. We have needs in the following cities ...
Todd Cohen.com Sales Community,Have you ever taken the time to ask yourself this question? "How do your clients see you"? It can be a tough one and one you NEED to ask your clients if you are going to have long term and sustainable relationships that help you create your success.Much more to the point, this says much about a key part of building a sales culture...."How do my clients see me"? That question needs to be constantly asked and evaluated by the sales organization. That question is a differentiator and it is worth asking yourself or if you are a sales leader, ask your sales teams (possibly as a workshop exercise) at your next team meeting. You might be surprised at the answers. Asking that question ...
Good Morning ToddCohen.com Sales Community-Ok, I its time to confess my secret. I see sales people everywhere. Every time I interact with someone I see some element of selling. I have always said that "Everyone is in Sales" and I see it all the time. Do you see it? The Barista at Starbucks, flight attendants and ticket agents ( including one excellent agent from Northwest Airlines who recently went above and beyond to help me) the locksmith I had to recently use and so on.So why do I think that these are all sales people in some fashion? One is that they are all engaged with a client and are trying in some fashion to help and serve. How they handle there duties leaves an impression on me and will certainly influence ...
ToddCohen.com Sales Community: Q3 is Here......yes, it has snuck up on us and now we have to keep the momentum strong. It is now more important then ever that we each hold ourselves accountable for keeping up the momentum. If we are to leverage what we have started and finish the year at or above plan we need to keep the momentum strong. Great sales leaders leverage the positive and at the same time ratchet things up.Momentum is KING. How can we keep up the momentum?Increase you field travel where possible and cost effective. You will accelerate more deals by being in the field as much as possible. This is excellent coaching time-in real time. Prioritize your field travel to ...
Dear ToddCohen.com Sales Community-It time for "Todd's List of Annoying Sales Talk"....or something like that. I actually just invented this today after hearing a speech where the presenter answered every question the same way by starting with "I want to be frank with you" or " I want to be honest here". Seriously folks how many times have we as sales professionals started to answer a question posed to us by a client with something that sounds like " "Let me be honest" or " Can I tell you the truth?" ..We all do it and we are all guilty of using these awful starters when in fact we are not being dishonest or disingenuous at all. The issue with using these type of phrases is that they cast a doubt in the clients mid that you are actually ...
Hello Todd Cohen.com Sales Community!Are you thinking about energy management? I bet you are thinking that I am talking about how to conserve gas or reduce your energy bills. Nope. I am not.I was in a sales meeting with a client today and the topic was one that I have spoken about with you often. The topic I refer to is time management. Great sales professionals are good at managing and getting the most from the hours each day ( and nights we work). Time management s a key part of being successful and feeling good about what we do. OK, now during this meeting, we started talking about time management as a ...
Hello Sales Community-How many times have we as sales professionals heard the complaint that we could not get a deal done because there was some issue with the systems at our company? I once worked for a company that had no less than 17 billing systems! Yes, you read that right! 17 separate and discreet billing systems. In this era of mergers and acquisitions, companies are buying each other long before they think about how to merge and integrate billing systems to make it easy for the client to do business. Now, you may be asking yourself...."is this another Todd rant"....? Well, sort of. We as sales professionals cannot let this back office dysfunction get in the way of us bringing great solutions to clients problems. Just today I was taking to a coaching client of mine ...
ToddCohen.com Sales Community,I was in a meeting yesterday with a client and we were having a spirited and engaging conversation around the topic of sales and marketing working as a team. Now to great sales professionals this is a basic tenet of our job. To be a great sales culture, sales and marketing need to be aligned, on the same page, in synch or whatever saying you prefer - you get the idea.Wait, not everyone does though....the conversation yesterday was with people who DO get it, but I am still amazed at the people who cant get this fact and think that sales and marketing is actually sales vs. marketing. Its NOT. Wake up! We ...
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