Leadership

Was every penny you ever spent on Training a waste of money?

In Sales Training we are often challenged to explain the expected return on investment on the training we’re invited to deliver. It’s a fair question, but an incredibly difficult one to answer.

We could, of course, use the simplest of measures.

A simple division of the upfront investment into the results returned as an outcome of the training.

For example: taking the incremental revenue growth over an agreed period and divide that by the training investment. The hope being that a bigger number than the investment presents itself.

R: £100,000 incremental revenue shift / I: £10,000 training = 10X ROI

That’s risky though. There are no ‘silver bullets’. Instant gratification does not exist and if it did, it would be incredibly expensive to buy.

Did you know the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day?

Let’s say you enjoy 7 blissfully decision-free hours of sleep a day, that still means you are making 2,000 decisions per hour, that’s a decision every 2 seconds.

Many of those rapid-fire decisions are based on your beliefs.

10 Skills that Make the Best Sales Leaders Stand Out

Many sales leaders attempt to manage their team simply by looking at the team’s numbers.

They constantly look at how many opportunities are in the pipeline.

They track the number of appointments, proposals and, of course, the number of sales made for the month.

Then, the manager will attempt to hold their team accountable for maintaining some pre-determined level of results.

The problem is you can track numbers, but you can’t manage them.

You can observe your team’s results but, by that point, there is nothing you can do about them. Worse still, numbers can be a very poor indicator of actual growth and progress.

DISC assessments were developed based on psychologist William Moulton Marston’s theory about behavioural traits.

Since Marston’s original findings were published in 1928, they have been further developed by Walter Vernon Clarke, an industrial psychologist, and a DISC behavioural assessment tool for the workplace was created by John Geier.

This tool can help you and learn more about personality styles, paving the way toward improved communication.

Read on to learn more about the different DISC assessment styles and communication practices that work with each.

Here's a Mystery.  

Most departments in an organisation have a common language and a common process.

Everyone in Accounting talks the same language.

In Marketing, there's a very analytical process by which everyone agrees to measure results.

In Operations or Engineering, or any other part of the organisation you care to name, everyone agrees on the process by which things get done, and everyone agrees on the key terms that connect to the process.

As organizations grow, they realise that there are numerous different ways to define success.
A new business, for example, will be immensely satisfied the first year the operation returns a profit.

On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year.

Defining what success means to you and establishing goals based upon these criteria can be an important step in monitoring your business’s development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you. Here are a few different ways that you can consider defining your success.

Why don't we spend more time considering the consequences of making a bad hire?

The cost of a bad sales hire is phenomenal. Let's take a look.

To calculate the true cost of a bad sales hire you are going to want to know:

1 > The cost to recruit, on-board and train a salesperson.

2 > The average sales of your A players (top 20%), B players (average) and C Players (bottom 20%).

Are you communicating....or trying to get the other person to submit?

In Transforming Leaders: The Sandler Way there are eight common baits that people use to get other people into Communication Dysfunction.

This is what happens in dysfunctional exchanges between people.

They have one commonality.  One person is using his or her strengths against the other person in order to bring that person to submission - so that they will acquiesce or come around to a certain way of thinking or acting.

Leadership starts in your own life and then radiates outward as an example to others.

Dave Arch wrote in his Book 'Transforming Leaders - The Sandler Way' "You cannot expect to transform a Team, or an Organisation, until you've transformed yourself."

There are 7 essential qualities that are reflected and exemplified in the character and work habits of great Leaders.

Small business owners in the South East opting for apprentices over grads Small business owners in the South East would rather recruit an apprentice for an entry-level role than a graduate, according to a survey of 200 small business owners in the South East. 53% of respondents said that they would rather opt for an apprentice for an entry-level role.