One of the activities I love to to do better understand what’s going on in the sales world is reading job ads for salespeople.

I find it interesting because it helps me better understand the time we’re living, the needs of the companies and very often what my direct competitors are doing.

It has been a while since I wrote about a strategic commercial topic: in the last weeks I choose to balance the type of contents on the website and focus more on tactical, managerial and personal development subjects.

Now that I wrote about the topics I had on hold and the the website is finally in balance I can come back to strategy and I’d like to start with power nodes.

Last night after a long day of work I had the pleasure and displeasure of attending a resident’s meeting.

Although I have been involved in complex sales and negotiations for a few years I was very surprised to see that even resident’s meetings have enormous difficulties and some variables in common with complex sales.

In the last weeks (both in articles and in podcasts) I focused on the ‘Expertise Problem’, a problem that all the salespeople (especially the younger generation) are exposed to.

Given the great availability of knowledge and research in sales, an in-depth study of the topic can improve our skills but can be a limit too: in fact, by continually reinforcing our learned principles we can limit our openness for novelty and change.

In other words, by always reinforcing to the concepts we are most passionate about can be a barrier for the development of new knowledge which would lead to a change in the paradigms we were trained on.

Last week I wrote about the problem that all salespeople face, especially the new generations who are exposed to much more knowledge and research compared to the past.

In the article I focused on the reinforcement of learned ideas and principles which can become a limit for novelty and change: in order to avoid this, I suggested some actions promising that I would have wrote about how to avoid the scripted behaviours we’re all exposed to.

Honesty and despite the challenges we face nowadays, I don’t think there has ever been a better time to work in sales.

In the past few years (I would say in the last decade), sales has taken an even more relevant place in the boardroom so a wide area of research and a lot of knowledge is developing around the topic.

It seems we can admit that sales is at the same level of all the other disciplines which make up the broad Business subject and we can only be proud of that.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about ‘Demo Pressure’ and how to avoid it.

In the article I provided an antidote to the unpleasant pressure that every salesperson experiences when a prospect or client wants to skip discovery and go straight to the demo: the antidote is to position the demo as a process in 2 steps which are connected, interdependent but happens separately.

At the end of the article I recommended keeping some time between the 2 steps so that the information obtained in Discovery can be studied, organized, and used to customize the demo.

One of the greatest satisfactions I had so far regards the professional diversity of those who follow the website.

Even if I work in IT, I’m happy to see that the website is followed by salespeople working in a wide variety of industries: software, services, telecommunications, insurance, banking etc.

What makes me most proud is working on a board of advises which speaks a language common to all salespeople, advises which are applicable in different industries.

A few months ago I wrote an article regarding the numbers myopia, an insight for those who find themselves in the difficult situation to hire a new sales rep.

In the article I focused on the fact that, in judging the sales career, numbers can lie: as I said, the numbers must be contextualised according to the situation that the salesperson was experiencing at that time.

In other words, there are several other variables to consider because in this work, numbers tell just a part of the truth.

Last week I wrote an article (and recorded a podcast) about product training, trying to approach the topic from a different point of view.

In fact, I suggested some questions that could be added to the process of training creation so that sales people can elevate the conversation, taking it to a more strategic level.