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.

If you follow the website, you know that I like to talk about sales training with a more general perspective – after all, this is a training website.

I’ve talked about the topic several times, approaching it from different points of view: for example I delved into some of the problems of sales training, the structure of a good training program and why companies should outsource sales coaching.

Last week I wrote about sales quotas and why it’s necessary to share these with the sales team and get their buy-in, and the reason is purely motivational.

As wrote in the article and as said in the podcast, there can be no real commitment from the sales person if there’s no emotional attachment to the goal.

In this scenario, the front-line Sales Manager has to take care of the emotional attachment and its consolidation thorough consistent reinforcement.

Even if I’m not managing people nowadays (but I have been in the past), this is not the first time I write about how  to interact with the sales team and what actions can be helpful.

Last time I focused on why sometimes a team doesn’t do what the manager says, suggesting some effective questions to ask before you take any action.

I am extremely passionate about the topic of objections: they’re not only part of my training but I wrote/spoke about it several times, delving into the topic from different perspectives and trying to give mostly tactical advises.

There are several reasons why I’m so interested in this topic, but there’s one in particular: when handling objections we deal with the ’emotional world’ of our prospect/client and we deal with its consequences, whether positive or negative.

In other words in objections handling the roles come down, people emerge and the seeds of what will – or won’t – be a commercial relationship are planted.

If you’ve been following the website you know that this is not the first time I write about SDR/BDR, in fact I’ve already done it twice.

The first time I talked about why many SDRs/BDRs are not appropriate for a sales job, and the second time I focused on why we should rethink the SDR/BDR role according the the changes of the last years.

In this second article I was quoting David Brock (one of my favourite authors and ‘Sales Thinkers’) who introduced the topic in 2019 and whom I had the pleasure to interview on this topic, in a podcast episode which will be out in a few weeks.