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Sales Training Connection
MAY 22, 2013
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Sales Training Connection
MARCH 18, 2016
ORTHOKNOW (March 2016) shares insights from six experts on how the orthopedic sales rep role is changing – including Richard Ruff. Changing-Role-Rep_ORTHOKNOW_March-2016.
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Sales Training Connection
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
Salespeople dread dealing with mistakes. At best they get you off track … at worst they lose you the sale. Mistakes run the gamut from corporate issues, like defective products or billing issues, to mistakes generated by the salesperson themselves, like sharing faulty information or missing a key player involved in making the buying decision. Some mistakes are just annoying, some are financially costly, and some have even more dire consequences.
Sales Training Connection
APRIL 26, 2017
New Sales Reps. What would successful sales reps and sales managers tell a new salesperson on how to gain credibility? We posed that question to our customers and heard many great recommendations, like: Listen to the customer’s needs. Determine what you should do, and then do it 100 percent of the time. Do what you say you’re going to do, always follow through, stay true to your word.
Sales Training Connection
APRIL 19, 2017
After many years of sitting in on sales calls and even more providing feedback to salespeople in sales simulations, we’ve noticed there definitely is variability in the amount and quality of pre-call planning. Pre-call planning improves when someone else is on the call, like a sales manager, colleague, or even a consultant along as an observer. But the boost doesn’t last.
Sales Training Connection
APRIL 12, 2017
Sales Manager. New sales managers often are promoted for their sales success – not sales management expertise. So what happens after the sales manager assumes the role and responsibilities of their new position? Too often “paperwork” like CRM systems, HR concerns, and other administrative requirements take precedence. Additionally many new sales managers are inundated by their sales team with fires to put out.
Sales Training Connection
MARCH 28, 2017
Internal Champion. In major B2B sales where the sales cycle is long, competition is keen and multiple players are engaged in the decision, developing internal champions is one of the more effective best practices. Why? A lot of the discussions and decisions go on when you’re not there. So if you have a champion in the room, it’s more likely you’ll have a better outcome.
Sales Training Connection
MARCH 21, 2017
Let’s assume you’re a sales manager in a highly competitive B2B market with a team of eight major account reps. You have just received an email from your VP of Sales outlining an aggressive growth strategy for the next 6 months. You’ve decided the best approach is to ask your sales reps to grow the business in their existing accounts. You have called a meeting with the sales reps to share best practices for generating new business from existing accounts.
Sales Training Connection
MARCH 1, 2017
New Sales Managers. Customers expect salespeople to know more today than ever before … and to know it at a higher level of proficiency. This difference constitutes an inflexion point. Customers now want sales reps who are trusted advisors not product facilitators. All this means that in order for a sales team to be successful in the years ahead, front-line managers need be highly skilled.
Sales Training Connection
FEBRUARY 22, 2017
Listening in sales calls. While most salespeople have come to agree that asking questions is a key skill, many still underestimate the contribution of good listening to achieving top performance. It is the forgotten twin in the proposition – ask, listen and then talk. For them, the first step is awareness. The second step is actually becoming more skilled.
Sales Training Connection
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Onboarding new sales reps. Today a sales team must not only be able to sell a competitive advantage; they must be a competitive advantage. In most companies, it is increasingly difficult to sustain a competitive advantage by traditional means. Traditional factors, like superior products and innovative manufacturing technologies, may provide short term advantages but unfortunately they can be replicated in relatively short order by an increasing number of agile and aggressive domestic and interna
Sales Training Connection
JANUARY 31, 2017
Sales performance. Constant change has always characterized the business world. Looking in the rear view mirror has never been a recommended strategy for determining future direction. However, from time to time the nature of the change takes on a different look. The scale and speed of the changes during these periods can truly be labeled disruptive.
Sales Training Connection
DECEMBER 31, 2016
Happy New Year. Wishing you a successful sales year. Keep an eye on the Sales Training Connection for new ideas that may help you improve your sales performance. To a smashing 2017, Janet and Richard.
Sales Training Connection
DECEMBER 14, 2016
Selling to C-Suite Puzzle. In major accounts sales success at the C-level is a “do or die” proposition. What makes it particularly challenging is “one strike and you’re out.” There’s no second chance to get it right. Successfully selling to senior executives is a book with many chapters. However, three footnotes are particularly important: When do you sell to senior executives?
Sales Training Connection
NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Virtual Reality and Sales Presentations. Each year medical companies develop a dazzling array of new products. Some are minor upgrades. While others are extraordinary new products designed to be game changers or, in some cases, “bet the company” entries into the market. Unfortunately after all the market assessments, business plans, beta tests, and approvals many new medical products fail to achieve the anticipated commercial success.
Sales Training Connection
NOVEMBER 10, 2016
Companies spend a tremendous amount of time, money and effort every year to improve the productivity of their sales teams. The intervention strategies range from sales training efforts to coaching initiatives to sales tools to marketing materials. These efforts tend to be laser focused on helping sales reps enhance their ability to sell more effectively.
Sales Training Connection
NOVEMBER 3, 2016
Sales training. If you look back over the last decade, a number of industries have gone through dramatic change. They have changed what they buy, how they buy, and what they are willing to pay for it. The future will produce more of the same with the changes likely to be even more dramatic. If your customers are making changes of substantial magnitude, then the case is made that it’s no longer business-as-usual for your sales team.
Sales Training Connection
OCTOBER 17, 2016
Developing a sales culture. Traditionally when talking about sales best practices, most of the emphasis has been placed on individual sales rep and sales management skill sets. But the more we have studied high performing sales teams, the more we have come to realize that the cart has often been placed before the horse. Perhaps sales teams would be even more successful if greater emphasis were initially directed towards creating a culture that drives individual excellence.
Sales Training Connection
AUGUST 17, 2016
Sales Management Excellence. Herminia Ibaraan, an INSEAD professor, published a provocative book arguing that in today’s market if you desire to get better at management you must venture outside your comfort zone. Being stuck in outdated mindsets or ways of doing things will not lead to success. The message is: to achieve success, managers must learn to pivot – that is do something different rather than just getting better at doing what they are doing.
Sales Training Connection
AUGUST 9, 2016
Seling with Clinical Data. Physicians – and other prescribers – report that clinical data is increasingly important in making decisions. So, as one “moves to the other side of the table,” selling with clinical is not a “nice to learn” but instead one of those “must dos.”. Sometimes clinical data is not available. But even when it is, too many salespeople do not optimize its use during interactions with medical staff.
Sales Training Connection
AUGUST 1, 2016
Sales Training – 2026. As a way of exploring the future of sales training, let’s time travel to the year 2026 and examine the major trends of the day. Suspending disbelief, assume you have time traveled and have arrived in the summer of 2026. You are journeying south on Highway 1 towards Big Sur in your Apple Titan 2.0. You have preprogramed your new Titan including a stop for lunch at Nepenthe.
Sales Training Connection
JULY 27, 2016
New sales managers. Congratulations! You’ve done it! You have crossed over! You are now a sales manager. So, what do you do now? Even after some initial guidance from colleagues, most new sales managers find themselves struggling to figure out how to balance the requirements of the position. The mountains of paperwork about HR concerns and other administrative requirements take most new sales managers back a step or two.
Sales Training Connection
JULY 13, 2016
Sales Strategy. When you listen in on strategic account review sessions between Sales Managers and sales reps all too often the conversations is primarily about what has gone wrong – “Why did we lose that big sale?” or “How come the forecast figures are off?”. While it’s certainly important to diagnose what’s gone wrong – it’s equally important to analyze success.
Sales Training Connection
JUNE 1, 2016
Sales Training Investment. It is also not about the elapsed time since you last did it. The strategic “it” in this case is the decision about whether you should make an investment in sales training. If you traveled back in time and drop in on some of the conversations about sales training, you might hear: “We are not knocking the ball out of the park but things are okay plus we have a lot of other things going on so let’s think about that sales training thing next year” or “We just did some t
Sales Training Connection
MAY 18, 2016
Sales Training and Start-ups. Why do some start-ups make it and some don’t? As one might suspect, given the staggering number of start-ups formed every year, there is no shortage of information on critical success factors. Some common ones are: Timing, working capital, and the leadership team. In addition, the ability to develop and sustain a viable growth plan is seen as one of the more difficult and tricky success factors.
Sales Training Connection
MAY 4, 2016
Sales Training Investment. How much money are companies spending on sales training? And is it enough to worry about whether or not one is optimizing the investment? This, as they say, is the easy part. The answer to the first question is a lot; the answer to the second question is – yes. Companies spend a hefty amount of money – so yes, it is worth worrying about.
Sales Training Connection
APRIL 28, 2016
Medical device sales reps. Ever wonder what medical sales reps like most about their jobs? MassDevice reported the findings from a survey of more than 1,400 sales reps in the 2016 Best Places to Work in Medical Sales survey. Take a look at what they found: 72% of those responding were satisfied or very satisfied with their job. Nonetheless, about one-half said they were actively seeking a new job.
Sales Training Connection
APRIL 6, 2016
Sales Strategy – Stop, Pause, Reassess. A sales manager recently finished sales strategy reviews for the top 20 accounts in her geography. She told me, “Let’s not talk about the quality of the sales strategies – some were great and some not so much. I expected that. What I didn’t expect were the stories about how the sales reps executed their sales strategies.”.
Sales Training Connection
MARCH 15, 2016
Power of Storytelling in Sales. One of the most common traps in selling is talking too soon and talking much about your product. Now, if you travel back in time there was good reason why many sales reps fall into the “product pitch” trap. They were constantly being taught the “101 tips for doing a perfect feature pitch.” They were just doing what they were taught.
Sales Training Connection
MARCH 9, 2016
Etch A Sketch Sales Force. The Etch A Sketch was introduced at the peak of the Baby Boom in 1960 and was one of the best-known toys of that generation. Today, it can be found in the Toy Industry Association’s hall of the 100 most memorable 20th Century toys. This toy of yesteryear is a perfect image to use in framing a discussion about the need to revamp a sales force to be better aligned with ones customer base.
Sales Training Connection
JANUARY 20, 2016
Sales coaching. Good sales coaching is a balance – a mix of feedback on things that go right, as well as, things that don’t. The problem is we tend to get out of balance. It is easier to see the ineffective – faults and mistakes than to detect and analyze skillful performance. Inevitably, this colors the feedback we give. It is much easier to focus on the negatives than the positives.
Sales Training Connection
JANUARY 6, 2016
When is selling the most fun? Certainly when you have a superior product. Perhaps it’s even a “killer product”, like the Xerox copier vs. the mimeo machine. Unfortunately with global competition and advanced manufacturing technologies, those days are rare and if they do occur they are difficult to sustain. Today even when you have a superior product a competitor is likely come out with one that is just as good or better than yours in half the time of yesteryear.
Sales Training Connection
JANUARY 1, 2016
Wishing you a successful sales year. Keep an eye on the Sales Training Connection for new ideas that may help you improve your sales performance. To a smashing 2016, Janet and Richard.
Sales Training Connection
DECEMBER 17, 2015
Sales reps need to know more and their knowledge must be at a higher level of proficiency today than ever before. To be among the emerging winners, sales reps must not only be able to sell a competitive advantage; they must be a competitive advantage. They must bring value to the customer by the way they “sell” as well as by what they sell. All this means that sales training has moved closer to center stage and the spotlight is a little bit brighter than in yesteryear.
Sales Training Connection
DECEMBER 2, 2015
Transition from Sales Rep to Sales Manager. Congratulations! You were a top salesperson. Now, you’re a newly appointed sales manager. The good news is you have the pivotal job for improving the sales effectiveness of your organization. The bad news – many perils and pitfalls are lurking in the shadows. Let’s take a look at 7 best practices for making the transition from sales rep to sales manager a little bit easier.
Sales Training Connection
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
Sales Chitchat. Customers want fresh ideas and creative insights to address their needs that are both new and challenging. Increasingly customers want sales reps to be an advisor they can trust, not simply a product facilitator. This means sales reps must be able to move beyond product pitches and conduct business conversations. Business conversations are often thought of as serious discussions and compelling conversations.
Sales Training Connection
OCTOBER 28, 2015
Whether or not you have put in place a sales process – it is happening everyday. It is whatever your salespeople are doing Monday morning to navigate the customer’s buying process. The real problem is not, therefore, a lack of sales process. The problem is too many companies do not systematically manage and evaluate their sales process. In today’ markets buyers are changing how they buy but sales organizations often fail to adjust and adapt their sales process to the new reality.
Sales Training Connection
OCTOBER 21, 2015
Sales excellence. Major account selling is truly a highly skilled and information-intense profession. Just like any highly skilled profession one must not only master skills; you must also understand the principles upon which success is built. In major account selling, the most important underlying principle is the following – sell the problem before you sell the solution – the horse must be in front of the cart.
Sales Training Connection
SEPTEMBER 22, 2015
Online Sales Training. Recent years have seen tremendous disruption in how customers buy. And if buyers change how they buy – salespeople need to change how they sell. Customers need fresh ideas and creative insights for addressing a set of needs and opportunities that are both new and challenging. They expect sales reps to be knowledgeable about their industry, company, and issues at a higher level of proficiency than ever before.
Sales Training Connection
SEPTEMBER 17, 2015
A Classic – ’63 Corvette. As the fourth quarter begins, many VPs of Sales and Sales Training Directors will be focusing on closing Q4 strong and positioning their sales teams for success in 2016. One item on many agendas will be the annual sales meeting, often sometime during Q1. Over the years we have attended a number of our clients’ national sales meetings.
Sales Training Connection
AUGUST 17, 2015
Product sales pitches. If you are an avid reader of sales blogs, it’s likely you will come across three or four blogs a week about the secret sauce for creating a winning product pitch. If sales blogs had been around 25 years ago, you would have encountered even more of them because the product pitch has been around for a very long time. Way back when, companies spent an inordinate amount of time crafting product pitches for their major product offerings.
Sales Training Connection
JULY 6, 2015
If you missed the Best Small Business Blogs of 2015 (as culled by FitSmallBusiness.com) – take a look. You’ll find the Sales Training Connection … along with our 2015 featured post: Sales Reps – How to Bring Value by Saying “No” Take a read … Technorati Tags: sales best practices , selling economic value , selling value.
Sales Training Connection
JUNE 24, 2015
Ssales Simulation. Historically companies have often used sales simulations as a capstone sales training program for their senior sales reps or their national account group – that is when the program is positioned as a Top Gun school. While sales simulations certainly fit this need, thinking of sales simulations only as a training design for advanced programs is unnecessarily limiting.
Sales Training Connection
JUNE 8, 2015
Sales Networking. Sales reps often find themselves at industry conferences and other meetings where they should be networking. However, in too many cases they fail to optimize the opportunity because they are not sure what to do. So, by default, they end up spending their time in line to share a moment with a keynote speaker or attending yet another breakout session that is all about nothing.
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