BizSugar.com › User › IanDSmith › Published

When I devoured Daniel Pink’s new book, To Sell is Human, in February on vacation in Puerto Rico I tweeted that I was buying it for all my clients! Firstly because it was a great book, secondly it articulated the new rules of sales and finally it supported my playbook. Read More

It’s a tough market to raise your prices. Customers are extremely cost conscious and market savvy. Why should they pay more? Instead you need to reframe the problem into a yield optimization problem. Read More

In this final post on Scaling a Sales Team, I turn to execution tips. Driving your sales team to operate at maximum effectiveness is one of the most difficult operational issues you will ever face as a leader. From start-ups to $50m companies we are challenged to keep the momentum moving forward. Read More

We see many businesses struggling with this problem across sectors and across all stages of the company lifecycle. Focusing on B2B selling, I'm tackling the problem over 3 blog posts. The first one below reviews the questions you need to consider before building a sales model that works for you. Read More

In this second post I thought it would be useful to share some benchmarks covering, On Target Earnings, call stats, and cookbooks depending on the sales model you choose. Using worked examples let's examine possible ratios and metrics worth targeting. Read More

The Harvard Business Review published a great article last month based on Gallup’s latest – State of the American Workplace. One of the shocking conclusions – 67% of Americans have been disengaged at some level over the last 12 years! Read More

July is a great time to reflect on that first six months of trading. What really worked? What surprised you? Here is a little checklist for leaders to review to help focus and align your team on the next six months. This list will help you assess if progress is being on the right stuff.

Read More

There’s more to a successful business than free cash and killer marketing strategies—sales growth is what truly drives a business forward. But it can't be just about sales growth. It's about scaling a business to produce safe growth. Read More

The WSJ did a great book review last week blowing up the myths surrounding brainstorming and innovation – Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. The authors are professors at the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Read More

One of the most difficult aspects of scaling a business is alignment. You could be the head of a $500m division or the leader of a 25 person manufacturer but you will struggle with alignment. Getting people pointing in the same direction is the essence of leadership. Read More