5 steps that will make your managers into better coaches

“I’ve been involved in more than 30,000 deal reviews, 30,000 sales call reviews, thousands of forecast reviews, and more. That means I have a rich and varied… and sometimes painful… experience with coaching.”
https://www.membrain.com/blog/5-steps-that-will-make-your-managers-into-better-coaches

The Oversimplification of Sales Performance Work

Yes, you read that right. I’m worried about some of the things I’m reading and trends I’m seeing in the world of sales performance improvement. Simple is good. Oversimplified is not.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/the-oversimplification-of-sales-performance-work

How to ask better coaching questions

Great coaching makes it easy for your sales team to execute on sales process and methodology. It supports skills growth and reinforces the right behaviors at the right times. It also improves ramp-up times and reduces excessive turnover.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/how-to-ask-better-coaching-questions

Opportunity qualification is a continuous process

If you’re involved in complex, lengthy and high-value B2B sales environments, you can’t afford to regard opportunity qualification as a one-off exercise. You need to think of it as an ongoing process, in which you continually accumulate new learning as well as regularly revalidating any previous assumptions.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/opportunity-qualification-is-a-continuous-process

These Four Limiting Beliefs are Undermining Your Sales

“Every salesperson has a collection of beliefs. When they are positive beliefs, they support positive sales outcomes. When the beliefs are negative, they sabotage ideal sales outcomes. Our thoughts and beliefs influence our actions, and our actions lead to outcomes.”
https://www.membrain.com/blog/these-four-limiting-beliefs-are-undermining-your-sales

Guiding Our Customers On The Wrong Buying Journey

I have to start this post with a story. I’m an obsessed reader. At least once a week, I have to sign into Amazon to feed my reading habit. On logging in, I’m immediately fed suggestions of books I should buy...
https://www.membrain.com/blog/guiding-our-customers-on-the-wrong-buying-journey

5 reasons you should dump your old CRM

More and more organizations are coming to terms with the fact that traditional CRM has simply not lived up to its promises. Touted as a powerful sales performance tool, in many organizations it has turned out to be an unwieldy tracking and reporting tool, a glorified Rolodex that salespeople resent while sales managers wrangle to get them to use it at all.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/5-reasons-you-should-dump-your-old-crm

Is bad sales logic destroying your profit?

There is an epidemic in the sales industry, and it’s destroying profits. Year after year, sales effectiveness continues to decline, and while the causes are many and complex, there is one big problem that is causing way more trouble than it should.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/is-bad-sales-logic-destroying-your-profit

Revisiting the Buyers Journey

I can still remember the powerful inspiration I gained from my first reading of Hugh Macfarlane’s “The Leaky Funnel” – the 2003 book that first drew the B2B sales and marketing community’s attention to the concept of the buyer’s journey.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/revisiting-the-buyers-journey

Top 4 Reasons Why Salespeople Suck at Consultative Selling

Yesterday, a sales manager I was coaching asked me to explain the difference between a great question and a tough question. I gave him the one-minute version but this article has the expanded version of that answer.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/top-4-reasons-why-salespeople-suck-at-consultative-selling

3 ways your salespeople are multiplying by zero

Grab a ten-year-old and they can remind you of this important math concept: Any number multiplied by zero, is zero.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/3-ways-your-salespeople-are-multiplying-by-zero

Sales Effectiveness: Focus On The Individual Or The Organizational Performance?

The other day, Matt Dixon and I were having a discussion, trying to solve all the problems of sales. As is often, the case in these discussions, we started reflecting on a lot of broad and, possibly, esoteric issues.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/sales-effectiveness-focus-on-the-individual-or-the-organizational-performance

This cognitive bias is making you cocky… and undermining your sales

Over the past several months, we’ve been exploring the impact of cognitive bias on the sales organization, and how to both harness its power and overcome its negative impacts. This week, we’re looking at a cognitive bias that makes you, and your sales teams, cocky… even if you think it doesn’t.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/this-cognitive-bias-is-making-you-cocky-and-undermining-your-sales

9 Reasons Why Salespeople Lack the Urgency Necessary to Succeed

I was in the right-hand lane of very slow moving traffic because of a lane closure ahead, marked by orange cones. I was along side the cones in the lane where traffic was merging left. All of a sudden, a police siren and flashing lights were upon me but I had nowhere to go.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/9-reasons-why-salespeople-lack-the-urgency-necessary-to-succeed

Is your sales enablement enabling the right things?

Sales enablement is a hot topic at the moment, and a key priority for many sales organizations. Yet, as an industry, we’re failing badly at it. According to the CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, 32.7% of surveyed organizations had a sales enablement function in 2016 (up from 25.5% in 2015), but only 5.2% of surveyed companies said that sales enablement was meeting all expectations.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/is-your-sales-enablement-enabling-the-right-things

Contrast drives change

When you crunch the numbers, the most common outcome of even apparently well-qualified complex sales opportunities is a loss - not to an alternative solution, but to the status quo.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/contrast-drives-change

Here are three reasons organizations are abandoning their old CRMs

Before I began the work that would eventually become Membrain, I was a part of, and built, sales organizations. I became intimately familiar with the unwieldy nature of most CRM implementations, including the industry-leading Salesforce CRM. I experienced firsthand the results of poor user adoption rates and low technology ROI–resulting in graveyards of information, instead of guidance for salespeople.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/here-are-three-reasons-organizations-are-abandoning-their-old-crms

How Executives Fail to Understand the Reasons for Poor Sales and Revenue Performance

"That wasn't what I expected!" You might say that after reading an awesome book, waiting for months and years in anticipation of the movie version, only to be extremely disappointed when the much hyped film failed to live up to what you remembered feeling when turning the pages.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/how-executives-fail-to-understand-the-reasons-for-poor-sales-and-revenue-performance

Top challenges for sales leaders in the new year

ProSales Institute issued their 2017 Sales Agenda report last month, which surveyed almost 400 sales leaders on their top challenges for the coming year. I read it with interest as I always do, and the results line up with where I see the industry’s challenges to lie, as well.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/top-challenges-for-sales-leaders-in-the-new-year

The Sales Manager’s Job Is Different

The front line sales manager (FLSM) has, possibly, the single most difficult and important job in the sales organization. FLSMs are responsible for translating the strategies and priorities of the organization into execution by their teams. Through their teams, they are responsible for millions to tens of millions in revenue.
https://www.membrain.com/blog/the-sales-managers-job-is-different