Point of view …where we catch up with passionate practitioners in sales management. This edition, we catch up with Suzy Hunt, a qualified coach and DISC practitioner, who also had a stellar career in FMCG sales management at brand giant Lucozade. Suzy is also one of our wonderful associates, and has been heavily involved with both sales improvement projects, (think helping clients design their own sales processes) and the coaching side,

  Emma The sales manager's view Unfortunately, staff turnover is still an issue for us, as many others are experiencing too. The “The great resignation” seems to have resulted in a lot of swapping roles in the sales profession. So, following on from my last article about email etiquette I have been spending a lot of time coaching my new team members on the sales basics. This month I thought it would be usefu

  Emma: The Sales Manager’s view This year we have had an influx of new members to the sales team and one of the challenges I have to continually work on is email communication. Many of our new recruits do not have much sales experience and the quality of their written communication is very variable to say the least! Here are the top tips that I coach them on: Be responsive A sales role is a customer satisfaction role: Acknowledge

Exactly how are buyers & suppliers supposed to collaborate effectively? In summer this year, we launched a research project to look at how buyers and sellers see collaboration around strategically important issues. For example, many organisations are trying to be more sustainable and to achieve that, they really need to engage their suppliers. How well is that collaboration working today? …well not fantastically is the answer! We

Emma The sales manager's view With the period of informal zoom attire coming to an end, do we reach for the suit once again or try something different? I have noticed the discussion being mentioned in hushed voices, but as often with fashion choices, many are waiting for others to take the lead. A good starting point for such a discussion can be to dust off your old work attire policy and to not change anything too drastically. I like to c

Emma: The Sales Manager’s view As an industry, we often face some tough price negotiations, especially from the larger customers. Over the years, I have noticed that salespeople have an inbuilt instinct to want to give discounts. There is a misconception among many of them that buyers have all the power. This year, I have been laying the ground work with my team to put us in a stronger position for when these moments arise. The quote from Alic

EMMA: The sales manager’s view I had quite an argument with someone in my network recently who is also a sales manager. He kept saying, “I can’t wait till we can get back to visiting customers in person” and “We’ll soon be rid of these annoying zoom sales calls.” Why would anyone want to go back to hours in traffic jams, parking stress, hours of driving, when you can sell from your desk? I’ve taken a very clear line with my team: We will co

EMMA The sales manager’s view I am big believer in “the devil makes work for idle hands” so I confess I have driven the sales team hard this year. So, during quiet moments, we’ve updated GDPR lists, cleansed our CRM, done quite a lot of freebie work for clients to show some love and been very active in prospecting to try to build a pipeline for when recovery comes. It feels like we are very fit for the future, but when will the apples fall

Emma The sales manager's view It’s funny how the HR folk have got off their soapboxes when it comes to coaching. Last year, it was all ‘coaching is great, coaching is everything’. This year they’ve gone quiet. Well to be fair, they’ve got their hands full with furlough and other not so nice work. Recently, I came across the “ESC” – that’s the Effective Coaching Scale¹ to you and me. It seems to be the first psychometrically sound measure o

The National Sales Conference 2020 What happened to sales exhibitions and conferences? Surely, they are all on hold right now because of covid -19? Not so! On September 8th to 10th our sister company Kojo Academy will be exhibiting at the first National Sales Conference to be held on-line. Normally held at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, this event will now take place on- line for 2020. There is a great line up of speakers, and you can network,