RAIN Group Sales Blog

Reinforcement has been a trend in the world of sales training for a while now. All the research data in sales training—and learning and development in general—supports the need for robust reinforcement.

But it’s still not happening often enough.

According to Aberdeen, fewer than half (44%) of companies formally follow-up initial sales training with reinforcement. At the same time, the companies that do reinforce training see 20% more sellers achieve sales quotas.

3-Step Framework for Leading Effective Sales Coaching Conversations

Mike Schultz
March 4, 2020

Many sales managers and coaches are never taught how to lead effective sales coaching conversations.

So they start with, “What’s up?”

Then they listen to sellers for an hour with a bit of back and forth about this opportunity or that one. They may talk about the need to fill the pipeline or come up with an idea to move one of the opportunities forward. And then the hour is up.

Sales Rep Onboarding: How Long Does It Really Take?

Mike Schultz
October 30, 2019

Finding and hiring new sales talent is a long and expensive process. Once the new rep is hired, it takes time to onboard them. Especially challenging during the ramp-up period is building their knowledge in:

Your customers' businesses—their markets, industries, customers, regulations, etc.
The needs you solve and how to identify those needs

[Infographic] 10 Ways to Achieve Your Top Sales Priorities

Erica Stritch
August 20, 2019

We recently surveyed 423 sales and enablement leaders and discovered their top 10 sales priorities for the year ahead:

Top Sales Challenges and Priorities for Sales Enablement and Leaders

Mike Schultz
June 26, 2019

What challenges do sales enablement and sales leaders encounter most often? Which ones are most difficult to tackle?

What are the top sales priorities for the next 12 months? How should they be addressed to ensure they're achieved?

To find out the answers to these questions, we surveyed 423 sales, enablement, and company leaders.

The results are fascinating. As sales researchers and analysts, it helps us to see not only what's changed, but also what's changing right now and where the industry is going.

[On-Demand Webinar] 3 Strategies to Overcome Sales Leadership Challenges and Achieve Priorities

Erica Stritch
June 19, 2019

Delivering value, making the ROI case, retaining customers, growing accounts, recruiting top talent, forecasting, implementing a sales process, utilizing sales technologies, winning against the competition, developing sales managers, coaching sales teams, generating leads, onboarding, productivity, compensation...

There's no shortage of challenges sales leaders face.

Recently, we surveyed 423 sales, enablement, and company leaders to uncover their top challenges and priorities, and how they approach them.

Top Sales Leadership Challenges and Priorities [New Complimentary Report]

Erica Stritch
June 12, 2019

What are the top challenges sales enablement and sales leaders face today? What are their top priorities?

Which are most difficult to tackle? How should they be tackled?

To find out, we asked 423 sales, enablement, and company leaders these questions.

This report contains our findings, including 3 initiatives that will help sales and enablement leaders address their challenges and achieve their priorities.

What Makes for Successful Sales Coaching

Mike Schultz
February 6, 2019

"Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime."

This is a popular axiom in the coaching world.

You'll find it everywhere. Here it is in a CBS News story:

"Myth 8: Professional coaches tell their clients what to do and give them advice.

Fact: Bad or inexperienced coaches tell their clients what to do and are constantly giving advice. Good coaches do not…Instead, coaches help their clients explore and come up with the best choices for them based on where they are and the client's vision for their future. Coaches are experts at the process of changing behavior, which is much more valuable than giving instructions."

Core Competencies of Successful Sellers

Mike Schultz
January 24, 2019

There are common competencies every organization needs to build a truly successful sales organization.

At RAIN Group, we organize these competencies around the Sales Competency Wheel^SM.

3 Ways to Make Your Sales Training System More Effective

Mike Schultz
January 16, 2019

The most popular and effective diets and workout routines—ones that lead to the most dramatic changes—have specific guidelines and rules for how to follow the system.

No such system existed for sales—until now.

And, it works.

The New Revolution in Sales Coaching

Mike Schultz
January 3, 2019

Most leaders agree the opportunity to improve sales performance through coaching is tremendous, including:

Maximizing sales wins for their most important opportunities
Filling the pipeline with new, qualified opportunities
Maximizing sales to key accounts
Focusing sellers’ time on the most important activities
Developing skills, knowledge, and attributes to get to the next level of performance
Keeping sales activities and motivation at the highest sustainable level

These leaders are turning to coaching because coaching is an increasingly popular—and increasingly proven—method of improving performance.

The Definition of Sales Management - What's Missing

Mike Schultz
February 14, 2018

The state of sales management in many companies is disturbing. Consider these stats from our Top-Performing Sales Organization study:

66% of companies do not believe their sales managers have the skills needed to manage and coach sellers.
Elite performers are 2.4x more likely to agree that sales managers and leaders are effective at maximizing selling energy.
71% of companies do not believe people in selling roles manage their time and day effectively.

Almost 7 out of every 10 sales managers do not have the skills they need to do their jobs effectively! Astounding. It's certainly understandable, though. Sales managers are directed, by the very definition of sales management, down the wrong path.

5 Essentials for Managing Your Sales Organization's Talent

Mike Schultz
March 29, 2017

Attracting and retaining top sales talent is a huge challenge for many companies.

If you want to take your sales results to the next level, your organization must have the right people in the right roles, performing at a high level day in and day out. You also need the right management team with an effective process in place to ensure this all happens.

6 Key Areas to Optimize Sales Operations

Mike Schultz
July 27, 2016

It may not be considered the most glamorous aspect of sales management, but as business and technology have evolved, it’s widely acknowledged that getting sales operations right is imperative for a smoothly run, effective sales organization. On his blog, Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing even hails it as “THE most important and unsung hero for sales teams.”

4 Key Components of Your Sales Organization's Structure

Mike Schultz
June 1, 2016

In sales forces of any size, changing the sales organization structure is an uphill battle. Structure relates to the organization of selling at the company, including sales compensation, territory design, account and lead assignments, and more.

9 Guidelines for Leading a Sales Performance Analysis

Mike Schultz
March 2, 2016

Sales performance analysis is typically quite involved and complex. It’s no easy task to figure out how to improve, change, or build a sales strategy. But for those sales leaders who are taking a longer-term view and looking into sales performance optimization, a performance analysis is a necessary precursor.

Average Sales Win Rates: How Do You Compare?

Mike Schultz
February 16, 2016

Most sellers and sales leaders are often asking themselves: "Is my win rate any good?"

Win rate is one of the most basic measures of your sales success, so it’s only natural to want to benchmark your performance against the average to see how you stack up.

The Top 10 Sales Priorities for 2016

Mike Schultz
February 2, 2016

Now is the perfect time for sales leaders to analyze their results from the past year and plan priorities for the year ahead.

In our RAIN Group Center for Sales Research study, we asked 472 sales executives and sellers about what they considered to be their top priorities.

12 Questions Sales Leaders Must Ask to Improve Sales Opportunity Management

Mike Schultz
November 3, 2015

If you've spent any time in complex sales, you know there's been a significant shift in how you win sales opportunities and grow accounts.

In our client work and studies through the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, we've seen that:

What Sales Metrics Should You Track? – The Essential List [PDF]

Mike Schultz
June 11, 2015

"What gets measured gets managed."

– Peter Drucker

Only when you have a good sense of what's going on in your organization can you decide which buttons to push to make the greatest improvements. Even small efforts to track key sales metrics can quickly drive better results.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of B2B Sales Training

Ago Cluytens
January 20, 2015

There's one question I wish I got asked more when working with leaders looking to invest in B2B sales training. That question is, "What will it really take to get the best results?"

Why Does Sales Training Fail? It's Your Fault!

John Doerr
December 3, 2013

Sales training is a multibillion-dollar business. In the U.S. alone, it is estimated to be more than $5 billion (according to Dave Stein in Sales Training: The 120-Day Curse from ES Research Group). Yet, also according to Stein, between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. If we do the math, that amounts to somewhere north of $4.25 billion of unproductive training.

5 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching

Mike Schultz
October 1, 2013

More than ever, sales teams are struggling with unqualified leads, missed sales goals, and lost opportunities. Increasingly, company and sales leaders are turning to coaching as a solution.

And, why not? Executive and personal-effectiveness coaching have historically yielded great results. According to the International Coach Federation, the average company can expect a return of 7 times the initial investment in coaching.*

Shouldn’t the same be expected from sales coaching?

Infographic: 5 Roles of a Successful Sales Coach

Erica Stritch
September 24, 2013

Sales coaching has become a hot topic in business as more and more companies see a significant return on investment. However, where executive coaching and personal-effectiveness coaching yield positive results, sales coaching lags behind. Whether it's a lack of time, inconsistent coaching conversations, unavailability of tools and resources to succeed, or weak coaching skills, sales managers and leaders simply aren't producing strong results.

5 Sales Coaching Myths We Can All Safely Ignore

Ago Cluytens
September 17, 2013

Sales coaching—working one-on-one or in small groups with firms and individuals in a highly focused manner to help them increase effectiveness, revenues, and sales—is a large part of what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Done right, it’s one of the most powerful, impactful ways to increase revenue and boost individual or group performance.

How to Build Fluent Product Knowledge and Improve Sales Success

Mike Schultz
November 29, 2011

Salespeople know what they sell, and they sell what they know. When it comes to salesperson knowledge, people know too little about their particular industry, their customers’ needs, and their company’s products and services to be able to sell the full suite of solutions. Without this knowledge they can’t:

Ask the right questions to uncover the complete set of customer needs
Match the right products and services to those needs
Position the value of their company as superior to other options available to the customer

Indeed, they can’t and don’t hold masterful sales conversations with customers.

The result: Lost sales and missed cross-selling opportunities.

Sales Weaknesses that Are Holding Your Sales Team Back

John Doerr
September 16, 2011

There are thousands of ways to kill a sale. Some are obvious like not showing up to a meeting prepared, not following up, not listening, not establishing trust, going to proposal too early, not speaking to decision makers... the list goes on. These are all pretty easy to see and with some work and practice can be overcome.

Then there are the killers that hide beneath the surface that many sellers and sales managers do not even know exist. They are the sales weaknesses that are a part of an individual salesperson’s makeup that act like weights pulling them down.

Sales Management Mistakes That Lead to Underperforming Sales Teams

Bob Croston
February 2, 2011

Do your sales managers know how to coach and motivate your sales people?

Your sales staff is underperforming, but you can't figure out why. You're pretty sure that you've hired the best possible talent, but some days it seems like your sales staff is the gang that can’t shoot straight. Where did you go wrong?

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