Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 - (Page 32)

TRAINING TECHNOLOGY INCENTIVES TRAVEL/MEETINGS demanding employee base. At the end of the day, they have a visceral understanding of the pressures their customers face—and the levers that can be used to improve their performance. Another way to build business acumen is to develop comfort with financial terminology. The traditional “finance for non-financial managers” course rarely works well with salespeople. Instead, many sales forces have adopted approaches where the learning focuses exclusively on what is relevant for salespeople. That narrows the universe to key terms and knowledge that will be useful in a conversation with a financially oriented executive. These courses then include extensive role-plays of salespeople having financial conversations with their customers. The Internet and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have made enormous amounts of information available on publicly held companies. Another type of business acumen training focuses on how to find and interpret the annual reports, 10-Ks, investor presentations, news stories and analyst reports that are easily accessible on the Web today. The trick is to give salespeople tools that take them right to the information they need: what results the company is trying to achieve, how its performance stacks up against its competitors, what strategies it has put into place and what financial metrics matter most. Then they have the ability to walk into a meeting with an executive and demonstrate their knowledge of the customer’s business immediately. The real power in the examples above is delivered when increased customer understanding and fluency is seamlessly integrated with other content that helps salespeople actually apply their knowledge. Sales forces accelerate their own results—and those of their customers—when they link business acumen to strategic account and opportunity planning, questioning, collaborative negotiation skills and even sales management activities. Some sales forces have extensive training curriculums. Others develop content on a just-in-time basis. But how many have business acumen components? More importantly, does yours? —Jonathan Hodge and Lou Schachter Jonathan Hodge is CEO of the Scottsdale office of BTS. Lou Schachter is the managing director of the global sales practice at BTS, as well as the co-author of The Mind of the Customer. SAGE SALESLOGIX. THERE’S ONLY ONE THING YOUR SALESPEOPLE WILL LOVE MORE : THE SALES. Sage SalesLogix is the CRM solution that gives your sales team the competitive advantage to close more sales. Start with its easy-to-use customization tools, then deploy it on your sales teams’ laptops, browsers, or PDAs – whichever suits them best. It’s so quick to adapt to the way they work, leading analysts have ranked it among the leaders in customization, ease of use and overall performance. Optimize your customers’ experience and boost performance as you chalk up more sales. Sage SalesLogix – CRM your way. istock photo To get the “17 Rules of the Road for CRM” whitepaper at no charge, call 888-279-1440 or sagecrmsolutions.com/smm © 2008 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage Software, the Sage Software logo and Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc. or its afﬁliated entities. 32 SALES &MARKETING MANAGEMENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 www.salesandmarketing.com www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com http://sagecrmsolutions.com/smm http://sagecrmsolutions.com/smm

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Brian Tracy University Sales Marketing Management Cover Story: Lessons From the Master Maximum Mobility Training Technology Incentives/Motivation Travel/Meetings Book Excerpt - Value Merchants The Way I See It - End the Discounting Habit

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

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