[Infographic] 14 Magic Metrics of Successful Sales Teams

For a sales manager looking for his first deep dive into sales analytics, it can be daunting trying to determine which sales performance metrics to focus on. Well, sales managers can consider their problems solved, with the release of our new infographic – produced in collaboration with InsideSales.com – displaying…  Read More >

Interview with CEO of Sandler Sales Training

Dave Mattson is the CEO sales trianing company Sandler Systems, Inc. which is a leader in international sales training and sales consulting. Dave first met David H. Sandler, the founder of Sandler Training, in 1986. He fell in love with the training material and methodologies right away and began working for…  Read More >

What is Sales Performance Management?

There are several key trends in sales and sales management but one particular trend is especially exciting and transformational – the trend towards Sales Performance Management (SPM). SPM is an innovative discipline of sales management that is focused on driving more optimal sales performance with next-generation tools and metrics-driven best…  Read More >

Aaron Ross – Predictable Revenue Drives Growth

Aaron Ross is the author of the award-winning bestseller Predictable Revenue: Turn your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com. He is also the CEO and Founder of Predictable Revenue, which teaches companies how to grow sales faster and more predictably. Previously, Ross helped create…  Read More >

The Right Sales KPIs For Your Sales Reps

Measuring sales key performance indicators (KPIs) for your sales reps is critical for sales performance management and building a predictable, repeatable revenue generation process. Studying the “right” sales performance metrics lets sales managers determine which reps are struggling and in which areas they need coaching help with. Unfortunately, a lot of…  Read More >

WARNING: Know Your 10 Sales Forecasts Killers

There are many challenges to forecasting accurately, but you can be more effective at accurate sales forecasting methods if you manage your “sales forecast killers” carefully. Consider these 10 key forecast killers and if they creep up into your opportunities then flag those opportunities as “at risk”. Timing Time kills…  Read More >

What is Sales Coaching?

We recently attended a webinar hosted by Salesforce.com called “Sales Coaching Master Class with Tony Robbins,” featuring Tony Robbins and Walter Rogers. We were truly inspired and thought this would be a great time to write a post about what Sales Coaching really means. As discussed in a recent blog…  Read More >

5 Key Reasons To Use Sales Forecasts

Sales managers depend greatly on the information provided by accurate  sales forecasting to guide their business decisions. In order to maximize sales and revenue while delegating resources and sales reps more efficiently, sales managers need to be able to predict the future performance of their organization as closely as possible. Here…  Read More >

Sales Leadership vs. Sales Management

Leadership seems like a simple concept but it frequently perplexes us. Many of us confuse leadership with management – they are different.  Additionally, it is misleading that leadership is sometimes thought of as the rank or seniority of someone’s role in an organization. This is incorrect. To make things more…  Read More >

What is Sales Management?

In recent years, Sales Management has changed more rapidly as a practice and profession than ever before.  A lot of this has to do with the rapid disruption in the sales industry and a transition to the Inside Sales model which is much more measurable and transaction driven. I thought…  Read More >

Why LESS is More When Sales Wants Leads

Your sales team thinks that it needs more leads. So, you ask marketing to generate more and more that you think will help grow your sales pipeline and ultimately your bookings (and revenue). But does it really matter whether you get 1,000 leads or 100 leads if the output of…  Read More >

Steve Richard – The Secret Sauce of Prospecting

Steve Richard is the Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Vorsight, an award-winning sales effectiveness firm that specializes in training B2B sales teams. Vorsight is currently ranked #1689 on Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5000 fastest growing companies in the United States. Steve was named one of the Top 25…  Read More >

Gary Vaynerchuk – The Future of Selling

Gary Vaynerchuk is a social media expert, wine aficionado and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author.  Since the release of   his first book – on wine – in 2008, Gary has published two more books (‘Crush It!: Why NOW is the Time to Cash in  …  Read More >

Sales Management Interview with Ken Thoreson

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Ken Thoreson who is a globally recognized Sales Management thought leader and strategist. He is also an author of multiple books and a frequent speaker at major technology industry conferences and sales conferences. Recently Ken  was once again named as one of…  Read More >

Don’t Use the “SDR : AE” Ratio to Build Your SDR Team

There is a common question from CEOs & VPs of Sales at growth-stage companies looking to scale up their New Customer Acquisition – it’s about how many # of outbound/cold-outreach Sales Development Reps (SDRs) they should have for each AE (closer): What is the right “Outbound SDR : AE” Ratio…  Read More >

Sales Experts Series: Interview with Jill Konrath

Recently we had the pleasure of speaking with Jill Konrath who is an internationally recognized B2B sales and sales management thought leader. Jill is the author of two bestselling books: SNAP Selling – which soared to #1 on Amazon within hours of its release – and Selling to Big Companies,…  Read More >

Top 5 Tips For a Successful “Sales Kickoff”

It’s time for your annual Sales Kickoff meeting. You budgeted for it, selected the location, chose the annual theme, scheduled the fancy group dinner, maybe even hired a speaker too. Your objective was to achieve sales pipeline alignment, educate your team, and motivate them to drive results next year.  But…  Read More >

Featured Sales Thought Leadership: Sales Metric of the Year

As part of our effort to feature thought leadership from various online sources, we are looking to showcase other blogs and introduce our readers to best ideas in the sales industry. If you’d like to be featured, email us at info@insightsquared.com. This week’s feature blog post is from Sales Benchmark…  Read More >

How Successful Sales Managers Use Data to Get Ready

Successful sales managers start preparing for the following year in Q4. They invest the time to look at key sales reports and sales metrics. They look at their existing annual revenue performance with respect to original goals to glean lessons for the next year. They also examined the territories and…  Read More >

4 Sales Reports for Successful Sales Managers

Highly successful sales managers lead their teams to close more deals.  Among the key traits of successful sales managers is the desire to manage their business by the numbers, and as a result they make better decisions. Therefore, they regularly view sales reports for clear visibility into the key metrics that…  Read More >

3 Most Important Things in Sales

There are 3 most important things in sales and sales management: People Pipeline Process Why? People – if you hire A-level people and develop them to execute at a high level then you get top 10% outcome. Pipeline – with growing pipeline you will increase your revenue and without it…  Read More >

3 Unique Differences of the CHAMP Selling System

Why the CHAMP Selling System is Different There are a few unique distinctions that make the CHAMP Selling System different. These also ensure that it helps you build “Predictable, Repeatable & Scalable Revenue” to grow your company.   1. Founded as a “superset” of the best practices gleaned from all…  Read More >

Defining an Opportunity in Sales [The Sales Process Engineering Series]

Engineering an Effective Sales Process - Defining a Sales Opportunity
Once you have created clear definitions of what is a Lead, an MQL, and SQL, it is important to write down a consistent definition of a sales “Opportunity” so that your sales team and your marketing / DemandGen team can all understand this and work effectively to grow the Sales Pipeline based…  Read More >

A General Overview of the CHAMP Selling System

CHAMP Selling is simply about making your customer a hero, a champion (i.e. by investing in you and your solution to solve their challenges). If you’d like to see the Summary of the CHAMP Selling System then you will find a slide/presentation on this link too. But, in general, the…  Read More >