Your Sales Management Guru

Sales Leadership, Marketing  and Social Media 

As sales leaders we must all seek to understand new approaches, current technologies and how marketing and sales execution  must work in conjunction to exceed our revenue goals. I have found two quality sites that I would recommend you review on an ongoing basis-as I do- to keep current.

If you are in selling in a  B2B business  then B2B Marketing zone is a great resource.

Using social media?  Improving SEO, the Webbiquity is your spot to learn the tricks, secrets and  new ideas. 

I have provided the links below…
Have a great weekend…

B2B Marketing Zone

A community collecting and organizing the best information on the web about B2B Marketing.

B2B Marketing Zone is a collection of blog posts and articles all around B2B Marketing.  It uses the Browse My Stuff technology to create this topic hub.  Topic Hubs are sites that aggregates content from a variety of sources, organizes that content around keywords in the topic domain, and supports both manual and social curation of that content.

The goals of the B2B Marketing Zone are:

Collect High Quality Content -.

Provide an Easy to Navigate Site – Be A Jump Off Point –

Help Surface Content that Might Not be Found –

A community collecting and organizing the best information on the web about B2B Marketing.

http://www.b2bmarketingzone.com

Webbiquity

Webbiquity: 1) The fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, reputation management, content marketing and interactive PR. 2) Being omnipresent on the web for the search phrase that uniquely describes you or your organization. 3) The place to find help with all of this. Webbiquity – be everywhere online

Welcome to Webbiquity, a b2b marketing and social media blog. This is the new home of the WebMarketCentral blog.

http://webbiquity.com

Posted in sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Training | 2 Comments »

Be Prepared-Great Boy Scout Motto-Works for Sales Mangement Too

As a former Boy Scout camp counselor, I was recently invited to reunion. We do them every two years to honor a man that was one of my mentors in my life and those of you who have listened to my keynote, know about Sam.   He impacted the lives of thousands of individuals not only in Wisconsin, but throughout the world with his energy, leadership and friendship.  This week’s blog however is not about Sam, but the invitation.

Most everyone has heard the scouts motto of Be Prepared, as an Eagle Scout it is a part of my life. This weekend the Southeast was rocked with 54 tornadoes and at 2am Sunday morning my weather radio went off, we headed to the lower level of my home with a radio, flashlight, water and a few other items to wait out the all clear.  It was scary listening as all the surrounding cities were called out as the storm approached. The good news was we had very little damage in our area; however one tornado did touch ground about 2 miles away. Then at 2:30am my phone rang and my neighbor called from Michigan, his alarm was going off and he wanted me to check out his home…. into the rain I went with my golf rain suit on, walking around his home and “having his key and his alarm code I entered his house. (I was prepared for this kind of thing) The good news there was no damage at his home too.  What does this small story have to do with you?

As a sales leader at end of the April or for that matter at anytime are you PREPARED?

You may never know:   

When a top performer might leave you?  Are you advertising every 60 days for new salespeople on a regular basis? What is your pipeline for recruiting?

When an expected and needed order fails to materialize. Do you have a clear          understanding of your sales funnel ratio’s and a large enough number of sales           opportunities to make up for the lost or postponed sale?

 When someone in marketing or you sales team does not execute a planned             assignment that impacts your organization.  Remember to Inspect What You  Expect.  Follow up; hold people accountable and double check the details.

Comment below on what other events could pop up that “you may never know “ could occur that could impact your success  and how you can prepare for them or send me an email:  Ken@AcumenMgmt.com

Be prepared means being proactive, anticipating events and putting yourself and your team in a position to be safe and to succeed.  Have a great quarter.

Acumen Management Group Ltd. “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com

Tags: keynote speaking, sales leadership, Sales Management
Posted in Keynote Programs, Recruiting, Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Motivation, Sales Training | Comments Off

Building your business requires both leadership and management, and the first step in that journey is understanding the difference between the two. Leadership is the ability to make things happen by encouraging and channeling others’ contributions, addressing important issues and acting as a catalyst for change and continuous improvement. Management is the skill of attaining predefined objectives with others’ cooperation and effort.

The best partner companies, like other successful organizations, are led by individuals who have clear vision — and the ability to establish specific objectives for working toward their organizational goals. Executives at partner companies that have leveled off, stalled or are struggling to break even may lack both vision and objectives.

An executive vision should address the following questions:

• What does your organization look like now? What will it look like in three years in terms of revenues, number of employees and specialty areas?
• How do you define success? What will the company’s net worth be in three years? What are its profit goals?
• How do you want to be known by your clients, your competitors, the business community — and by your vendors.
• What’s your ultimate goal? Do you have an exit strategy that calls for acquiring other companies or being acquired yourself? Or do you want to build a long-term corporate organization?

Answering these questions will help you fine-tune your vision, focus your efforts and inspire your employees. They’ll also help you and your managers set the objectives to spur your company’s growth.

Among other considerations, sales-related objectives might include:

• Revenue growth objectives by dollars or percentage
• Gross margin dollars generated by practice
• Percentage and dollars by practice area generated by new or current
  customers
• Revenue per employee
• Percentage of service dollars vs. products generated
• Managed services dollars vs. total revenue
• Number of net new clients added each quarter
• Percentage of won/lost accounts per proposal generation

Managers can use predefined objectives to create sales and marketing programs and dashboards to measure effectiveness. Leaders can use these objectives to judge management performance and promote the organization’s continuous improvement. The results: Employee performance and morale will improve, customer satisfaction will increase, revenue and margin goals will be exceeded — and your organization will begin to build value.

Improving your organization’s value is critical in our maturing industry. Certainly, you can define value as retained earnings, recurring revenue values and balance sheet results, but it’s also important to evaluate sales factors such as customer retention, net new client acquisition ratios or client penetration rates and lifetime value ratios. Your intellectual property, patents, employee non-compete agreements, brand recognition and even employee retention percentages are also important components to consider in building your organization’s long-term value.

One last word: As a professional — no matter what your level of responsibility — you must also focus on personal growth. What’s your plan for increasing your individual value this year? Moving forward requires all of us to manage personal development as well as our companies’ growth plans

Ken Thoreson is managing director of the Acumen Management Group Ltd., a North American consulting organization focused on improving sales management functions within growing and transitional organizations. You can reach him at ken@acumenmgmt.com. www.AcumenManagement.com. BLOG; www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

Posted in Keynote Programs, Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Motivation, Sales Training | Comments Off

After 13 years of consulting with organizations and many years working with independent partner teams I have seen many situations and many similar environments. I thought this week you might like to match up your organization to the one I have created in the URL below.

Most importantly, I have offered several ideas how to create an even higher performing organization.

http://tinyurl.com/y46vakf

Let me know your thoughts on this example and your perspectives on moving forward in 2010. Ken@AcumenMgmt.com

www.AcumenManagement.com for more free videos on Building Predictive Revenue.

Posted in Keynote Programs, Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Training | Comments Off

In this last video blog, I share other tools that you can use to enhance your ability to be a successful sales manager.

You can reach me at Ken@AcumenMgmt.com

Posted in Recruiting, Sales Compensation, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management Planning, Sales Training | Comments Off

Sales training makes a difference in creating top performing sales teams. In this video blog you will learn how and why you need to create Quarterly Sales Training plans, why you need your sales team training each other, how to build a quality New Hire On-Boarding process and why a focus on building culture is required to push everyone over the top! This fast paced video is full of ideas and tools to help all sales leaders develop higher levels of sales success.

Check out the entire video series on our web site and take the free sales management assessment. www.AcumenManagement.com

Posted in Recruiting, Sales Compensation, Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Training | Comments Off