Really looking forward to re-connecting with the thoughtful leaders who will be attending this year’s Sirius Decisions’ Summit. Also looking forward to connecting with those attending the AA-ISP Leadership Conference. It’s a rare back-to-back opportunity to discover what thoughtful business leaders are doing to tease higher revenues out of their sunk costs of front-line sales people.
Much work’s been done in recent years to harness the productivity-improving potential of web-based lead prospecting systems. Search Engine Optimization, Marketing Automation, Website Conversion Optimization, and Social Media have all made enormous contributions. Yet, somehow, spending on sales and marketing seems to continue to grow while margins continue to decline (at least in the tech sector, according to Forrester). So, what’s a motivated, thoughtful, leader to do next?
I’ll be curious to see what attention is being paid to helping sales people have more sales conversations each day and the methods being used to do so. I’m equally curious to learn how leading firms are measurably improving the effectiveness of their sales conversations, In doing so, are they reducing the lag times between sales events? Are they creating greater funnel velocity? If yes, on either front, to what can these improvements be directly attributed? How much of the focus is on information vs. learning? How much is information provoking learning and how much are learnings, in turn, being practiced with impact?
I’m also curious to learn the perceived importance of new, more agile, forms of sales coaching in triggering higher levels of sales productivity. This, on the backs of having recently had the global head of sales training observe to me that in their sales organization of over 10,000 sales people “the press for reporting is trumping the acknowledged need for more and better coaching.” Could it be that we know what’s needed but can’t see past the comfort of life as it is to achieve something much better?
So, with a deep breath and an open mind, I look forward to wandering into the abyss + see what I can learn. Knowing who’s going to be attending + presenting, I’m excited at the potential.
If you’re planning to be at either of these two events and would like to compare notes, feel free to ping me. I’ll be the curious cat asking lots of questions.
Stay tuned.
