Business

Join Mike Montague and Grant Baldwin of The Speaker Lab as they unravel the essentials of powerful speaking techniques, from presentation preparation to landing speaking gigs.

Welcome to the world of social media mastery with Shaily Hakimian. Discover the secrets to success in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and building genuine connections online.

So, you're thinking of building your own sales training program? Let's talk about the numbers and logistics of putting it all together.

Join us on this journey to event success and discover how structured approaches, two-hour time limits, and social proof can transform your networking game. 

In this episode, Tom Scarda, franchise coach and advisor at the Franchise Academy, shares his insights on how to succeed at owning a franchise.

In this episode, Herb Cogliano, an experienced executive business coach who has helped numerous midmarket businesses achieve exponential growth, shares his insights and strategies on how to scale up your business to the next level.

Sales is the backbone of any business, without it, a company would not be able to generate revenue and grow. It is the process of identifying, attracting and converting potential customers into paying customers. Sales can be a challenging task, but with the right strategies and techniques, it can be made easier and more effective.

In the business community, we are always searching for slight edges. We always try to get more business–by earning it. We always want our clients to buy additional products and services from us, and we always want them to become advocates on our behalf over the long term. Those are all things we want. And there’s nothing wrong with being part of an organization that wants them.

Discover invaluable insight on finding your ideal job role, developing appropriate attitudes for success, and setting achievable goals that will help you make an impact in today's competitive world!

Trade shows can be a great opportunity to network, learn about new products and services, and grow your business. However, they can also be overwhelming. It can be difficult to know how to make the most of your time there.

Many business leaders make costly errors as they put together their plan for the year to come – errors that make it harder than it should be for their teams to implement the plan and attain the goals it identifies. Here are five of the most expensive mistakes we see. Avoid all five, and you will write a better business plan!

Here are three proven, painless strategies for starting and completing the right plan for the coming year – a plan that will help you make the best possible decisions over the next twelve months and keep your business humming.

You’re a business owner. That’s a wonderful thing! But stop and think for a moment. Is that all you are?

“Please just send me a better proposal, and when you do, give me your bottom line. I don’t have time to go back and forth. Just get me your best number.”

Sandler Training Gerry Weinberg & Associates, Inc., an international training organization dedicated to professional development, has hired Andrea Bartl as Client Success Manager.

Summer signifies the smell of fresh-cut grass, family picnics with hot dogs, and ice cream left on children’s faces, the sight of sunsets over the lake, and the crack of the ball on the bat.

David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-time Author, talks about his Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best-selling book, The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them.

These last two months have certainly been unprecedented. Hopefully, we have survived the worst of it and can now focus on gaining momentum into recovery. It is time for us to clean our pipeline of any opportunities that are no longer going to transpire.

Have you received a call recently from a client or an advisor asking, “How are you doing?” or worse—you were the one making the call?

Setting clear expectations is an important part of any sales leader’s working day. Unfortunately, it’s something that doesn’t always happen as effectively or as consistently as we might like. Here are five simple steps you can take to get better at this critical part of the job.

If you’re a sales leader, you are tasked with striking a delicate balance. Your job is not to sell for the members of your team – selling is what you hire, train, and retain good salespeople to do, after all. Yet your job is to help shape the business development strategies that make the most sense for your business, for the salespeople who report to you, and of course for your customers.

Leadership is more than learning the characteristics and habits of effective leaders. Truly effective leaders ensure the organization has clear direction and an infrastructure which will enhance the probability of the organization successfully achieving their vision.

One of the main goals of an L&D strategy is to improve employees’ performance. Your training sessions must result in a motivated and resourceful staff, one able to close more sales. But how do you create a strategy that actually improves employee’s performance?

In selling to and serving major accounts, we hear a lot about value. Certain buzzwords have emerged around this topic, terms that, more often than not, simply add confusion.

Have you ever wondered why a once-promising new hire is performing far below your initial expectations? From one perspective, what’s happening here is pretty simple: the person you hired is not the person you interviewed. The dynamic at work in an interview situation is similar to the dynamic at work on a first date./blog/how-succeed-onboarding-new-hires-podcast

Give our podcast a listen to learn the right steps you need to take in order to create a sales playbook for your team.

Mike Montague interviews Tony Altham, Executive Director at BNI in the UK, on How to Succeed at Business Networking.

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Discover the secrets and benefits of coaching top performers within your sales organization from Tom Ziglar.

There’s a wise saying popularly attributed to baseball legend Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Here’s how I unpack that wisdom: We have to know what our goals are, and we also have to know the specific behaviors that support those goals… otherwise, we may end up supporting someone else’s plan, rather than our own. With that sobering thought in mind, consider this list of five behaviors that are essential the achievement of any worthwhile personal goal.

Mike Montague interviews Karl Schaphorst on how to succeed at being a purpose-driven salesperson In this episode:

• What it means to be a purpose-driven salesperson
• Attitudes to adopt and avoid
• Embrace pain and suffering

In his book Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell contends that people make their best and most accurate decisions in the first two seconds of facing a situation—in other words, in the blink of an eye. It seems inherently suspect, though, this notion that people can make correct decisions quickly. Is it? You were probably taught from an early age that haste makes waste; don’t judge a book by its cover; and look before you leap.

What kind of salesperson should you always be on the lookout for? What specific traits does the ideal sales hire always possess, no matter what industry you’re in, and no matter what your market looks like?

Selling for a living in the twenty-first century requires coming to terms with a dizzying array of interconnected, hard-to-anticipate changes in the areas of technology, marketplace trends, and client agendas. Falling behind in any one of these areas means losing relevance and with it, your competitive edge.

The aggressive, sustainable growth so many company leaders seek, but few can actually point to, lies in moving yourself and your organization into a growth-driven sales culture. The following three steps are essential preliminaries to that shift.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Collectively over the years I've heard every excuse as to why people don't need to track metrics. "You don't understand I'm just too busy to track that type of thing," or "what is that really going to do for me in the long run."  Well, in the long run, if you truly understand what the outcomes are statistically every time you pick up the phone or attend a networking event, couldn't you predict the future?  Wouldn’t that make life a little less stressful?

Read Time: 6 Minutes

I love sales!  It is a career where you, the sales professional, determine your income based on how skillful you execute the duty.  It has a feel of independence, ownership and entrepreneurship and it can be extremely rewarding.  Professional selling is regarded as one of the top earning careers on the face of the planet.  Note to you business owners out there: If your salespeople are making more money than you, don’t be jealous, be excited because they are building your business and increasing its value!

Read Time: 5 MInutes

In addition to the people in your company who deliver services and keep operations running, how much do you value the folks who bring in the most revenue, i.e. the top sales performers? Answering this question directly should be part of your overall business plan.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Sandler V.P. of Online Learning, Mike Montague, interviews Matt Pletzer on How to Succeed in Succession Planning.

Listen Time: 23 Minutes

In sales, we all bundle our accounts, clients and prospects, into logical groupings to add clarity and understanding to our efforts. We use vertical categories, assembling together our healthcare, consumer products, technology accounts, and others. We also differentiate by geography, adding efficiency in territory management by bundling accounts based on physical locations. 

Read Time: 10 Minutes

CEO and President of Sandler, Dave Mattson, explains how blind spots hold us back, how to find them, and how to fix them to get your business where you want it to be.

Listen Time: 29 Minutes

Retail champions, the subject of my book RETAIL SUCCESS IN AN ONLINE WORLD, outlines not only how to connect with customers face-to-face but also a long-term engagement strategy for after the customer leaves the store. 

Read Time: 6 Minutes

In the business world it’s often been said, “Our strongest asset is our people.” But how often is it stated that they are also your greatest weakness? Every business can benefit from a reality check. If you use a systematic strategy for developing the people in your key roles, that reality will likely reveal the valuable human assets on your team.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Tim Priebe, Founder of T&S Online Marketing, talks about how to integrate Sandler into your marketing and shows you the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at marketing the Sandler way. Get the best practices for marketing collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 30 Minutes

In the past couple of decades, our workplaces have gone from the office to mostly virtual spaces. We get our jobs done and we communicate in the cloud. However, we still struggle with the same issues in communication which we had decades ago. Here are a few effective ways to overcome communication barriers in the workplace which you can apply right now.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

This is a special bonus episode, a look back at this year’s Sandler Summit and one of our opening keynotes by Glenn Mattson, Sandler trainer from New York City, talking about success.

Listen Time: 9 Minutes

Learn how to build a better day. Whether it is yourself or your sales team, Jim Ayraud will help you learn the best practices for sales accountability and building new behavior habits.

Listen Time: 23 Minutes

The internal revolution that delivers a predictable, rapid growth curve requires a scalable sales team. This revolution always starts with the sales leader; it is always launched, modeled, promoted and defended by that leader, in close collaboration with the senior leadership of the company; and it always expands outward.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Cal Thomas, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at sticking with your goals and achieving them. Get the best practices for goal setting collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 24 Minutes

Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer and two-time author, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at selling across the executive level. Get the best practices collected from around the world for using your executives to sell to the prospect's.

<Listen Time: 28 Minutes

Just like we need food and nourishment for our physical self, so does our business.  However, while our body tells us we are hungry and it is time to eat, our business doesn’t necessarily do the same.  Therefore, it is critical that we put plans in to place to make time to ‘feed’ our business. 

Read Time: 5 Minutes

It's common for people to mistake sales management for sales coaching. In fact, these are two very different roles. The table highlights some of the most notable differences.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

I’m often asked to identify a single “blind spot” that keeps leaders from growing their businesses aggressively. There are actually a number of these … but one that’s particularly common is the failure to collect best practices and assemble them in a regularly updated “playbook.”

Read Time: 6 Minutes

In enterprise selling, there is a heavy focus on business value. Watch to see how Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling, addresses this challenge through the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program.

Watch Time: 2 Minutes

Geof Bowie, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at achieving a flow state in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 21 Minutes

Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, describe how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses one of the most common enterprise sales challenges, extended sales cycles.

Watch Time: 3 Minutes

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

Learn the guiding principles of effective management with Mike Montague and Caroline Robinson.

Watch Time: 54 Minutes

Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, explain how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses the idea of sophisticated competition – a challenge that, while present in the simple selling arena, is extremely prominent in enterprise selling.

Watch Time: 2 Minutes

In this episode, Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling, speaks with Paul Sandford, Managing Director of Sandler’s North Hampshire’s business operations in the U.K. Paul’s career includes successful sales and sales management positions at SAP, Success Factors, Concur Technologies, Open Text and Basware. 

Listen Time: 26 Minutes

The hot labor market is stressing hiring managers and their organizations like no other job cycle in the last 20 years. Despite the mounting pressure of filling an open role, organizations that remain true to their hiring standards will win in the long term.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Learn how the Sandler Enterprise Selling program addresses the idea of cross-functional sales teams with Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling.

Watch Time: 4 Minutes

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 9 Minutes

David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-Time Best-Selling Author, talks about his fifth book, Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders. The book is on sale here, as well as, the companion video course.

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

SMART Goal Setting with Mike Crandall: Mike Crandall, Sandler Trainer from OK, and Mike Montague, VP of Online Learning discuss SMART goal setting strategies.

Watch Time: 56 Minutes

Let’s start by talking about the elephant in the room: Cold calling is almost every salesperson’s least favorite topic. In fact, the only two groups who like the idea of cold calling are those who have never done it and sales managers.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Erin Pheil, Founder of the Mindfix Group out of Denver, talks about how to succeed at overcoming common head trash issues in sales with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful. Get the best practices collected from around the world for overcoming these mental roadblocks.

Listen Time: 31 Minutes

Learn how the insights and our real-time messaging works on the Sales Accountability platform.

Watch Time: 3 Minutes

Welcome to the How to Succeed podcast, the show that helps you get to the top and stay there... This is How to Succeed at setting yourself up for a breakthrough.

Listen Time: 12 Minute

Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling and author, interviews guest, Emma Barrett-Hoey about how to succeed at enterprise-level selling. Brian is a co-author of the new Sandler book, Sandler Enterprise Selling: Winning, Growing and Retaining Major Accounts.

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 8 Minutes

People sometimes ask me whether there is a single, simple principle that will help everyone in the organization to learn and grow and improve over time, regardless of an individual’s position or level of experience. There is. But it may come as a surprise to you: embracing failure and embracing it quickly.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

This bonus episode is brought to you by the Sandler Annual Sales and Leadership Summit in Orlando, FL March 20th-22nd. To join our trainers from around the world and about a thousand of your high-performing colleagues, go to here for more information. 

Listen Time: 13 Minutes

Dave Trapani, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at managing your pipeline. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 22 Minutes

Learn how to overcome self-limiting beliefs with Antonio Garrido.

Watch Time: 56 Minutes

Most of us who lead teams and organizations readily acknowledge that we should be doing more to invest in the personal and professional development of the people who report to us. We have a lot of responsibilities, we get busy, and, all too often, we don’t take action on this essential priority.

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Welcome to the How to Succeed podcast, the show that helps you get to the top and stay there... This is How to Succeed at avoiding the dangers of success.

Listen Time: 16 Minutes

2019 is shaping up to be a very exciting year at Sandler, especially because of four important new strategic alliances we’ve formed. In this post, I want to look briefly at all four of the organizations with whom we’ve formed strategic partnerships with (Ziglar, Inc., Top Sales World, Grovo, and Evernote), and why each partnership is important.

Read Time: 4 minutes

Matt Pletzer, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at dealing with too much business. It's a good problem to have, but it can prevent you from selling more and growing. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

25 Minutes

Consider these three, often overlooked, reasons to remember how critical Q1 is to your business’s growth. Each reason represents a specific opportunity for your organization to start strong and make the very most of 2019.

Read Time: 7 Minutes

This bonus episode is brought to you by the Sandler Annual Sales and Leadership Summit in Orlando, FL March 20th-22nd. To join our trainers from around the world and about a thousand of your high-performing colleagues, go here for more information. Tickets are limited.

Listen Time: 18 Minutes

All too often, what holds salespeople back in terms of reaching their potential is not a missing sales skill or an improperly applied technique. More often than managers like to imagine, the problem is a failure of leadership.

Happy New Year!

Not only is it important to set goals for the New Year, but it also makes sense to take some time to reflect on the successes and setbacks from 2018. Below are four suggestions on how leaders can use insights and learnings from the year just past to shape their organizational growth plan for 2019.

Nick Tokman, also known as Sunshine as seen on Discovery Channel's Emmy-winning show, Deadliest Catch, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in finding your passion and choosing a direction for your life. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Dave Mattson, President and CEO at Sandler, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Hap Klopp, Founder and former CEO of The North Face and author of multiple books, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in the the face of digital disruption. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 30 Minutes

Bill Bartlett, Sandler trainer and author, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in branding your personal presence. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 20 Minutes

Microlearning lessons are sharp and concise, making it easy to revisit lessons as needed to reinforce new behaviors, attitudes and techniques, a critical factor for long-term change. Here are five reasons today’s human resource professionals are turning to microlearning, and specifically to Sandler’s strategic partner, Grovo.

Read Time: 3 Minutes

The end of the year is upon us! And contrary to popular belief, this is not necessarily a “dead” time in terms of business development and relationship-building for salespeople. Here are four simple strategies you can use right away to ramp up your prospecting performance during the holiday season.

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Kevin Leung, Sandler client and Salesperson of the Years, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 20 Minutes

If I asked a group of sales leaders, what motivates their salespeople, money is going to come up more often than not. And yes, money is important as it does pay the bills. And for some, money can be used as a scorecard. But are true high performers only motivated by money?

Read Time: 3 Minutes

David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training, talks about how to rehearse your pitch with a prospect so they can sell your solution internally. If you can't be in an internal meeting, the next best thing is to have a white knight fighting on your behalf. Learn the best practices collected from over a thousand Sandler employees around the world.

Leaders: January will be here before you know it! With that inescapable reality in mind, consider the following five strategies you can use right now to ensure that your business is positioned for maximum growth in 2019.

Stephen J. Cloobeck is a self-made business leader with over 30 years of experience across every aspect of hospitality design, development, and deployment. As the original founder and former CEO and chairman of Diamond Resorts International - a business that grew to become one of the largest vacation ownership companies worldwide - Cloobeck made a name for himself as the industry's most adamant advocate for radical customer service, which he calls embracing the Meaning of Yes.

Antonio Garrido, Sandler trainer and author of Asking Questions the Sandler Way, joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques of building better habits. Learn how to find and replace negative habits with better ones that lead to more success and better productivity. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Eric Warner talks about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques that drive client success. Learn how to improve your client retention, drive more cross-sells and upsells, and grow your business by helping your clients succeed.

Brian Sullivan, VP of Enterprise Selling, and Mike Montague, VP of Online Learning discuss the challenges of selling into large organizations and how to overcome them in this Facebook Live session.

Clint Babcock, Sandler trainer from Tampa, joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques of negotiations. Learn how to find, understand and use sources of leverage in your sales negotiations. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of salespeople in final negotiations.

Mike Montague shares his thoughts on business development in this special bonus episode. Learn the problems and challenges of traditional marketing, advertising, and sales approaches, and what to do about it. You will discover how to add people and opportunities to your sales and marketing funnels without peddling, pushing or price-cutting. Why resort to gimmicks, when you can be a professional business developer?

Mike Crandall joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors and techniques of transitioning the ownership of your business to the next generation of leaders. This is always a tough subject, but the future is coming and how you plan now will determine how bright that future will be. Learn how to succeed at transitioning your business to the next generation.

Lori Logue, Manager of Customer Success at Evernote, talks about how Evernote business can help you share notes with Salesforce and collaborate across the sales and delivery teams. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of successful notetaking in business.

One of the most powerful strategies leaders can use to support their own effective decision-making is also one of the simplest: Build trusted members of your team, people who think differently than you do, into your decision-making process.

A lack of confidence when interacting with potential buyers is a sure way to sabotage a sales discussion. Here are four ways salespeople can improve upon their interpersonal skills and become more confident when dealing with prospects.

When we use the word “Excellent” to describe a business or a team, we’re talking about a certain specific way of doing business. In our experience, there are three clear criteria that consistently define organizational excellence

When you’re growing a small business, it’s important to put an emphasis on best utilizing the tools at your disposal. Regardless of your industry or experience, one of those tools should be social media. While there are endless uses for social media and I have previously discussed social selling tactics, below I have identified five tips that you can bring back to your business and begin to implement today for social media marketing.

The challenge of consistent growth is ever-present for small businesses. It’s difficult for all organizations, but especially for businesses that don’t have as many resources to devote to growth. For this reason, whenever you can develop or implement habits to improve your new business growth, you should do so. Below are six methods that you can deploy while networking to grow your team and its success.

Milt had missed his sales quota for three straight quarters. Maria, his new sales manager, had tried to get Milt’s previous manager, Bob, to share his thoughts on why Milt was consistently failing to hit his targets. Bob’s answer was direct: “The guy just flat-out doesn’t care about hitting quota. He’s not cut out for sales anymore. He used to be committed. Now he’s lost interest.Senior management is giving him one more shot. If he can’t cut it this quarter, with you, the plan is to let him go. This is Milt’s moment of truth.”

The world of social media is often overwhelming and misunderstood for a lot of sales people. The biggest mistake I see is not maximizing the abilities within LinkedIn®. LinkedIn® should be used as a powerful branding, research and prospecting tool. In preparation for a recent LinkedIn® session, I put together a list of some of my favorite LinkedIn® Strategies to use for growing your business.

Sam was surprised when his boss, Juanita, called him into her office, closed the door, sat him down, and asked him:

“So what is it you guys do?”

This was not the question Sam expected to hear from his sales manager that morning. He was expecting Juanita to start grilling him about his quarterly numbers, which were not anywhere near where he wanted them to be. 

Ken’s closing ratio had been the lowest on the team for four months running. Juanita, his manager, asked him to meet with her privately so they could figure out, together, what the possible obstacles to better performance might be.

Juanita said, “Can I ask what kind of strategies you’re using to identify the pricing and product offerings?”

“What do you mean?” Ken asked.

Betty’s quarterly numbers were low. Her manager, Milt, asked her to do some role-plays so they could identify potential areas for improvement. They spent about 20 minutes role playing through various scenarios – at which point Milt called a time-out and asked, “Betty, do you realize you’re positioning us in exactly the same way with every person to whom you speak?”

Most people who spend a little time searching on the Internet or in a bookstore can quickly find a guide on how to write a business plan. However, just following these templates doesn’t guarantee that the business plan produce will be successful or even good. A successful business plan needs quite a bit more to actually be useful and even more to be functional and successful. As the elements come together, if done correctly, the most important component of success will come from the business owner and leadership versus the company itself.

The business world is not immune to change. Companies grow, and they shrink in size. They expand their market reach, sometimes, and contract it at other times. They introduce new products and services and discontinue products and services. And, they change the ways in which they create, promote, price, and deliver their products and services.

As organizations grow, they realize that there are numerous different ways to define success. A new business, for example, will be immensely satisfied the first year the operation returns a profit. On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year. Defining what success means to you and establishing goals based upon these criteria can be an important step in monitoring your business’s development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you.

Like any new generation, there are differences in how Millennials interact with those around them, and what their expectations are in the workplace. What intuitive business leaders are noticing, however, is that there are tremendous benefits that members of this generation bring to the workforce. Their unique generational experiences and the skills they have gained can help them, and the organizations that hire them, excel.

Giving sales-related tasks their due diligence is part of growing your business. As business growth occurs, you have to divide your time amongst more tasks, more clients, more sales team members...you can see where this is going. The busier you get, the easier it is to fall into the trap of ‘busy work,’ or tasks that make you feel like you're accomplishing things but actually detract from business success.

Do you ever wish you could be a fly on the wall of your local competitor just to see what they do behind the scenes to grow their business? What are they doing that you aren't? You might be surprised to learn that it’s not just how they get new customers or their product or service innovation offerings that make them successful.

The traditional corporate structure in the workplace is ready for a change. With Millennials entering the workforce, there is a resounding call for a structural shakeup. These young professionals have a lot to say and they want to have their voices heard. Successful companies are noticing this. Instead of paying attention to only GPA's, they are looking for critical thinking and problem-solving skills in new hires.

It's a fact: most organizations need a killer sales force. Business development, marketing, must-have products or services – these are all essential to meaningful revenue growth. But your sales team is the heart of production. Your salespeople are the ones championing your offer and driving precious profit. Your team should be the best it can. Period. But how do you build a successful sales team? Buckle up, because it's no easy task. As long as you follow these seven essential steps, however, you'll have a team of sales all-stars under your belt.

Are lawyers also salespeople? If you asked one of them directly, they'd likely scrunch up their face as if they'd just heard an awful verdict from the bench. But the truth is in this day and age the legal profession is as competitive as any other (if not more so) for new business. Why do you think that every non-profit board contains at least one lawyer. It's likely just not out of the goodness of their collective hearts

Quick poll: When was the last time you stepped foot in your bank? From drive-through bank windows to more recent banking amenities like online banking and mobile apps, banks have practically been encouraging customers to stay away for years. Along with the conveniences for the customers, banks benefitted from less overhead and an increased focus on compliance. So after years of being told there's no need to come inside, it was as if everyone saw the light and stopped entering their bricks-and-mortar bank. Problem solved, right? Not so fast

The most common complaint we hear from the heads of professional services firms (lawyers, accountants, engineers, marketing or PR agencies) is that their people are technically brilliant, but have a serious aversion to business development. Totally understandable considering the training the majority of professionals receive relates directly to delivering services they provide (e.g. how to conduct a better audit or how to create a crisis communications plan)

People from all walks of life can be technically brilliant and do a great job if someone would "just give them the project." Many consultants become consultants because they believe they can provide a better product or service and make more money than if they stayed working for a company.  It's great to dream big and recognize your aspirations however I run into more and more of these "technically brilliant" people who look me in the face and tell me they do not sell, so why would they need sales training? This leads to an interesting discussion as to where they get their business from.

Small business owners tend to stay small because they do not install systems and processes into their business. Most owners want to hire "experienced" sales people. The mentality is to hire someone, teach them about their products and services, then expect the person to "go sell". What's the problem? If we hire experienced sales people, once they learn the product or service, they should be good to go, right?