The challenge every Sales or HR leader faces when enhancing the effectiveness of their sales teams 

In the ever-changing landscape of sales and marketing, VPs of Sales and HR Directors are continuously seeking ways to enhance the effectiveness of their teams. The key to this lies not just in skill-building but in nurturing broader capabilities. It’s time to consider a shift towards a capability-based Sales Academy, an approach that promises to revolutionize how your sales team operates. 

Why are traditional skill based Sales Academies failing and What can you do about it? 

A critical limitation of traditional skill-based training is its narrow focus, often misaligned with the dynamic roles of sales professionals. In a capability-based Sales Academy, the focus extends to developing comprehensive capabilities that are vital in today’s market. These include discovering untapped potential for pipeline building, developing robust account strategies, and identifying accounts with the highest potential for up- and cross-selling. These are not mere skills; they are strategic capabilities that empower sales professionals to navigate complex market dynamics and drive sustainable growth. 

The traditional approach to sales training is often a short-lived boost in specific skills, that do not cater to the evolving nature of the sales environment. Market trends shift, customer preferences change, and products evolve – a scenario where only continuous learning and adaptability can ensure success. A capability-focused Sales Academy fosters this environment of continuous growth, ensuring your sales force remains agile, innovative, and ahead of the curve

Moreover, the transformation from a skill-based to a capability-based training paradigm requires active management engagement. This involves identifying growth areas, integrating real-world applications, and creating opportunities for teams to apply new capabilities in strategic planning and execution. Such involvement not only underscores the training process but also demonstrates a commitment to nurturing a high-potential sales force

Implementing a capability-based Sales Academy is more than just a shift in training methodology; it’s a strategic investment in your organization’s future. By focusing on capabilities like untapped pipeline potential discovery, account strategy development, and targeted up- and cross-selling, you’re equipping your sales team not just to meet targets but to exceed them innovatively and consistently. 

As we navigate a market that demands more agility and strategic foresight than ever before, the need for a capable and forward-thinking sales force is paramount. For VPs of Sales and HR Directors, championing a capability-based Sales Academy is not just an innovative step forward; it’s an essential strategy for staying competitive and driving long-term success. By investing in these broader capabilities, you’re paving the way for a more dynamic, proactive, and high-performing sales team. 


Does it still make sense to present the sales process as a linear multi-step progression? And if not, how can we organize sales to handle today’s complex reality? 

During the industrial revolution in the 19th century, industrialists tried to streamline and standardise factory production into linear processes as much as possible – thinking that this would help them to manage their activities, predict the outcome of each step in the production process, and so ensure a consistent level of quality.  

We still view the sales process today largely in the same linear way as the industrialists did back in the 19th century. We get a sales lead in, qualify it, have a discovery meeting, exert our influence in the offer phase, and do whatever it takes to close the deal.  

We often assess our salespeople’s productivity according to this linear logic: we count the number of appointments, offers and conversion rate for these offers, and then we try to optimize this process as much as possible. The leading salesperson in the organization is usually the benchmark in this assessment, with the lesser gods needing to mould themselves into their image.  

Increasing complexity  

Organizing sales according to this linear representation works to a certain extent – the complexity of the sales process can be manageable if you share exactly the same sales dynamic in all deals, and only have to deal with one type of stakeholder, with a similar order size each time…  

But the reality is completely different and much more complex for most salespeople:  

  • Most salespeople are responsible for different products and serve different vertical markets
  • The number of stakeholders who make or influence decisions is growing all the time. The most recent research speaks of 5 to 20 stakeholders, depending on the size and complexity of activities
  • The various decision-makers and influencers are rarely or never all in the same mental phase in the buying journey. Some of them will not yet see the benefits of your product, while others might have been wanting it for a long time already. Each stakeholder will have travelled part of the buying journey from the perspective of their own responsibilities, and considered the impact of your product on their department

This alone can result in overwhelming complexity already, which makes it difficult for individual salespeople to handle. Every element in this complicated matrix of products, industries, stakeholders and buying phases demands a different sales conversation. Also bear in mind that each salesperson is working on multiple deals at the same time. 

Linear internal processes  

The linear approach is unfortunately still the most common, and it’s often cemented in rigid processes and CRM systems. It’s a recipe for failure. A typical example is a salesperson having a conversation with a prospect who knows exactly what they want but does not have the authority to make a decision. A CRM often cannot handle this complexity.  

The classic picture of suspect – prospect – discovery – solution – object handling – closing has often been updated and aligned with a typical buying process for complex sales, but even here, salespeople are often forced into a linear framework of ‘required steps to follow’.

Even in complex sales, salespeople are often forced into a linear framework of necessary steps to follow

The typical marketing approach, where prospects go through a funnel from awareness to decision, may be useful for content marketing and digital customer journeys, but it is too simplistic to represent the complexity of the actual buying journey, and certainly not suitable for tracing buying readiness. Is someone who downloads your eBook interested in buying your product? Maybe. But just as often they do this out of personal interest. 

Adapting to the unique buying journey  

It’s clear that every buying journey is unique, and classic sales models cannot adequately capture this reality. Every decision-maker has taken their own path, and it’s difficult for a linear process to provide an answer to that. As a salesperson, you are constantly entering into the customer’s buying journey at different moments. Forcing an internal, linear process on the customer’s mental process is therefore useless. 

Marketing Funnel
As a salesperson, you are constantly breaking into the customer’s buying journey at different moments. This cannot be represented in a linear way

Take the example of a couple entering an electronics store to look for a new TV. The tech geek in the couple will likely be quickly convinced about the latest features on the new 8K HD device. The more price-conscious half of the couple may wonder whether a new purchase is even necessary. As a salesperson, you need to adapt to each buyer’s mental phase. You probably won’t be able to bluff the price-conscious half of the couple with features (decision). Nor will you have to point out to the tech geek the necessity for a new TV (awareness).  

What salespeople need today, to be able to handle complexity, is an adaptive model that allows them to be agile and adapt to every situation. The salesperson’s main task is therefore to detect the customer’s mental state and buying readiness. If they can do this, it’s important that they respond to that mental state by doing the right thing at the right time. Developing sales people is one of the main responsibilities for sales leaders. Making sure sales people can report on the real situations in every deal in a very pragmatic but structured way is needed to enable steering and coaching. A classic multi-step process greatly restricts this and makes business reviews too time consuming, with a lot of irrelevant storytelling, and without the expected outcome.


Companies invest a lot of money in developing content that supports sales, but often see no return on their investment. The reason for this is that the sales organization does not use the developed content, or isn’t using it enough. So what’s going on?  

The impact of content usage and, by extension, sales enablement has been demonstrated many times before. According to figures from Miller Heiman Group in 2019, organizations without sales enablement achieve average win rates of 42.5%, while organizations with sales enablement achieve an average win rate of 49.0%, a huge 15.3% increase. 

Sales content is not marketing content  

Content plays a crucial role in different phases of the buying cycle. It can accelerate the sales process and significantly reduce sales costs. But what exactly do we mean by sales content?  

Typical sales funnel

Content for: 

  • onboarding when launching new products or services
  • important announcements with regard to the sales strategy
  • preparing for customer contact moments
  • during the contact moment
  • follow-up after the contact moment
  • training and coaching salespeople

Apparently, it turns out that salespeople don’t find enough of this kind of content in the materials produced by marketing departments. The reason for this comes from the purpose that marketing content serves, i.e. to influence the market based on its own strengths, and to lead as many interested parties as possible through the famous marketing funnel, with little variation in the message – ‘one-to-many communication’ – as quickly as possible, from awareness to buying intent.  

Content that is developed for this purpose has some specific characteristics:  

  • the customer searches for and discovers the content under their own initiative (inbound marketing) 
  • the content reaches the customer online or via an automated process (outbound marketing)
  • the effectiveness of the content is measured using KPIs such as clicks, reading time or number of shares
  • the ultimate goal of the content is to generate Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

From funnel to unique journey  

Many organizations still believe the MQL simply needs handing over to the salesperson who then just has an easy tap-in to score the goal. The customer has already passed through the entire marketing funnel, so all sales has to do is cash in on the marketing effort.  

But this belief is – of course – misguided. The idea that a customer will dutifully go through a content funnel, and immediately be willing to buy at the end of that journey, is not the case in practice. Content is consumed for various reasons in this marketing funnel, and there are sure to be interested parties for your product, but people also download your ebook out of curiosity, or scroll through your website, to ultimately discover it’s not what they’re looking for. So who says your MQL has the required budget, or can make a decision or even influence it?  

The marketing funnel in no way helps to predict the customer’s buying intent or willingness to buy. And it tells us little about which phase in the buying journey the customer finds themselves. The buying journey is therefore anything but linear, and it’s unique for each customer. When the salesperson starts working with an MQL, they always intervene at a different moment in the buying journey. And that requires specific content.

Sales content that works  

It’s impossible for the marketing content mentioned above to satisfy the non-linear need. After all, marketing content is fundamentally different from sales content. The latter needs to support a salesperson before, during and after sales conversations. The customer does not consume it directly; they access it through personal interaction with the salesperson.  

To increase the use of content in sales and so improve sales productivity, make sure your sales content has these characteristics:  

  • Snackable: short and powerful, simple to use and easy to understand
  • Accessible and quickly findable, so salespeople can spend more time selling and less time searching for content
  • Adapted to the customer’s mental stage in the buying journey
  • Interactive: inviting participation and interaction
  • Just in time: supportive for the salesperson in every phase – from preparing for the customer conversation, to interactions with the customer, and in the follow-up process
  • Focused on action: usable, helpful and encouraging action.  

Are you ready to get to work on your sales content strategy? Let us know!


Who are the hunters and farmers in your sales team? Or do other characteristics determine the DNA of your salespeople? If you want to improve your team’s sales performance, you need to know their DNA. 

The classic way to look at salespeople is the dichotomy between hunters and farmers. In a nutshell, this is the difference between salespeople who acquire customers and who maintain customer relationships. 

Unfortunately, this dichotomy is a bit outdated, and no longer useful for maximizing your team’s sales potential. Further in this article, I explain why. But let me start by stating how we may look at this in a better way. 

Three important sales competencies  

Research has shown that every sales profile is, to a greater or lesser extent, a combination of three components or competencies. And one such competence is a mix of knowledge, skills, attitudes and convictions.  

These components are:  

  • Account Management: This competency focuses on supporting the customer in the best way. This translates into customer support and taking responsibility to resolve problems quickly and appropriately. Account Management also means coordinating and connecting the right people within the company and the customer. Everything is about service and maintaining existing relationships. 
     
  • Account Development: This competency includes actively seeking up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Important attributes here are proactivity and thinking with the customer to cover their needs with the available range of products and services as much as possible. Account Development requires that you can extend relationships to colleagues of your relations who may also benefit from a partnership. This allows you to sell other products and services and maximize the share of wallet. 
  • Business Development: The three main characteristics here are building new relationships, empathy for the customer’s business and influencing from trust. This competency is necessary to develop new opportunities within the same company, but also to activate and bring in new customers. 
Sales Profile by team example:
Sales profile by team

Healthy mix  

Every salesperson has a unique blend of the three competencies listed above. Some of the underlying skills can be learned, at least up to the point where the salesperson steps outside their comfort zone too far or when personal beliefs become too much of an obstacle in a business environment. In that respect, it is not strange to speak of the salesperson’s DNA. An obvious example is that you would teach someone who scores very high on account management and has virtually no business development competency skills, to market a new product or focus on new customer acquisition.  

Based on the unique mix of competencies, you can better distribute roles and responsibilities in your team. A balanced distribution ensures a consistent and positive customer experience across all touch points. 

For example, someone with strong account management competencies and little affinity for business development will function best in a commercial support function. Customer Success and inside sales are two typical job titles for such a profile. Someone with strong business development competencies and little affinity for account management will thrive on bringing in new customers, and preferably non-recurring customers. 

Why the hunter – farmer model is no longer adequate 

The dichotomy between hunters and farmers may have been useful as a shortcut, but today’s more complex sales practice requires a much more nuanced view. Today we see sales profiles more as a unique blend of three competencies that every salesperson possesses to a greater or lesser degree. 

Today’s reality brings forth new challenges: 

  • The Internet and social media often lead to better informed customers, but just as often to misinformed customers.  
  • The number of people involved in B2B decisions has increased to an average of 6.8 people and can be as high as 20.  
  • Products and services have become more comprehensive and complex. 
  • Market volatility has never been greater. 
  • The speed of change and evolution continues to increase. 

The best way to deal with this new complexity is to organize sales as a team sport. Make sure all competencies are present in the right dosage so you can offer your customers a consistently positive experience throughout the entire customer journey. 

Better performance based on your team DNA   

The distribution of the three sales profiles across your team is what we call your team DNA. That DNA will have an impact on: 

  • How and who you are hiring, and which competencies you need to reinforce  
  • Which roles you assign to the different people in your team  
  • Which skills and knowledge areas need to be developed  
  • How you compose your customer portfolios. For example, you want to avoid having pure acquisition customers in the same portfolio as retention customers. 
  • How you manage and coach each team member in line with what they like to do and what they want to improve in quickly.

Do you want to maximize the performance and mental fitness of your sales team? Then, first and foremost, you need a certain balance in the available profiles adapted to your goals. An efficient, flexible and balanced team with the right DNA consists of motivated employees who each individually do the right things at the right time, together with the right stakeholders, both internally and with the customer. 

Discover your team DNA  

Do you want to map the DNA of your sales team and use this to improve their performance? You can. At Perpetos, we use a sophisticated audit that we can also link to sales performance. 

For example, in this audit we examine: 

  • The preferences and spontaneous reactions of team members when handling a range of customer situations  
  • Time spent on each type of sales activity
  • Time lost on activities that should not be the responsibility of a sales person 
  • What energizes your sales reps and keeps them mentally fit 
  • To what extent they are satisfied with support from other departments 
  • In some cases, to what extent compensation is perceived as “fair” and in line with expected performance 

We call this our Account Development Audit™. The audit is most effective for companies that derive a significant portion of their revenue from recurring customers and sales. For companies that sell investment goods for example, we have a different audit that is more suited to that typical environment. 

An audit of your sales team is an important step towards making better use of the people available to realize your goals.

Do you want to know more about the possible impact of a DNA analysis of your team?

In these times, professional salespeople are witnessing an unprecedented change in all aspects of the business world that will echo for years to come. Being an active part of this shift is crucial to the success of your business and the individuals that keep it running. What the sales function is confronted with is an unavoidable shift to remote learning in support of the demand to master the skills of remote selling. 

In this blogpost, we discuss strategies to remotely train salespeople with new skills, refreshing their existing skill sets, and how to keep them motivated and engaged along the way in today’s hybrid selling world. 

Sales teams face the need to immediately master remote selling 

Today, selling has never been more difficult and requires salespeople to be very agile when selling virtually and connecting with their customers on a personal level. Now more than ever before, sales learning and development is extremely important for enabling salespeople to upskill and reskill  to meet the new demands of your business and the needs of your customers all while selling from home. Normal methods of learning won’t cut it in these difficult times, a new training approach is required to help your salespeople go through their own digital transformation.  

Turning in-person training and delivering via the web is not a solution 

It is not just about turning your in-person training and delivering it through a video conference tool like Zoom or Teams. Nor is it effective to resort to traditional e-learning through a learning management system. Content that’s in your learning management systems is most likely not relevant to the new sales models that have been put into place because of all the changes businesses are making regarding the effects of COVID-19. Also, every moment an impatient sales professional spends sitting through time-consuming LMS courses is time away from selling. We must find better ways to reinforce topics throughout the normal workday without disrupting anyone’s workflow

Step-by-step training 

Many learning programs deliver so much information in short periods that it can be unreasonable to expect employees to pick everything up immediately. They are human, and humans have a natural tendency to forget. A more effective and lasting approach is to introduce new skills to employees while continually reinforcing what was previously taught to improve long-term knowledge retention. Once they show proficiency with a particular skill, you can move on to the next one. The key, however, is making sure that employees don’t forget what they initially learned. One way to ensure sales professionals retain what they learn is to embed micro-learning into your Learning & Development strategy. 

Snackable and mobile learning to reinforce learnings 

Research has proven that a great way to avoid disrupting sales people workflow is by pushing “bite-sized” chunks – no longer than 2 minutes per topic – so they can stay focused on their work and implement teachings into their day-to-day with ease. Mobile-first remote learning is essential in this effort. Even with more people at home, the “device of first attention” for most people is their mobile phone (Fig. 1). 

Additionally, these reinforced training sessions can be done in pockets of free time rather than salespeople having to carve time out of their day to get it done. This way, everyone gets constant refreshers and reinforcement without any of the inconvenience.

Fig. 1: Bite-sized chunks of mobile learning through Qstream 

Bite-sized chunks of mobile learning through Qstream

Personalized learning paths that support corporate objectives 

Your salespeople all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, some may have already sold remotely before, so you need to take into consideration the different variations of knowledge sets by analyzing the knowledge gaps and using personalized learning that will meet the needs of each salesperson. Personalized learning paths can only be routed by understanding the proficiency and knowledge gaps of each individual.  

We see 2 ways to personalize learning paths while supporting corporate objectives: 

  • Through popular microlearning applications like Qstream that allow to identify proficiency gaps and guide personalized development programs  
  • By means of qualitative and quantitative interviews, investigating common areas that affect sales performance. This deep dive into audiences’ learning needs will surface blockers and boosters of commercial performance and will allow to go directly into implementation mode with tailored content within a coherent corporate development program. 

Interested in microlearning? Qstream is the only microlearning platform scientifically proven to increase knowledge, develop skills, and change behaviors.  

Impact measurement and personalized coaching 

Analytics from an LMS is historically insufficient for sales managers or trainers in determining if their salespeople are understanding what’s being taught. Microlearning platforms enable you to track and compare the evolution of sales engagement, proficiency and performance. The insights gained from these can help to leverage each individual’s strengths for the benefit of the other team members. Real-time dashboards and proficiency heat maps (Fig. 2) show initial and current proficiency, allowing you to assess progress and offer personalized coaching for each team member.  

Fig. 2: Qstream dashboards with heat maps

Qstream dashboards with heat maps

Real-world scenarios 

The key to keeping reps engaged is to feed them information that is relevant to what they are experiencing every day. Microlearning platforms like Qstream provide an easy method for learning by utilizing spaced repetition, cases and testing (Fig. 3). This way instant learning is obtained, and salespeople are able to incorporate the lessons into their daily routines and use that knowledge in real-time

Fig. 3: Microlearning with roleplay on Qstream

Microlearning with roleplay on Qstream

Precise coaching 

Mobile platform tools can paraphrase classroom content into 12-15 yes/no, multiple choice or scenario-based questions, helping your team to jog their memories and repeat what they have picked up during training. The system thus reinforces knowledge, not only by testing but continuous retraining at the same time.  

Ambition, engagement and improving proficiency are encouraged through competition and gamification – with extra points for both speed and accuracy and real-time leaderboard. Managers receive suggested topics for coaching their team members as well as overview of how much progress individuals have made compared to earlier tests. Data-driven matrixes evaluate the impact of training, offering customized coaching opportunities for the team’s manager, based on individual and team results. 

Making Sales training Stick 

Competency does not come from periodic, one-time training. According to Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, learners forget 90% of what they learn from an event-based approach within 30 days, with most of the new material being forgotten within the first few hours after the training.  A solution to promote knowledge retention is spaced learning. 

Spaced learning implies multiple training opportunities. Repetition is indeed the mother of learning. We also notice great results by combining spaced learning with microlearning. 

A systemic approach to learning  

Key components of a systemic approach to learning for the mobile workforce will typically include a mix of learning strategies: 

  • Virtual training sessions that relate to the day-to-day operations and will equip salespeople with the confidence and capability to perform at their highest potential 
  • Experience-sharing sessions that will leverage peer-based support to unlock current difficult customer situations 
  • Individual coaching sessions to follow up on field implementation of newly acquired knowledge and skills 
  • Supplemental online training that will put the learner in contextually rich scenarios that are cognitively challenging.  
  • Spaced microlearning to break up complex or detailed job-specific learning content into scenarios and delivering this repetitively over time through a learning experience that fits into the daily flow of sales work 

Combining these learning strategies will ensure that your upskilling becomes ingrained in individual habits, thereby making sales people better performers and more likely to have a positive impact on organizational goals. 

Conclusion 

The digital age requires an agile learning environment, supporting continuous learning. Hence the need to integrate spaced and mobile learning for continuous knowledge reinforcement and proficiency measurement. Creating the capacity to objectively measure the impact of improvement initiatives, and even measure proficiency, enables you to create individual learning paths on the one hand and encourage the implementation of effective sales strategies on the other. 

Having questions on how to implement
effective commercial improvement initiatives?


Last week, I had another meeting with a Head of Sales in order to determine improvement opportunities within his sales team. Once again, the Head of Sales expressed to me the closing skills of his account managers should better. 

While this might be true for some, the reality is that this is mostly the symptom of another problem.  

While conducting several assessments to determine skill and proficiency levels within and across sales teams in several organisations, we noticed a recurring pattern: sales professionals induce the difficulty of closing themselves

How? They often go for the kill too soon in the selling process.  

Let me explain. We all know buyers go through their own buying journey. After being triggered by something, their interest is raised, they become aware something should change, start exploring,… to finally end up deciding what specific solution they need and whom shall be the best provider of this solution.  

If, as a sales rep, you start proposing a specific solution while the buyer just became aware something in his current situation should change, or worse, if you start telling him why he should collaborate with you, you will create a lot of friction.  

When you think of it, it is no rocket science. It all has to do with the mental phases we all go through in our decision process towards change. This mental journey is illustrated by buyer journeys. This is something your sales reps should be aware of so they can determine what they should and should not do, and when to do it.  

So, what about your sales reps’ closing skills? It is quite simple, really. If you want them to be efficient in applying their closing skills, first ask yourself if your selling process is aligned to the buyer journey. If so, your sales reps are able to identify the buying readiness of prospects, know what to do accordingly, and when to close.  

Want to know if your selling processes is truly buyer aligned?

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Collective intelligence makes your sales team smarter. Empower your entire team to help one salesperson solve a problem by using intervision techniques to leverage collective intelligence. 

Collective intelligence 

Put simply: ‘two heads are better than one’. Intervision techniques therefore help you harness every member of a team’s own thoughts and ideas to promote group intelligence – investing in each member and increasing the potential of overcoming one salesperson’s specific challenge. 

Intervision techniques call on collective intelligence 

Intervision, also known as ‘group coaching’, ‘peer coaching’ or ‘co-development’, refers to an activity with a small group of professionals who have a professional context in common. It emphasizes the multilateral contribution between colleagues – as opposed to supervision – because collective intelligence is a kind of wisdom and knowledge that grows out of a group. 

The intervision technique provides sales managers with a different way to interact with their team and team members. Similar to group coaching, it relies on questioning and active listening, but also employs brainstorming techniques and makes it possible to tackle both technical and conceptual problems. The main difference, however, is that intervision covers topics that will benefit the entire sales team and make it more effective, whereas individual coaching aims to solve a problem specific to the salesperson. 

What sales problems can intervision techniques help to resolve? 

Team meetings are too often laborious and ineffective, and this is where collective intelligence can help. Intervision techniques relate to sales team coaching. They develop sales efficiency, strengthen team spirit, and increase corporate identity. They can be used to generate new ideas, discover new ways to analyze situations, and find new possible solutions. 

There are a couple of conditions for its effective use, however: the presented case must be real, and it must relate to a real blocked sales opportunity, for example in a situation where a salesperson experiences repetitive failure or a persistent communication issue. 

The exposed situation very often reveals a common problem – something that sounds familiar to all salespeople, which they might have been exposed to in the past or are still facing today. This is why the intervision session can benefit the whole team. 

How to moderate an intervision session 

The session can be done with or without a facilitator, but it’s always crucial to stick to the allocated time for the exercise to be effective and stop the group from dwelling on details. It is recommended to spend 45-90 minutes on each issue as a group, depending on the group size and complexity of the topic.  

  • During an intervision session, a participant raises one issue, which could be a new challenge or a problem that they have encountered. It’s essential that it’s an ongoing issue.  
  • The other participants then act as consultants and commit to share ideas, collaborate, and help the salesperson who wants to overcome a difficult situation. Group members ask questions to find out more about the topic and clarify particular points. It’s important not to start discussing solutions at this stage, but simply to focus on clarifying the issue. 
  • The next stage is for the group to start brainstorming possible ways of approaching the problem and suggesting possible solutions. The issue owner is invited to listen and to take in the proposals without joining the discussion.  
  • Following the brainstorming session, the group makes a number of recommendations and suggestions to the issue owner, who can then provide feedback on what he/she has heard from the group: how it helps or not, what they can take away from the exercise, etc.  

Selling in uncertain times 

This technique is particularly relevant in today’s market – with fierce competition and rapid change. Sales organizations need collective intelligence to be more agile and adaptive without burning talent. Visit our ‘Selling in uncertain times’ resource center, talk to our experts, and check out our open ‘Intervision and sales team coaching’ training to find out more. 


Understand the motivation of sales people 

A good sales leader not only succeeds in organizing the sales team well to achieve the goals but he or she also supports the team with the right tools to be successful. And still, the best sales leaders you recognize by the sellers themselves. If you look closely, you can recognise them by the spark in their eyes, the discipline at work and the motivation to reach target. They are not one-time performers but consistently perform well, even over a longer period.  

Is there a secret manual? And if so, can this be taught? 

There are several basic principles. Thus, a good motivator puts the other person first and realizes that each person is different, with individual wishes, expectations, and motivations.  

And there are many aspects to consider such as the fact that people can change. What used to motivate, it doesn’t have to be today. Also the intensity of motivation can change.  

Research shows that most people have one or two decisive motivators or drives, such as wage components, training, friendships at work. If you can define these motivators, you will have the basics to build your dream team of successful sales representatives.  

Furthermore, it is important to realize that managers can never keep all employees 100% motivated 100% of the time. That’s okay. If you can avoid demotivation and increase motivation – any win is welcome – the final results will increase with a multiplier effect.  

Most sales representatives will be open and transparent about their demotivators. Often these lie in a surfeit of administrative tasks and solving customer problems that contribute little to (more) sales.   

Motivators are often much more varied and harder to discuss. A good relationship of trust with the manager can make the difference.  

It turns out that sales representatives are surprisingly often driven by growth. Growth in the job, their career, the number and type of clients they can handle, etc. With this motivator, it is advisable to demonstrate how commitment leads to more possibilities. Providing a career path and delegating responsibilities will give this seller extra incentive. 

As a result, some sales representatives are stimulated by challenge. They want to win. These individuals are at their best when they are given visible appreciation for their achievements, when they can build on their strengths and their imperfections are glossed over.   

Some sales representatives prefer to work in a team, others need their independence. It is important to create situations where both profiles come into their own, by assigning specific projects: for example a project where you have to collaborate with a different department or if your manager wants to delegate a certain task to you.  

And we have to be honest, quite a few sellers think the pennies are very important. Therefore, reward plans need to be well aligned  with sales results, with attention to short- and long-term results and adapted to the sales strategy. 

Excited for some tips to share a sales strategy with your team by using a virtual sales kick-off? And to inspire and motivate them? Then read our blog ‘a virtual sales kick-off?

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Sales Kick-Off (SKO) going virtual?

Excited for some tips to share a sales strategy with your team by using a virtual sales kick-off? And to inspire and motivate them? Then read our blog ‘a virtual sales kick-off’.


Virtual SKO

Sales Kick-Off 2021 will soon be upon us, and this time , as we’re all working from home more, it’s highly likely to go virtual.

That’s why it’s imperative for you to know what engages and motivates people from a distance. How can you shift your salespeople’s mindset to align them with the strategy, objectives, process, content, and tools they need to succeed in 2021?

You can find out more about taking the lead in the aftermath of Covid-19 by watching our webinar.

Unique challenges

The annual SKO is your starting point for aligning your entire sales organization around your company mission, vision, strategy, and objectives. Just like previous years, your sales team will be wondering how they fit into your plans, and what you as sales leader are doing to support their effort and ensure they succeed. But things are different this year, because of restrictions on people meeting in person, in groups… at home, in the office, or anywhere you might normally go for a team event.  

Regular team-bonding activities and sessions are out of the question, because you’re not allowed to meet in larger groups. So what other activities can you arrange to build team spirit, and encourage and enthuse your sales reps?

5 steps to virtual SKO success

Step 1: Set clear objectives for your virtual SKO.

  • What’s the number one issue impacting sales efficiency that you need to address for the coming year?
  • What’s the main change or transformation you can implement to drive your sales organization forward?

Try to see the bigger picture when answering these questions. Working out how issues relates to your sales process will help you determine if need better planning, other talent…

Step 2: Define your program content.

Once you’ve set your objectives, you can use careful planning to make the most of your time and create content that aligns with your goals.

  • Ask yourself what questions your team are likely to have, and prepare your answers;
  • Can you arrange any hand-on exercises or breakout sessions?
  • How can you make these activities work in practice?

It’s worth running through your ideas in advance to iron out any issues that might arise and structure the SKO properly. Don’t forget: you also need to give your salespeople time to network or simply recharge sometimes.

Discuss all these questions and issues with your team, so they can help you find answers and make any necessary arrangements. Once you’ve formulated your SKO, you can reverse engineer the meeting.

Step 3: Find out what you can in advance.

  • Invite your salespeople to share customer success stories;
  • Record their best elevator pitches;
  • Provide team updates;
  • Etc.

Step 4: Encourage participants to get involved

  • Stimulate chat before, during, and after your keynote to gather questions and concerns from the floor;
  • Break out into virtual sessions so that people can discuss plans together.

Step 5: Outline what happens after the SKO

  • Work out the best way to ensure your plans for result-driven adoption and reinforcement are put into practice;
  • Think about execution and set up virtual sales initiatives to pave the way to success;
  • To improve your commercial performance by prioritizing your activities, read our checklist.

In summary

When asking yourself how a virtual SKO can drive results, it’s important to consider the following:

  • A virtual SKO is still a live event, so you still need to engage all attendees and make sure they get involved;  
  • The medium used to deliver the messages doesn’t change the outcomes – and the outcomes depend on shifting the mindset, explaining each salesperson’s the contribution, and following up implementation;  
  • The plan for what happens after the SKO is just as important as the event itself.  

Going virtual

To help you shift your usual SKO into a virtual one, you can consider shifting your SKO budgets for travel, accommodation, and networking into post-event sales effectiveness programs.

  • Investing in learning and coaching;
  • Develop the new insights required to carry out the new plan;
  • Focus on the skills that need to be reinforced;
  • Work out how to measure success.

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Much has been said and written about the changes the digital age has to all commercial activities.
Specific for sellers you regularly read the following statements:

  • Customers have already completed 57% of the buying cycle before they want to meet a seller
  • The relationship is becoming less and less important and price is the most important decision criterion
  • Customers wish to meet our sellers less and less frequently

We have published 2 articles with more details and background about these themes. The first one is a ‘Checklist: What customers expect from your sales people’ in which you will find the 10 most important customer expectations.

The second article describes the most important market changes as well as how to overcome the resulting productivity challenges.

A recognizable example:

Thomas is Operational Manager for a logistics company with 23 lorries on the road. Tight margins in the sector brought the director of Thomas’ company to start looking for ways to cut costs. Together they’ve identified a number of issues that regularly cause problems, such as poor agreements about pick-up and delivery times and driving empty lorries back, all of which comes at a cost. Thomas’ bonus this year largely depends on him finding a solution!

How Thomas buys

He’s known for a long time that there’s software available for optimising the planning. And he’s already looked at how much it costs, but at the time he only saw the investment cost. Now, with pressure coming from management, Thomas decides to take to the internet again to get a global idea of the solutions available for his problem, work out roughly what it costs, and see how much it could help the company save in terms of unnecessary costs.

The conclusion of this ROI exercise is positive: Thomas finds that resolving the issue would cost considerably less than suffering more losses in the current situation. Then he keeps searching to see exactly what his company needs. He looks for opinions and feedback from peers, and tries to find out what differentiates the good software from the bad. He wants to know which providers are offering top notch solutions. And what differences there are between all these providers and their products.

With his list of ‘buying criteria’ ready, he invites three providers who seem to be offering more or less the same software. Together with his manager, Thomas decides to sign with the cheapest provider.

Sales reps still have an important role to play

There’s a good chance that Thomas’ story sounds familiar to many readers of this post. We speak with lots of companies whose margins are deteriorating in a price war with competitors.

But the fact that customers are smarter these days, and have already compared your product features with those of your competitors before ever contacting you, doesn’t mean that the salesperson no longer has a role to play. Online information isn’t always correct, for example, and it might even be irrelevant in the customer’s specific case. Buyers don’t always know how to get good value from the information they gathered, either. And that’s exactly how salespeople can help them – by leading them along the right lines.

Salespeople who succeed in the digital era often have this attitude:

  • Align the sales strategy with the phases the customer goes through in their buying cycle
  • Take the right action at the right time with the right contact person
  • Strongly believe that helping customers is their top priority

Read more about the CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SELLING open training, see if the next session fits into your schedule, and book your seat straight away:

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SELLING open training

Click here if you want to organize an internal program on this theme and related competencies.


I used to be closely involved with a sales team at a medium-sized technology company. Nicolas, one of the salespeople there, often came away from meetings feeling a bit dazed, convinced that procurement’s only goal was to buy at the lowest possible price. But Bruno, one of his colleagues with the same types of customer, sells very successfully without always needing to lower the price. Is Nicolas just unlucky, or is there more to it?

What Nicolas isn’t seeing

Nicolas keeps falling into the same trap. He ends up negotiating on price because he hasn’t convinced the customer of his solution’s value, which leads to buyers trying to hammer the price down. Or he starts bargaining before other issues have been cleared up, such as delivery times or SLAs. And sometimes he simply gives up too quickly.

So what makes Bruno so successful?

Bruno, on the other hand, appreciates that negotiating actually means finding solutions. He understands his customers’ challenges and KPIs, and responds by offering them added value in his solutions. He keeps a ‘give and take’ list, which gives him self-assurance and helps him find a win-win situation together with the customer. Last but not least, he also always has a strategy and action plan. Customers see Bruno as a partner and adviser; he understands their situation and is there to help them.

Negotiating techniques

What’s crucial in negotiations?

  • That you, like Bruno, understand the procurement KPIs – there’s a lot more to it than simply buying at the lowest price
  • This knowledge gives the seller a certain amount of bargaining leverage
  • And that puts sales in a position to understand their discussion partners’ objectives and strategy, and predict their next move, so they can tailor their sales strategy accordingly

The moral of the story is to start negotiating as soon as the customer begins their buying journey, in the initial conversation. If you as the seller do everything right throughout the customer’s buying cycle, negotiating actually becomes very simple, even for complex matters. It turns the negotiation into a simple conversation that successfully concludes all previous discussions.

Read more about the COMPLEX NEGOTIATION SKILLS open training, see if the next session fits into your schedule, and book your seat straight away:

Click here if you are looking to set up a Sales Academy in your company

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  What are customers open to? How to find out and create sufficient trust to discuss?
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