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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.

I remember taking a parenting class when my boys were young. The big takeaways from the class were the requirement to tell your child what the consequences of their behavior would be and to be clear on what you expected from them. I recall my boys’ mother and me saying to each other on numerous occasions, “We can’t get mad at them if we weren’t clear with our expectations.” Sometimes, the principle sounded like this: “Don’t punish them if you didn’t tell them they would be punished.”

Anyone who doesn’t think the landscape has changed for sellers over the last 10 years is either not paying attention or in denial.

More and better competition, social media, the internet, and increased buyer savvy are just a few of the factors driving the changing landscape of professional sales.

Mike Montague interviews Carlos Garrido on How to Succeed at Asking for Referrals In this episode:

• Why do we struggle to ask for referrals?
• Attitudes to help you get business from referrals
• Give referrals to get referrals

Many firms are very focused and skilled at hiring the right sales professionals. From establishing the knowledge, skills, and attributes (KSA) that are required for success to leveraging pre-hire assessment tools companies have become skilled in process of recruiting and hiring top sales candidates. But then the break down occurs! In some firms all the emphasis on finding the best available candidate versus the best candidate available goes out the window with a weak and/or inconsistent onboarding process. The process required for taking newly minted sellers and developing them into top producers is often times MUCH less clearly established and structured.

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.

LinkedIn is a powerful prospecting tool. That fact is beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What IS somewhat in doubt is exactly what that means in terms of how it is used. My personal position is that LinkedIn is great for identifying potential leads, getting introduced to those leads, and nurturing an online relationship.

Often, we’re frightened when we come to terms with a problem that has grown out of proportion and seems dangerous. As these problems manifest, we become more and more aware of the intricacies that have created it. The hardest truth to face when it comes to challenges that build up overtime is that they are typically products of our own creation. Often, built out of a lack of perspective to our own coded responses that come from the autopilot of repeated behavior.

Selling to major accounts, also known as enterprise accounts, is radically different from selling in other spaces. For one thing, the major account selling cycle is a continuous process – continuous because there’s no end to the cycle of selling to and serving large accounts. And the streams of transactions over time between buying and selling organizations constitute a client journey with a distinctive itinerary along a clear roadmap, a roadmap that delivers value on an ongoing basis.