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SALES PERFORMANCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSIGHTS FROM AMY FRANKO
Barbie, Beyoncé, and Taylor: A Sales Strategy To Create a Sales Halo”
Click, skim, or scroll anywhere, and chances are good you’ve read about one of these powerful women. Alone, they each have created billions in economic impact. Together they represent the force of the female buying demographic that is shaping local and global economies like never before. As of this writing, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is likely to gross over $1 billion over 100 shows. Barbie has grossed $1.28 billion globally at the box office. And Beyoncé's Renaissance tour may gross between $275 million and $2.4 billion. There’s a sales lesson in all of this, and the WSJ calls it the Women’s Multiplier Effect. Barbie, Beyoncé, Taylor and the Women's Multiplier Effect on Sales Strategy Think of the Multiplier Effect as amplification. For every dollar spent on one product or service, other products, services, and industries are pulled into the halo of sales growth because they support the initial sale. Read...
Be a Better Board Director: My Lessons from the Board Chair Seat
In this article, Amy Franko shares important lessons for board directors and board development. Recent research shows that strategy and talent development are areas where board directors wish to focus more time. Amy specializes in these areas; as an entrepreneur and growth expert she is ideal for growth-oriented companies in technology, manufacturing, and professional services. View Amy's resume. The Girl Scouts had me at their mission: “We build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place.” In 2014, I had been searching for an opportunity to be more engaged and involved in my Columbus, Ohio community. As the oldest of five daughters, this mission spoke volumes. Nine years later, I’m still inspired by our very youngest Girl Scout Daisies through our high school-aged Ambassadors. No matter their age, they make a tangible difference and build lifelong leadership attributes....
Sales Podcast: The Power of Mindset in Sales
Amy Franko on the Making Sales Social Podcast In this episode of the Making Sales Social podcast, Amy Franko joined host Brynne Tillman to discus power of mindset in sales. Topics included the role of personal branding, strategic thinking, and relationship building in modern sales. As sales professionals, we need to focus on meaningful interactions and a curated approach to prospecting for more impactful results. Some highlights from the episode include: Value Equation and Personal Branding (00:03 - 04:47): Amy emphasizes that in sales, the value of a product, service, or solution is tied to the value of the salesperson. A strong personal brand contributes to one's business acumen and knowledge, ensuring that the value provided to clients is inseparable from what's being sold. Elevating Sales Strategy (02:46 - 03:22): Amy points out that a shift in perspective or thinking can often lead to significant...
Too Much Flexibility? Selling Strategy to Navigate Workday Dead Zones
Too much flexibility is hurting your sales growth. Optimizing your selling strategy to navigate workday dead zones can help. A recent Wall Street Journal article outlines a phenomenon called “workday dead zones,” where pockets of a traditional workday don’t exist like they used to in the past. Those pockets of time then shift to other segments of the day and ultimately lengthen the workday. WSJ cites a common dead zone right now as the 4-6pm timeframe, that has now shifted to an evening timeframe for many workers. There’s a formula of flexibility that began with the introduction of more sophisticated remote technologies around 15 years ago. That flexibility accelerated overnight nearly overnight 3 ½ years ago with COVID and has proved challenging for organizations to normalize post-pandemic. I’m aware of at least one organization that just very recently lifted pandemic-era travel restrictions for sellers....
How to Achieve Sales Growth with Industry-specific Skills Assessments
Guest Article in TD Magazine An organization is only as strong as its growth engine, and the sales function is the fuel for that growth. Organizations continue to be challenged with hiring, onboarding, promoting, and developing sales teams for long-term success. One solution is a sales-specific approach to data strategy and application. Read more how to achieve sales growth with industry-specific skills assessments in my new article for TD magazine Read it here.
11 Sales Development Metrics That Drive Sales Growth
When I’m working with clients, there are varying degrees of maturity when it comes to the sales development metrics they track. I’ve found that by putting specific focus on 11 key sales development metrics, your sales professionals, and sales results will benefit in a few specific ways: Improved business acumen that comes with looking at the bigger sales picture, promoting an understanding of how high quality selling truly impacts the business Improvements in leading indicators like sales activities, pipeline quality, and territory planning Improvements in lagging indicators, such as average order growth and sales quota attainment Three Sales Enablement Strategies You Can’t Ignore For Sales Growth First and foremost, invest in a quality CRM and make sure sales managers and sales professionals are using it as the “central sales truth” for the organization. This will make your sales leadership job...
Win More Deals with Qualifying Opportunity Questions and Categories
You can’t win deals without ruthlessly qualifying opportunities. As I'm working with my clients in sales training classes, lead qualification tends to pop up as a frequent area for improvement. They may have opportunities in the pipeline, even late-stage deals, that they expect to close. However, many of those opportunities seem to get stuck. More often than not, the sales opportunities that languish weren’t well qualified in the first place, but were mistakenly identified as viable. They aren't alone. According to SPOTIO, 22% of sales people in a 2023 report say qualifying is the most challenging part of the sales process. In this article, I’ll share strategies for qualifying opportunities and increasing your sales success. Sales Process and Methodology: Foundation for Qualifying Opportunities First, let’s start by defining sales process and sales methodology. These two elements combine with your CRM to...
5 Ways You Can Grow Sales Through Sales Enablement
Your sales team and your customers are operating in a new environment, one that will likely never fully return to what it was. New mindsets and approaches are needed to master selling in disruptive times. Mastering these new mindsets and approaches will give your sellers and organization a competitive advantage. This is where your role as a sales leader becomes even more important. How do you pivot and then advise and coach your teams to success—to better serve your customers and further grow your organization? The answer lies in sales enablement. Very simply, sales enablement is helping your team sell more efficiently and more effectively. The pillars of enablement include both tangibles and intangibles: the culture of your overall organization and the sales team, training, resources available, content available, overall sales strategy, and the sales processes or framework that is in place. According to...
How Modern Sellers Win When Sales Growth Goals are Long Odds
There’s a concept in gaming called goal-setting theory, where a player working to win the game has greater success when there are goals involved, and when the goals have several core elements. Clear rules, realistic time horizons, clarity and specificity, the right level of challenge, and incremental success milestones. So much of this applies to sales growth goals-- there’s a competitive, game-like quality to setting and achieving success. In sales, sometimes the game parameters are such that the sales growth goals are long odds, and in certain cases unattainable. Consider these sales scenarios. Hero to zero. The year where a sales professional lands the biggest, one-time deal of his or her career and achieves 200% of quota. They’re the rock star, the hero. The following year comes a quota so large that the odds of duplicating it are minimal without a deal of the same magnitude, either with the same...
Board Development Podcast: Developing a Better Board
Amy Franko on the Conquering Columbus Podcast Conquering Columbus is a podcast covering the stories of those throughout the city of Columbus, Ohio who are doing extraordinary things in business, science, athletics, and more. In this episode of the Conquering Columbus Podcast, I joined host Josh Whit to talk Board Development-- both from the perspective of the board member and the organization. Having just completed a four-year stint as chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland, Board work is a topic near and dear to my heart. In my role on the Council's board, I oversaw a $16 million transformational initiative to build a new STEM and leadership center to transform workforce development. I also spearheaded a successful and innovative board development program. And recently, I was selected for the prestigious Deloitte “Board Ready Women” program. Thanks to Conquering Columbus...
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