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SALES PERFORMANCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSIGHTS FROM AMY FRANKO
Are You Making These Sales Leadership Mistakes?
I often advise sales leaders and growth officers in their strategic, people, and operational efforts. There are some common sales leadership mistakes and pitfalls I observe, and in this article I’m sharing those, along with some ideas to help you build awareness of and improve them. Sales professionals, I encourage you to read as well if you aspire to become a leader or you want to focus on your self-leadership. 1. Lack of balance between leadership and management tasks. The first sales leadership mistake is lack of balance between leadership and management tasks. Leadership elements include activities like participating in and shaping strategy, creating a productive and performance-oriented environment, helping your individual team members develop their sales plans, identifying new markets and clients, and talent scouting. Management tasks are items like reporting, tracking activities,...
Sales Culture is the Key to Growing Next-Generation Leaders
Has your organization filled its leadership pipeline?
For success into the future, you’ll need more professionals selling as part of your succession planning practices. When your professionals are equipped to sell, you’ll create more client opportunities, you’ll generate stronger revenues and profits, and you’ll be in a better position to diversify your services.
In this week’s post, I share four strategies for growing your sales culture and developing next-generation leaders with the experience and know-how to generate revenue.
Podcast: Creating a Sales Enablement Center of Excellence
The Sales & Marketing Management Podcast Featuring Amy Franko Sales enablement is defined as the strategic, ongoing process of equipping sales teams with the content, guidance and training they need to effectively engage buyers. On this episode of The Sales & Marketing Management Podcast, I joined host Paul Nolan to dive into an article I wrote for SMM Connect about Creating a Sales Enablement Center of Excellence. Some highlights from this episode include: What is a sales enablement center of excellence and why sales enablement is "hot" today. [2:43] How to create a sales enablement center of excellence. [6:37] Where does sales training come into it? [8:43] The three pillars of sales enablement. [11:00] How to implement channel partner development. [19:24] Connecting the dots. [20:34] Please listen below, and be sure to follow Sales & Marketing Management for more great content! For more...
Sales Training for Next-gen Sales Managers
Guest Article for Training Industry It's not easy being a sales manager. In fact, you could argue they have one most challenging roles in any organization. Are your next-gen sales managers receiving training to build their capabilities? To succeed, next-gen sales managers need solid sales training and guidance. Unfortunately, they don’t always receive the ongoing development required to build and lead successful sales teams. Learning leaders and practitioners have a significant opportunity to change this with approaches that build current sales managers and the future pipeline of sales managers. In this article for Training Industry, I share: Sales Growth Obstacles Facing Sales Managers 8 Capabilities of Next-generation Sales Managers Strategies for How L&D Can Lead the Way Read the full article here. Does Your Sales Training Program Hit the Mark? Amy Franko is the leader in sales training and sales...
Podcast: Inspiring Women
The Modern Seller on the BradyWare Inspiring Women Podcast Too many sales organizations don’t use sales metrics effectively. On this episode of The Inspiring Women podcast, I joined host Betty Collins to discuss primary misconceptions that services providers have about sales, imposter syndrome, delivering value, negotiating, and much more. The show is presented by Brady Ware & Company. Some highlights from this episode include: Why I credit coming from a large family with my success in sales What “modern selling” means What misconceptions exist in today’s selling situations My observations about women in sales What I have learned from my successes and failures Three pieces of advice Please listen below, and be sure to subscribe to the Inspiring Women Podcast for more great content from Brady Ware and other Inspiring Women! For more information on sales strategy and methodology, download my eBook. And...
Podcast: Sales Metrics are for Mapping
Using Sales Data to Create the Outcomes YOU Want Too many sales organizations don’t use sales metrics effectively. On this episode of The Sales Leadership podcast, I joined host Rob Jeppsen to share how you can create value for members of your team with some tools you can use immediately to make a difference. Rob helps sales leaders leverage the four levers that lead to predictable, sustainable success at Xvoyant. Some highlights from the Sales Metrics episode include: 12:30 How should sales leaders be thinking about data? (Amy's data philosophy.) 16:15 How we can use data to empower teams. 23:00 Understanding if your working with your best customers and clients. 27:50 Why you need to have an expectation of what growth can look like. 33:50 What does good look like? 39:45 Using data to have a partnership conversation. 42:00 Two things sales leaders should do right now. Please watch below, and be sure...
Does Your Money Language Sabotage Your Sales Success?
Does your money language sabotage your sales success? The answer is likely yes. Your language around money impacts you more than you may realize. It can be your competitive advantage or your biggest saboteur when it comes to sales success. When you’re aware of how this is showing up in your customer interactions and your overall sales strategy, you can put better approaches in place to maximize your success. How Your Money Approaches Show Up in Sales Your language around money is both about the words you choose and how financial conversations occur in your sales process. For example: Are false growth metrics making you complacent? Examples of how this manifests itself include relying on price increases to grow or...
One Self-Leadership Habit to Help You Win 2023
It’s what I love most about the turn of a calendar; lots of whitespace and opportunity ahead of us to create what we want to experience and accomplish in the upcoming year. There’s a self-leadership habit that can help you to make the most of your days throughout this year, and that’s to continually bust your own status quo. What is Status Quo? When I facilitate the topic of status quo in my sales strategy and sales training workshops, here’s how I define it: status quo is our current state of being; it’s the comfort zone we will subconsciously return to in a given situation. Sometimes the status quo is productive and serves us. Many times, it keeps us off track from doing what we logically know we should be doing different, especially in new or stressful situations. The Power of Patterns I write about this in more depth in The Modern Seller, and one way I’ve found to understand patterns is from The Power...
Productivity Tips for Modern Sellers in 2023
The new year brings new resolutions. If one of your resolutions is to be more productive, in this week’s blog post I offer ideas and insights to help modern sellers understand why they aren’t as productive as they should be, what the top three productivity dos and don’ts are for sellers, and my favorite hack to improve day-to-day productivity.
Your Planning Guide for a Successful Sales Kickoff
The start of the sales year is synonymous with sales kickoff season. As a sales leader, it’s your first opportunity to set the stage for success. Whether you’re hosting an in-person sales kickoff event, are going virtual, or using a hybrid approach, you can ensure your kickoff makes the greatest sales training impact if you follow this guide to planning a strategic sales kickoff. This article will provide you and your team with a framework for a successful event and event follow-up. Download eBook: Social Capital (New!) Set Your Sales Kickoff Goals What are your goals for your kickoff and what outcomes do you want to accomplish? I recommend tying in three to five business or sales goals from...
Our Strategic Selling signature sales training program is now available online. This online sales learning program is ideal for professional services and B2B sales. Get started with 2 free lessons.
