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December 2011

In this Issue
Christmas Break
Sales Appraisals
No Stinkin' Process?
MXL Adds DSG
Christmas Sales Quote

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 Classical Christmas, by Michael Griego

Coffee Break

 

Christmas at

Red Rock Coffee

   Mountain View, CA     Dec 13th & 20th @ 7:00-9:00pm

 

Take a work and Christmas shopping break, relax with a cup of coffee and listen to MXL's Michael Griego take a break from his day job.

 

On December 13th and 20th from 7-9pm, Michael will be performing classical and flamenco arrangements on classical guitar featuring Christmas music from his "Classical Christmas" CD recording.

 

Have a Merry Classical Christmas!

 

Red Rock Coffee

201 Castro Street

Mountain View

7-9pm 

 

Sales Tip of the Month

  

Three Keys to Finishing Strong

 

1. Set Your Sight on the Prize - Never lose sight of your goal and objectives. Keep it clearly etched in front of you.

 

2. Sprint to the Finish - Strong finishers give it an extra kick at the end to outrun anyone ahead of them. Don't let up the pace until year end.

 

3. Never Give Up - Famous words by Winston Churchill, and other winners who didn't quit. Sales pros don't cave, they suck it up, make no excuses and find a way to get it done.

42 Rules

42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness

by Michael Griego 

 

Foreward by Mark Leslie

 Read the Reviews

Buy the Book

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All Reps and Best Reps

Imagine enabling ALL your reps to sell like your BEST reps.

 

What if you could provide your salespeople with a selling "system" that enables them to consistently apply your company's sales best practices to EVERY deal in which they compete. What if?  Odds are your win rates would improve and that you'd be able to accelerate new-hire ramp up.

 

Now you can with Playboox Playmaker, an on-demand sales playbook application integrated with Salesforce.com.

 

For some time now sales teams have used manual playbooks to codify their best practices and provide sales process guidance. We've helped build playbooks for leading technology companies like Yahoo!, Ricoh, Nokia, ServiceSource, Telepacific, Datameer, Fusion-IO and HyTrust to name a few. Increasingly, we've heard the request for a way to easily develop and automate sales playbooks. From this was born Playboox.

 

Contact us if you're interested in seeing how you can use Playmaker to equip your salespeople to prepare to win and win more often.

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Have an Effective Sales Appraisal? 

In his article "How to Create an Effective Appraisal" Jonathan Farrington highlights a formula for evaluating sales success:

 

Attitude+Skills+Process+Knowledge = Success

 

Farrington adds a 15 point rating scale that appraises Personal, Sales and Manager measurement areas against appropriate benchmarks.

 

Vehicle for Discussion

We see many companies that either have appraisal tools or methods that are either too simple or too complex. The system outlined in this article is fairly solid and could be easily implemented without too much distraction. The key is in the delivery. These are not HR-driven evaluations - these appraisals are best done quarterly and used as a vehicle for discussion between sales manager and rep. The goal is honest discussion of strong points and areas for improvement.

 

Be careful - top producers zero in on any negative comments. In the sales world, a fair, simple and justifiable appraisal encourages "A Players" to get better and all others to step up.

 

Are you wisely appraising your salespeople?

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Process? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Process! 

In this insightful article, Playboox CEO Dan Zamudio outlines the challenges in establishing an effective sales process.

 

Let me first establish that there is a Mount Rushmore-sized mountain of evidence pointing to the substantial impact on performance associated with institutionalizing sales process, but yet, this same research shows, the vast majority of sales organizations fail to do so. When it comes to defining a sales process, what we often see is that companies tend to fall at one extreme of the sales process maturity curve or the other. They either have no process or have over-engineered it. Both positions are dangerous and bear out the same result: no one follows process, either because it doesn't exist or because it's overwhelmingly complicated and perhaps inefficient to do so.

  

No process might be a slight exaggeration if you call using the default pipeline stages in your CRM a sales process, which is more often the rule than the exception. You'd be surprised at the number of brand name companies that have no documented sales process (although they acknowledge they need to).

  

Since the wild majority of cases fall into the "no/low process" bucket as evidenced by research from CSO Insights and others, the central point of this post is to examine the barriers that are preventing the formalization of sales process from becoming more commonplace, and what we might be able to do to remove or minimize these. 

 

Since the wild majority of cases fall into the "no/low process" bucket as evidenced by research from CSO Insights and others, the central point of this post is to examine the barriers that are preventing the formalization of sales process from becoming more commonplace, and what we might be able to do to remove or minimize these.

 

So, why the hesitancy? A few reasons comes to mind.

                                                                         Read More...
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Partner Synergy - MXL Adds DSG

It's a great thing to connect with like-minded people addressing the same needs in the marketplace. DSG Consulting has added MXL Partners to it's national network of Affiliate Partners.

  

Our 2011 partnership involved projects with Citrix, Freescale, TelePacific, CompuCom, ServiceSource and Peoplefluent. A very successful partnership year for clients and partners alike. 

 

DSG and MXL focus on the following:

  • Sales Strategy
  • Sales Process
  • Sales Messaging
  • Sales Leadership 

Need to implement your strategy across a large sales team?

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A Christmas Sales Quote

"A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year; he is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here; then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before, and the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for. He is less a selfish creature than at any other time; when the Christmas Spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime..." - Author Unknown