Peak Sales Recruiting

I love quarter end. Having spent many years selling myself, I remember the rush of the countdown and closing everything you can to hit your quota and get into accelerated commissions. I also enjoyed the competition amongst all the reps hustling hard and getting super creative to not only hit their own numbers, but to [...]

Most sales VPs think they are doing just fine on sales hiring. “We’re able to find everyone we need.”… “I get what I need from HR.”…”Most of my reps are on plan.” That may be true, but tracking three simple performance metrics will give you much better visibility into what you are doing well and [...]

As a sales force leader, you are constantly watching the performance of the team, evaluating who is doing well and who needs a push to perform better (or, to be blunt, who needs a push all the way out the door). The bottom-line way to evaluate your sales reps is on quota attainment, but even [...]

Last week I attended the executive briefing from Miller Heiman which just released its Sales Best Practices Study for 2009. We covered the 2008 Sales Best Practices Study here. This year 3,900+ sales professionals participated in the research. Some highlights from 2009: “Successful sales organizations do not do one or two things well; they maintain [...]

The concept of Sales 2.0 represents an enormous change in the way many companies sell and market. Some of us will be attending The Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on March 4th and 5th to see best practices in action. So it begs the questions: What is Sales 2.0, is it right for your [...]

How are your numbers looking one month into the quarter? We polled our network of VP Sales to see what is at the top of their dashboard for evaluating the health of the sales effort running towards quarter end. Here are the top responses: 1.    Pipeline – is it above or below the target multiple [...]

Reading Q&A with Mike Bosworth on his view of the changing role of the VP Sales, in which he answers questions such as what are the different challenges faced by a VP Sales today vs. 10 years ago and how will they be different ten years from now. The key thing is the increasing sophistication [...]

Year end is almost on us. Here are some tips for finishing strong. Review your pipeline and put extra effort on the key deals that need to close. Make sure you know the customer’s drivers – if they are like most companies, they are experiencing tough times – if you are introducing year end promotions, don’t [...]

Miller Heiman recently released its annual best practices study and tech sector sub report (Opportunities to Achieve Revenue Growth in the Technology Industry – see below) – the 2008 report involved 17,000 participants and covers how leading sales organizations are winning, perceptions and trends. There are several good findings in here for enterprise sales forces [...]