Posts in Sales
The Greatest Sales Compensation Plan Ever*

* Just kidding, there is no such thing. The many, often conflicting goals a sales compensation plan is meant to achieve, in addition to the huge variety of products, services, and businesses, make it impossible to have one plan that is “the greatest.”

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The Ultimate Checklist Before Your First Sales Hire

Imagine you are the founder, owner, or CEO of a young, ambitious company. You have developed a great new product. You have taken it to some potential clients. And some of those clients were so impressed by the product that they purchased from you.  You are now ready to go to market. 

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Is Your Gut Feeling in Sales A Fata Morgana?

Within a business, an individual sales opportunity can be evaluated against all other past and current opportunities, those lost and those won. These metrics allow us to estimate the close probability. Not as a guesstimate, but rather with statistical probability.

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The Perfect Storm For Interim and Fractional Sales Leadership

The OECD defines a scaleup company as a company having an average annualized return of at least 20% in the past three years with at least ten employees at the beginning of the period.

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The Golden Rules of Sales Do Exist

Now, why are there so many businesses that have a CFO, CTO, and COO, three internally focused functions, reporting to the CEO, but not a Chief Sales, Chief Commercial, or Chief Revenue Officer?

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The Enterprise Sale

99.9 % of all businesses in the US fall into the category of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Consequently, enterprise deals are few, and because of all the factors described above, they are hard to win. And with the obvious big win in sight, the risk is high.

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What Exactly Makes an Interim Sales Leader Successful?

Van de Groep & Olsthoorn identify nine success factors and, like me, argue that the success of any fractional or interim executive assignment is primarily the result of matching the right leader into the organization. Let me put those nine factors to the test, though, specifically for a fractional or interim sales leader.

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Are You Happy with Your Conversion Rate?

Conversion rates have different definitions or meanings, depending on the nature of the business or the stage of the sales cycle. And in every case, they carry tremendous importance as an indicator of success and efficiency.

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The Ultimate Guide to Pre-Selling

Presales is the entire process of successfully closing a sale of a product that does not yet exist. Like the infamous vaporware, for example, a software or hardware product that has been advertised but is not yet available, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written, designed or produced.

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The Ultimate Guide to Fee Models for Fractional Executives

Fee models for fractional executives have an art and a science, a balance between multiple factors, and an element of “as-high-or-as-low-as-desperation-takes-you” to it. And that is not too different from the permanent job market.

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