132 Building a High Performance Sales Team (with Steven Norman)
“Surveys have shown that the top performing salespeople have much greater internal networks within their own company.”
Steven Norman is a seasoned B2B sales leader and general manager, with over twenty-five years’ experience in consumer, small business and enterprise sales. Throughout his career, he has worked for leading technology brands including Dell, NEC and Targus and has been responsible for over US$4 billion in sales. He is the founder of Growth Acumen, which helps companies implement world-class sales practices and leadership development.
In this episode, we talk about:
Future-Proof Sales Strategy by Steven Norman (book)
Bringing value to a sales conversation
New sales strategies for evolving customers
Implementing the right structure for your business
Creating an interview process
Referral selling
Investing in collaborations
To learn more, listen to the full episode!
Key to Sales Success Nowadays
What we’ve learned in MBA school 20 years ago about sustainable, competitive advantage just doesn’t exist in that form anymore.
And we were taught to focus on our products and to maintain differentiation and that’ll be the key to success. But most product categories have been heavily commoditized within the last ten to twenty years, and competition is increasing. We’re now faced with a lot of global competition, the world’s a lot smaller, and a lot of us face non-traditional competitors. So to stand out with your product is a pretty flawed strategy. That’s why it’s critical for companies to develop a professional sales function that brings value in and of itself.
Why You Shouldn’t Interview Based on Gut Feel
We shouldn’t be hiring from gut feel. We shouldn’t be hiring based on unstructured interviews, or having a few people do unstructured interviews.
Because once you get together and compare notes, we can’t get any meaningful comparison when we have that discussion because everyone interviews in a different way, in a different style.
Managing Change Effectively
Around 70% of change efforts end in failure.
If you’re looking at transforming your sales team, changing how your company sell, you better put a serious effort behind that change effort. where the CEO is personally involved in every step of that change.
