Team Building

Marketing is making strides in lead generation, but how kinetic is their nurturing? Lead nurturing is often thought about as being found with a flag waving when your leads decide to take action about resolving a problem your products or services address. If this is your marketing strategy, you're leaving a lot to chance just hanging around waiting to be found. Maybe for some of your longer-horizon leads this is fine, but it's not going to help you speed up getting quality opportunities to opt into sales conversations. You've all seen those funnel diagrams that show spouts of leads leaking out of them at different points during the buying process. In order to stop the leaks and add momentum to your nurturing, you've got to get commitments to action. The higher a sense of commitment you can create, the farther and faster your leads will move toward becoming sales op... (more)

Eight Timeless Pearls of Sales Wisdom

Recently, a former sales mentor of mine named John Tuohy passed away. Mr. Tuohy was an award winning field sales representative who seemed to have an endless array of tactics and sales strategies that he used to sell his products. I was fortunate to have him take a liking to me as a “green pea sales rep” and although he and I worked on two different sales teams, Mr. Tuohy was always willing to share his thoughts with me - not only about sales but also about life when we would attend our monthly sales meetings in Dallas, Texas. I lost touch with Mr. Tuohy a few years after he reti... (more)

Top Sales Executive to Share His Insights on Ulitzer

Lee Novak, one of the top sales executives in the country, launched his Ulitzer blog to share his experience, insights, and sales coaching tips. Lee Novak, a Sales Management Executive for 25 years, uses a proven people-first, client-first philosophy. Lee has a reputation for building teams that not only are high-performance groups but also that do business the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons. Novak publishes his Ulitzer blog posts on his two topic sites: Lee Novak on Ulitzer (http://leenovak.ulitzer.com) Team Building (http://teambuilding.ulitzer.com) Sale... (more)

Coaching the Star Performer

Dear Lee, I have a tenured sales person who has a history of overachieving his sales quota for the past three years. In fact, he has been one of the top performers in the company and is excellent at closing business in competitive accounts. However, his service after the sale and his follow through is the worst on my team. Clients have complained frequently about feeling as if, he only cares about them when he is selling them something and then he disappears, doesn't return phone calls, etc. I have attempted to coach him on this deficit but quite frankly, he doesn't take critici... (more)

My Quota is Gigantic!

Dear Lee, Last year I was a record setting sales rep at my company selling high tech solutions. Today I received my annual quota for the new year and was shocked to see that my account list shrunk by 10% and my quota is the highest in the company.  I am  very frustrated with this. I attempted to negotiate a reduced quota with my manager but he dismissed my request, saying that he has full confididence that I will figure it out. My quota is gigantic but my spirit is weak. Any suggestions? Down in the South -   Dear Down in the South, I am sure that you are familiar with the bib... (more)