A Productive Salesforce

Ike Elliott was discussing Level3's numbers and Sales plays a big role.

Business Markets Group isn't growing at the expected rate. When questioned about this on the conference call, Neil Hobbs pointed to the fact that they have had quite a bit of turnover among Business Markets salespeople, and as a result many new salespeople are ramping toward productivity now. That's great if the salespeople ramping toward productivity don't also churn themselves out. Growing a productive salesforce is one of the more difficult tricks to pull off in telecom, requiring selectivity in hiring, diligence in monitoring sales performance, discipline in enforcing standards, and iteration when salespeople don't make the grade. It's apparent that Level 3 is in the middle of that process right now in the Business Markets Group and the jury is still out on whether they will be successful. This one certainly bears watching over the next two quarters.

As I posted on TMC's On RAD's Radar, Sales is Key right now and many of my clients have turned their focus to Selling and Making Sales. This is Job 1 now.

I have a book, SELLECOM, that can help. I have calls about sales tips (How to SELLECOM). There are countless books written, webinars, seminars and coaches. (Jeffrey Gitomer is in Orlando in Sept.) Get some help making some sales team as productive as possible. Take a look at Landslide.com too. You get a Virtual Assistant that will input some data for the sales folks, which is a huge boost for those older sales types who don't like CRM.