Here is the key concept we use in Sales Profiling and development projects. If you want us to contact you, please leave your contact details through "Contact us" or through the dynamic zohozip contact widget. Alternatively, feel free to contact either Tarja or Calce by e-mail, phone or LinkedIn. Here is the link to the material "Sales (Sails) Academy"

An AS IS assessment it typically the first step you want to take whenever you are looking for improvements. There are many ways to take stock of a situation, but a self-audit is often a good start. Consultants typically have structured ways of doing it and we can offer you a Commercial Audit structure. It helps you find and prioritize your development areas.

It’s rare that I meet an App that I really believe can have great impact, but Translate Voice is such an App. You can record your own or the other person’s sentence and then it will automatically translate it, taking out the cumbersome writing of sentences. On the other hand you can still edit the sentences if the recording goes wrong. In comparison with most translation tools it also manages conjugations and endings quite well.

On my upcoming trip to Japan I will try to use it and you will hear more about it here afterwards.

DO this now: Go to one of your people and ask them for one thing they need help with, and then spend 3 minutes coaching them on that thing.

When you’re done, ask them how you did.

Today was an intensive day spent with 150+ salespeople discussing how sales is changing. Jyllandposten and Grundfos both explained how they have taken Challenger Sales in use, but in both cases adapting it to their own way of selling.

For many it's hard to revert from talking about your product to talking about the customers business. For some it comes naturally.

I presented the Coriant Sales Development program and had many good discussions about the topic. If you are interested in the material, please contact me or leave your details through the pop-up Zoho Insight chat tab.

Stefan Michael wrote a good article on Pricing that captures many, if not all, new scheme's and possibilities. It gives a framework for thinking through your pricing strategies. 

https://hbr.org/2014/10/capture-more-value

Now visible on Frontpage in right bar and contact number in HeaderbarThis post is to announce that Cedercreutz Consulting is now the authorized reseller for Market Motive in Europe. The www.Salestraininginstitute.com platform fits well to the sales profiling’s we are doing.

It provides a great hands-on refresher on almost any topic the sales person wants to develop in. The simulations offer a great way to take the learning into use on actual cases. Empowering the sales manager to track and, if needed, assign development areas fits seamlessly into our profiling work. Naturally all of this is available online, but enables simulation interactions that approaches face-to-face kind. 

Even when product is great there are other dimensions to consider in this kind of co-operation. We have worked closely with the Market Motive team for 7 months on a pilot project and are impressed with their skill, attitude and innovativeness. Interested? Get in touch or simply comment something below!

Here Carl-Magnus is visiting with Market Motive in Scott Valley, California. It is the first time the team meets in person. Back row from left: Carl, Jeff Front row from left: Scott, Kim and Lila

There are many companies that provide leadership team assessments. These help leaders ensure the diversity of the team. It helps to fully engage each member of the team and makes the communication in the team such that all units work well together. Normally the assessments are based on long interviews, some questionnaires and possibly some observations by a consultant. The impact can be great and if actions are taken to cover the gaps identified; the impact can be long lasting. However, most often the cost per person is also significant.

What we, at Cedercreutz Consulting, do is provide an optimized service that can scale. Having a similar approach across a large organization provides internal benchmarks and helps find structural deficiencies. Three things become very important to make such a project realistic:

• Your middle management needs attention, both as participants and as team leaders. The impact will only happen if these participants actively work for it.
• The whole assessment has to be solidly project managed, because many individuals can slow it down or stop it entirely from happening.
• The cost per person has to come down to a manageable level, while not giving up on the solidness of the approach.

At Nokia Siemens Networks we did this for around 1500 sales people. We also did it for tens or hundreds of Product Managers, Pricing Managers and Customer Operations Managers.

We can do the Feedback Coaching ourselves or help you find the right persons within your organization whom we then can train to become Feedback Coaches. 

We will help you find the right approach to Line Manager Reviews and help you run them if wanted.

We can help identify the needed competence development measures to get long lasting results.

Feedback Coaching is were ”the rubber hits the road” in my work. Every session is different, yet the topic is the same. It’s always about finding out how a person can use their own strength and insights in their own doing and being.

The SHL certification training teaches how to read profiles. Through experience one starts to see links between dimensions that can reinforce patterns or explain why certain parts stay dormant.

Sometimes less is more, simplifying the scores can make the profile easier to understand and see aspects that are worth to act on. 
Let me illustrate this through an example.

In our Sales Profiling we simplify scores to the old sales characteristics of Hunter / Farmer. The Farmer is the one that manages the account, creates a multitude of relevant opportunities, prioritises cases, optimizes the size of case, closes it and takes the next case forward as well.
The Hunter looks for the new kind of deals, the big transformational or business development deals that changes the way things are done. He or she will be making the right contacts, focus on getting them to desire the available (or at least soon to be ready) solution, portraying them in an way that cannot be resisted.

On our projects this is a generalization we discuss with the team leaders on our review calls. It's often a starting point to discuss if people are leveraging their strengths enough.

In one example a person that always considered himself a Farmer was shown that the profile is stronger on the Hunter side. He confronted his own fear of failure by focusing on all the aspects were he had build businesses or implemented new processes. He realized that had already been told by many colleagues that his Hunter side clearly is stronger than the Farmer side, yet he had never taken it to heart.

In the end he decided to start up his own business to see if he can learn to trust his instincts even more. As far as I know he is quite happy with it.