Priority Blog

There’s no catch-all formula to guarantee success of a new sales hire. But in successful companies I’ve helped, you do spot patterns. The ones that get traction are willing to undergo the pain of change. They set outcome-based targets when they start hiring sales people, so both the company and the new hire know what […]

Recently I was interviewed for an article that appeared in the Globe & Mail: The Downside of Seeking Business Advice on the Cheap. Journalist Guy Dixon says that if you’re going to invest in hiring a business consultant, it’s worth paying a little more for someone one who’s going to deliver the results you’re after. Naturally, […]

I recently attended the Unbounce CTA Conference in Vancouver, where Aaron Orendorff of iconiContent made a brilliant presentation entitled Let’s Get Rejected: 3 Counter-Intuitive Tactics for Successful & Brand Defining-Content. It touched on the right way to build sales with content strategy. I’ve often touched on integrating sales and marketing here and I just felt […]

Your salespeople have got the perfect solution for your customer’s problem – but how will the client pay for it? Can your sales professionals help them figure it out? Do they understand how the numbers look, even to measure their own sales performance? As we’ve seen time and again with our own sessions for sales […]

Short answer: yes, if the client is willing to put in the work. The person who can guarantee bigger sales revenues is not the sales consultant. At the end of the day, it’s actually up to the client. The sales consultant can advise, recommend and occasionally cajole — but the company that hired them has to […]

I was trying out a new audio book called ‘How to Get a Meeting with Anyone’ by Stu Heineke. It’s a quick, fun volume, on getting past the gatekeepers (a perennial sales problem) – but the further I got into it, the more I had a feeling akin to déjà vu. The meat of the […]

It’s never been easier to find talented people to hire for your sales team — but are you using outcome-based targets to do it? In a twist on LinkedIn, some hiring companies and recruiters are now going on apps like Tinder and Snapchat to find new talent. Whether you’re using a recruitment agent or handling […]

There’s a funny blind spot that comes up a lot in my work, as I help companies grow their sales pipelines: great sales people don’t always become great sales managers. A rapid-firing startup can see a phenomenal few quarters and promote their star sales professional into management – and not much happens. Sales plateau. The […]

The big deal, the sure thing, the sale that’s going to take your company to the next level… doesn’t happen after all. Eventually, it happens to everyone in business. Even for seasoned sales professionals who have become adept at riding the waves in a sea of rejection in our hunt for the big fish, we […]

Selling is getting harder. What we are effectively doing is selling change.  If you want a company to thrive long-term, that’s often what’s needed. I was reminded of this while consulting for a company that was undergoing a restructuring. It was long overdue, but also essential if they were going to stay in business. Their […]