Blog – The Leggett Group

Switching from ACT to Salesforce

I was recently asked by a client if she and her team should switch from ACT (a contact manager) to Salesforce (a cloud based CRM). I have personal experience with both products. I used ACT for over ten years. I have also implemented Salesforce for clients on five occasions and used it in my own business for the past two years. The key to determining whether to switch from ACT…

Running Effective Sales Meetings

An entrepreneur who runs his own sales meetings asked: We run through an hour-long sales meeting every Monday morning and I am beginning to really question our approach. Typically, each rep gives a quick status update of their pipeline potentials and then we discuss what we can do to move the deal forward in our pipeline…but that’s not always all that productive. So, I’m wondering what the best-run sales meetings…

Should You Promote Your Top Performing Sales Rep to Sales Manager?

It is often seen as the right, or natural, choice to put your top performing sales person into the sales leadership role. And it may be the right choice. However, sales leadership is about coaching, selecting talent and gaining results through others. The thing to consider is that many, if not most, very high performing representatives are self focused individuals and are most interested in their own personal achievement. It…

The Four Steps to Setting Demanding but Achievable Sales Targets – with Sales Team Buy-in

I approach target setting with the sales team as “joint exercise” between management and the sales team, using the following steps: 1) Upper management should have its overall revenue expectations in mind before starting the process. The revenue projections should include management’s assumption set about what will drive its projected increase in revenues (ex. new product, competitor going out of business, overall increase in the economy, etc.) 2) Then management…

Getting Real Value from Sales Force Automation

For a sales manager to be able to derive value from Sales Force Automation (SFA) the following key issues must have been addressed: 1) Clarity of the objectives for the SFA implementation. What exactly does management expect will improve / change with the adoption of a SFA solution by its sales team? 2) Make sure the SFA solution, and how you implement it, follow how your sales people work. For…