Company Shortcuts Blog

“S’Marketing” Explained

Your Sales Engine is broken and here’s why… Occasionally at a networking event you’ll hear a bunch of old sales hands (myself included) reminiscing about the days when we simply drove around the country with the precision of a co-ordinated army, visiting our customers and drumming up new business. Our Fords and B’mers stuffed full […]

Defining a Successful Sales Growth Plan

Business Growth Strategy
/ By Nicola Cook

As we enter not just a new year, but a new decade, it’s the perfect time to not only reflecton your past business performance, but on what you want to set as your growth metrics forthe coming year. Obviously, these will dovetail into your three year business plan, and mayinclude one or more of the […]

Focus On Growth

Business Growth
/ By Nicola Cook

I’m often quoted as saying that “sales is a culture – never just a department” but one of the biggest challenges facing any business owner, irrespective of whether you have a dedicated sales team or not, is how to disseminate and unite your team around your current strategic sales objective to adapt and change in order to stay ahead of the market.

Cut The Cake or Build a P.A.M?

One of the biggest decisions you will need to make as your sales team begins to grow is how to structure it across your entire customer base. Unless you want your people stealing the best leads from one another, selecting which are their ‘best’ clients and mismanaging the rest, or increasing the cost by overlapping […]

Avoiding Sales Recruitment Nightmares

Recruitment
/ By Nicola Cook

Ask a room full of entrepreneurs if they’ve ever made a recruitment mistake and everyone will raise their hand before regaling you with multiple horror stories of recruitment nightmares, none more so than when expanding their sales team.

Five Quick Fixes to Improve Your Sales Productivity

Sales Skills
/ By Nicola Cook

I spend all day everyday fine tuning my clients’ Sales Engines and not surprisingly there are some common quick fixes’ that I see time and time again. These often small changes will have a massive impact on the output of your own sales function (and remember I purposefully call a company’s sales function their […]

Building A System To Encourage Learning At Work

Culture
/ By Nicola Cook

Last night I gave the keynote address at my old school’s Speech Day… Apart from being an immensely humbling experience, being back on the platform, this time handing out awards and certificates rather than receiving my (then) very thin envelope of academic achievements, I used the opportunity to remind the graduating class of the importance […]

When Was The Last Time You Stress Tested Your Sales Engine?

Sales Skills
/ By Nicola Cook

As business owners we’re used to focusing on controlling the controllables and letting go of everything else, but how many of us can ever recall such politically and economically turbulent times?

There’s An App For That

How many times have you heard one of your employees tell you about yet another App or piece of software that will help with some minutiae part of your sales process? But if you’re not careful you can end up adding unnecessary complexity…

Lessons From The Best In The World

Sales Skills
/ By Nicola Cook

Last month, during our family holiday to Walt Disney World in Florida, I took the opportunity to spend a day ‘backstage’ on a behind the scenes Business Tour. How could you not want to learn more about how Disney does Disney? But before I share some of the keys to Mickey’s Magic; Yes, the secret […]