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Brian MacIver

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Partner, BMAC Sales Consultants

343 points

Protagonist in Sales Talent Management; Recruit, Train and Coach High Performing Sales People.
My Specialties are: Sales Performance, Assessment and Development of Selling Skills, and Sales Manager Training and Coaching. Installing Challenger Selling.

May 22, 2012

Brian MacIver asked a question

How would you handle your top salesperson's resignation?

Human Resources

Sales Management

May 22, 2012

Brian MacIver and 11 other people answered this question

Is "blame the sales people" or "poor sales" the real problem or just a "shadow symptom" for the real issue?

The CEO should be the last to throw the stone, but they tend to be the first.
Followed by Marketing and Finance, here is a live example!
http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/ignoring-sales-forecast-and-missi...
Now, who is the Turkey? more

Sales Management

May 20, 2012

Brian MacIver and 6 other people answered this question

What are the most important sales pipeline metrics?

If we used the “Oil” Pipeline as a metaphor for a “Sales” Pipeline,
then the health of the pipeline would be:
How much oil goes in, and how much oil comes out?
We would have an amount of oil
that we desired to come out ... more

May 12, 2012

Brian MacIver recommends this answer by Gail Wallace

What are some key "red flags" to look for when interviewing candidates for regional sales?

One red flag for me is when a candidate offers to bring in some of his current/former clients to your company. While that might sound tempting, it means he is likely to try to steal some of your clients at some point in the future. ... more

Human Resources

May 8, 2012

Brian MacIver and 1 other person answered this question at this roundtable

The Status Quo: Defeat Your Biggest Competitor in Marketing and Sales [5/17 @ 1 pm]

What are some examples of barriers? And how can I overcome them?

Hi Catherine, it’s strange no one has answered these questions.
As a Sales Consultant I get asked them all the time.
The three Barriers I encourage Account Mangers to erect,
to maintain their Status Quo, are functional, Financial and Relationships.
This means ensuring that you ... more

Status Quo Strategy

May 8, 2012

Brian MacIver recommends this answer by Ellen Bristol

How do you calculate the close ratio for your organization?

This is one of those questions about sales that really reveals the weakness of the sales process. It's simply not being managed like a process in the first place. Thus we have all kinds of questions about whether there are standard conversion ratios and other ... more

Sales Management

May 5, 2012

Brian MacIver and 6 other people answered this question

Can you get ROI from sales training acquired through RFP?

To answer, in part, Tibor's multiple question:
Any Procurement Process which does not have input from the "internal" Customer is broken.
(in this case the prime stakeholder is Sales)
It is an "orphaned" process.
When I work with Procurement (and L&D) to write the functional ... more

Sales Enablement

Sales Management

May 5, 2012

Brian MacIver and 8 other people answered this question

Does sales training really fail?

On re-reading the question, it is really a two part compound question
"Does Sales Training fail AND if so WHO is to blame?"
The short answer is when evidence based Selling Skills are learned from Sales Training it does NOT fail, and Sales Training takes ... more

Sales Management

May 5, 2012

Brian MacIver and 5 other people answered this question

Who is ultimately responsible for your company's sales - your sales manager or your salespeople?

Sitting across the desk from the CEO asking me, as a Sales Consultant,
“Who is responsible?”
I wouldn’t say YOU!
Of course ultimately the CEO is ACCOUNTABLE for the Sales results,
but they are not “responsible” for them.
When the CEO delegated “Selling” to the ... more

Revenue Achievement

Sales Management

April 21, 2012

Brian MacIver and 10 other people answered this question

After you've developed a product, what should you do?

Its already too late, you missed a stage which was listen to your market. Build it and they will come is only a movie. The "better" mouse trap is stored along side the water fueled car and fusion based electricity.
Start agian, take your idea ... more

Information Technology

April 17, 2012

Brian MacIver and 4 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Sell More and Save More of What You Sell [4/11 @ 1 pm]

Should data trump 'gut feeling' in sales? Should historical buying behaviours and attitudes weigh more heavily on marketing instead of statistics?

As a Sales Manager, I need both. "Gut Feeling" or more exactly Intuition
or "Savvy" is a part of the Job, BUT you have to balance it with Data (information).
Is it working,
is it changing,
is it getting better?
The Effective Sales Manager would ... more

Online Strategies

Sales Enablement

March 30, 2012

Brian MacIver answered this question at this roundtable

How to be a Sales Influencer – Grow Your B2B Business through Thought Leadership [3/29 @ 1 pm]

What is your opinion of the Challenger Sales Model?

I have been working with the TCS model for about 6 months now. It works.
Teaching, Tailoring and Taking control, lead to a higher level of Sale Productivity.
My Clients in Big IT, Big Telco, Big Software and Big Data had been promoting a "Relationship" ... more

Thought Leadership

March 30, 2012

Brian MacIver and 4 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Selling Is Going Inside – Isn’t It? [3/8 @ 9 am]

What are the factors that prevent salespeople from understanding a prospect's business and objectives?

Salespeople,sometimes only know what their Product is,
and know very little about what their Product really DOES.
This leads to an indifference about the Prospect's business and objectives.
Sales Product Training is best spent on looking at how Customers have APPLIED their product or service. ... more

Human Resources

March 28, 2012

Brian MacIver and 1 other person answered this question

What are your best practices regarding account planning tools, what are your recommendations regarding a CRM integration?

Great question Tamara, many of my Clients have been asking about this during the last two years.
There are two approaches, Integration of all the actual and potential Opportunity Plans becomes the overall Account Plan. Integrated Account Plans is both popular and successful when you ... more

Sales Enablement

Sales Management

March 25, 2012

Brian MacIver recommends this answer by Roz Bennetts

What is the best way to communicate to clients that you are raising your rates?

Great answer by Tim above.
Hi Gabe,
A lot depends on why you're raising your rates but that doesn't mean you need to share everything with your clients. At the end of the day all anyone wants is a fair price for products or services ... more

Customer Service

March 21, 2012

Brian MacIver and 11 other people answered this question

How do you know if a sales rep is ready to move into sales management?

"What do I have to do, to prepare to be a Good Sales Manager?" Is the first sign.
Until they are asking that question, they just are not ready.
After they ask it I develop them as Managers, Leaders and Coaches. more

Sales Management

March 7, 2012

Brian MacIver and 2 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Demystifying Neuromarketing [3/7 @ 1 pm]

How is neuromarketing different from neuro linguistic programming (NLP)?

It is harder to spell?

March 2, 2012

Brian MacIver and 1 other person answered this question

What are some of the best techniques for fostering effective sales team collaboration?

Hank, you are asking key questions on the most important area in Complex Selling, around the issue of Selling Team and Team selling. I would like to share with you how we are successfully doing this in Big Data, Big IT and Big Telco.
We ... more

Sales Enablement

Sales Strategies

Feb. 29, 2012

Brian MacIver and 3 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Are You Already Behind On Your 2012 Sales Goals? [2/22 @ 11 am]

Assuming you are behind your Q1 goal, what are the top 3 things you can do to get back on track?

Missing Q1 is a really serious Problem.
As a Sales Performance Coach I often get the call after Easter to “Help” the laggards, or more accurately “Poor Performers”. Let’s work on the following example you made 75% of Q1’s target and Q1 is 25% of ... more

Lead Management

Feb. 27, 2012

Brian MacIver and 7 other people answered this question

What are some of the best techniques to make sales teams more efficient and effective?

“Team Selling” is, as you so rightly say, becoming increasingly important in Complex Selling.
When we go from Individual endeavour to Team work lots of things have to change.
I will take your two key words separately; “efficiency” is how much work we can do ... more

Sales Productivity

Feb. 27, 2012

Brian MacIver recommends this answer by Tamara Schenk

How can sales convince buyers to buy?

It starts by changing the own attitude from "I have to sell a product" to "I love to solve my customer's problems and to drive their results".
In general, it means working consequently backwards from the customer, from the outside to the inside, model the ... more

Sales Enablement

Feb. 27, 2012

Brian MacIver asked a question

Dave Stein of ESR recently described finding good sales training as looking for a "needle in a haystack". How do you find good sales training?

Sales Enablement

Sales Management

Feb. 14, 2012

Brian MacIver recommends this answer by Mike Bayes

You own a popular local coffee shop, Starbucks moves across the street. What do you do to compete?

I had three coffee shops and had this exact situation. Many of the thoughts on here are great.
Here is what I did:
As a promotion we gave half price espresso drinks if they turned in a used star bucks cup.
I started to (with permission) post ... more

Feb. 14, 2012

Brian MacIver is now following John McTigue

Following 11 Topics

Challenger Sale; Sales; Sales Training; Sales Management; VP Sales; Sales Enablement

Sales Enablement

Sales Management

Sales Strategies

...

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