July 2026 Newsletter
Sales Management: The Ultimate ROI
Managing your sales team to maximize productivity and sales can generate the greatest Return on Investment (ROI) for any CEO or business owner.
Whether you have a one-person sales team or you have a large salesforce, you can manage and leverage your sales effectiveness to generate a tremendous ROI. If you want to achieve maximum productivity and double your sales to grow to the next level you must focus on and refine every aspect of your sales efforts and your sales team, as well as have the tools to properly manage and track your sales activity.
Below are key aspects of growing your sales and profits with a straight forward sales process:
1. Prospecting
Set clear goals for your sales team members of the number of required calls completed per day, calls scheduled for the next week and opportunities created in your customer relationship management software (CRM), sales appointments completed per week, proposal presentations completed and sales closed per month. Tracking sales activity in your CRM is key. You must ensure that each salesperson on your team has their calls scheduled a week or more in advance in your CRM, and time committed for these calls are scheduled daily to accomplish these calls.
2. Prospect Meetings
Most importantly, your direct sales team needs to use the telephone for one primary thing - getting meetings with qualified prospects. Have a well-crafted script as a guide, including a) added benefits of a meeting, b) credibility, c) qualifying questions, d) overcoming objections, and e) train your salespeople to ask for the meeting multiple times.
Make sure your salespeople do not have an overly elongated initial conversation and basically conduct the first meeting on the telephone - qualify the prospect, briefly determine their needs, secure the meeting and get off the telephone to ensure a productive first online or face-to-face meeting as the next critical step. And then confirm the meeting by email with the salesperson’s contact information and a company overview brochure attached.
3. Probing Questions
Whether you sell by telephone, conduct online meetings, or face-to-face, your salespeople need to begin by asking open-ended probing questions to both identify the decision-maker(s), qualify the prospect and get a clear understanding of their needs. Then, present the benefits of using your products and services and briefly provide some examples of how current customers have benefited the same way. Benefits sell, not features.
4. Recommendation
Using a range of questions to qualify the prospect and determine their needs, you need to formulate and make your recommendation. An inside salesperson will do this by telephone with smaller prospects, but an outside salesperson needs to do this on a planned online meeting or face-to-face with larger prospects. This is critical to move the sales process forward, to gauge interest, reduce the sales cycle, fine tune their needs, and to formalize the next step toward closing the sale.
5. Closing the Sale
Closing the sale is a process in itself. In order to minimize the sales cycle and move forward with the close, you should ask close-ended questions in the form of a Trial Close, such as, "If you feel comfortable that we could solve your lead time problem, would you be interested in moving forward?" Or, "Do you feel that a company with our expertise and lead time responsiveness could meet your needs?"
The Trial Close does not ask for the business, but serves to verify their need, readiness to buy, address any hesitations, concerns or initial objections and gets the prospect in "Yes" mode. A yes response to your trial close will lead you right into the close and a positive outcome.
There are many types of closes to gain a new customer. You have heard the saying, "Close early and often." This refers to not waiting too long to ask for the sale and be willing to close, overcome objections and close again. If your sales team is not doing this, they are going through the motions and leaving a lot of money on the table. Conduct Role Plays between your sales team members to ensure everyone of them is asking a distinct and definite closing question.
A preferred type of close is the "Either or" close. By having two options in your proposal you can ask, "Do you prefer Option A or Option B?" Simply ask for the business and be silent until you get your answer. If you have done your job properly, a yes will follow, and you should proceed in locking up and signing your new customer. Remember, you cannot help someone if you don't ask for their business.
CEO Advisor, Inc. has helped many of our clients to hire, train and implement proper sales management techniques to optimize sales and grow businesses to the next level in order to generate a tremendous ROI. Contact Mark Hartsell, MBA, President of CEO Advisor, Inc. at (949) 629-2520, by mobile phone at (714) 697-3370, by email at MHartsell@CEOAdvisor.com or visit us at www.CEOAdvisor.com for more information.
Whether you have a one-person sales team or you have a large salesforce, you can manage and leverage your sales effectiveness to generate a tremendous ROI. If you want to achieve maximum productivity and double your sales to grow to the next level you must focus on and refine every aspect of your sales efforts and your sales team, as well as have the tools to properly manage and track your sales activity.
Below are key aspects of growing your sales and profits with a straight forward sales process:
1. Prospecting
Set clear goals for your sales team members of the number of required calls completed per day, calls scheduled for the next week and opportunities created in your customer relationship management software (CRM), sales appointments completed per week, proposal presentations completed and sales closed per month. Tracking sales activity in your CRM is key. You must ensure that each salesperson on your team has their calls scheduled a week or more in advance in your CRM, and time committed for these calls are scheduled daily to accomplish these calls.
2. Prospect Meetings
Most importantly, your direct sales team needs to use the telephone for one primary thing - getting meetings with qualified prospects. Have a well-crafted script as a guide, including a) added benefits of a meeting, b) credibility, c) qualifying questions, d) overcoming objections, and e) train your salespeople to ask for the meeting multiple times.
Make sure your salespeople do not have an overly elongated initial conversation and basically conduct the first meeting on the telephone - qualify the prospect, briefly determine their needs, secure the meeting and get off the telephone to ensure a productive first online or face-to-face meeting as the next critical step. And then confirm the meeting by email with the salesperson’s contact information and a company overview brochure attached.
3. Probing Questions
Whether you sell by telephone, conduct online meetings, or face-to-face, your salespeople need to begin by asking open-ended probing questions to both identify the decision-maker(s), qualify the prospect and get a clear understanding of their needs. Then, present the benefits of using your products and services and briefly provide some examples of how current customers have benefited the same way. Benefits sell, not features.
4. Recommendation
Using a range of questions to qualify the prospect and determine their needs, you need to formulate and make your recommendation. An inside salesperson will do this by telephone with smaller prospects, but an outside salesperson needs to do this on a planned online meeting or face-to-face with larger prospects. This is critical to move the sales process forward, to gauge interest, reduce the sales cycle, fine tune their needs, and to formalize the next step toward closing the sale.
5. Closing the Sale
Closing the sale is a process in itself. In order to minimize the sales cycle and move forward with the close, you should ask close-ended questions in the form of a Trial Close, such as, "If you feel comfortable that we could solve your lead time problem, would you be interested in moving forward?" Or, "Do you feel that a company with our expertise and lead time responsiveness could meet your needs?"
The Trial Close does not ask for the business, but serves to verify their need, readiness to buy, address any hesitations, concerns or initial objections and gets the prospect in "Yes" mode. A yes response to your trial close will lead you right into the close and a positive outcome.
There are many types of closes to gain a new customer. You have heard the saying, "Close early and often." This refers to not waiting too long to ask for the sale and be willing to close, overcome objections and close again. If your sales team is not doing this, they are going through the motions and leaving a lot of money on the table. Conduct Role Plays between your sales team members to ensure everyone of them is asking a distinct and definite closing question.
A preferred type of close is the "Either or" close. By having two options in your proposal you can ask, "Do you prefer Option A or Option B?" Simply ask for the business and be silent until you get your answer. If you have done your job properly, a yes will follow, and you should proceed in locking up and signing your new customer. Remember, you cannot help someone if you don't ask for their business.
CEO Advisor, Inc. has helped many of our clients to hire, train and implement proper sales management techniques to optimize sales and grow businesses to the next level in order to generate a tremendous ROI. Contact Mark Hartsell, MBA, President of CEO Advisor, Inc. at (949) 629-2520, by mobile phone at (714) 697-3370, by email at MHartsell@CEOAdvisor.com or visit us at www.CEOAdvisor.com for more information.
Overcoming Resistance to Change to Improve Sales and Profits
Change can be one of the hardest (and scariest) things to implement in any company. Preparing for the acceptance of change, and then commitment to change are needed to be successful.
Here are the Top 7 Reasons Companies Resist Change and How to Overcome It:
1. Management (and Employees) Fear They Lack The Competence To Change
No one wants to admit a fear they possess. And change requires not only overcoming fear, but all of the new processes and work that comes with it.
But change in businesses is extremely necessary at times, and this necessitates changes in a) Skills, b) Processes, and c) Employees. So this fear can be warranted at times. Some employees will feel that they won’t be able to make the needed changes and resulting transition very well. But it is management that must show true leadership when change is needed and guide your team through the changes.
The hard part is that some of these employees may be right and it is management’s job to identify this, train or make a needed replacement. In most cases, these fears will be unfounded, and that’s why change requires you to be an effective leader and motivator. Needed change in a successful manner includes new training programs as consistency in new processes and skills are vital to both the employees and the success of the company.
2. The Risk of Change is Greater Than The Risk Without Change
The risk of change may be seen as the case to both management and the staff, and here lies the real challenge. Management must identify and embrace the need for change in order to improve and grow the company. But unfortunately, procrastination is the mode of operation believing that things will self-correct and this is where the most costly situation unfolds.
Making changes requires you to decide to move in the direction of the unknown on the promise that something will be better as a result. Making a change is about managing risk. If you are making the case for change, be sure to set out in detailed, truthful terms why you believe the risk is warranted and needed. Make projections whenever you can, as this will greatly help in quantifying the results and bringing clarity to your plans.
3. Management Needs to Provide Leadership When Change is Needed
If you see yourself as a change agent and a visionary, communicating a vision is not enough. Get the management team on board with your needed changes so that you or they can demonstrate how the new way can work. This entails identifying employees and management team members to take ownership and drive the initiative. For most people, seeing is believing and leadership by example can go a long way toward overcoming resistance, with a “Can do” attitude.
4. The Old Way is Both Known to All and Comfortable
If you ask management and employees in a company to do things in a new way, as rational as that new way may seem to you, you may be setting yourself up against firm, established beliefs. But when change is absolutely needed, you and your management team have to step outside of your comfort zone and then communicate and demonstrate to your employees that the changes will result in the needed improvements in the company. Often times, this requires the help of an outside business advisor to plan, organize, support, implement and follow through on the needed changes.
5. Employees Can Get Overwhelmed and Resist
Fatigue can really kill a change effort, both for individual employees and for an organization. When you’re implementing major changes, be aware of fear of the unknown as a factor in keeping people from moving forward, even if they are telling you they believe in the need for the changes. If a company has been through a lot of upheaval, people may resist change just because they are tired and overwhelmed, perhaps at precisely the time when more substantial change is most needed. If this were to occur, be very generous with praise and with understanding for people’s complaints throughout the change process.
When you communicate clearly and regularly the need and the benefits of the change, no matter how painful the process may be, employees will understand for the most part, especially when the entire management team is on the same page and communicating the same message. But that’s not enough, and fear of the unknown can produce further fatigue. You’ve got to motivate and show your appreciation, as well, and be patient enough to let people vent without excessive unproductive negativity. But stay the course. Your clear message needs to include that you are committed to change.
6. Employees (and even Management) Can Be Skeptical About Results
It’s important to remember that few worthwhile changes are conceived and clearly communicated in their best version from the beginning. Skeptics perform an important function of challenging the change so that it can be improved upon prior to implementation. So listen to your skeptics among your employees and management team because you will gain valuable improvements to your plan for changes. And then reiterate the high level benefits of the needed changes and that their input has value.
7. Employees May Not Believe in the Changes and Know It Will Result in Substantial Work
The truth is, sometimes your idea of change is just not a prudent idea. Sometimes people are not fearful when they resist. They just see that it is not best for the company, the employees and your customers. And even if you are not all wrong, it’s important not to ignore when people have rational objections. What is critical to discern is, are they resisting to change because they truly believe it is not best for the company or are they resisting because they see a lot of work ahead.
This concept of challenging the quality of the change vs. resistance to change and more work is vital. This takes expertise, objectivity and some seasoned questioning to sift through it. To win people’s commitment for change, you must engage them on both a rational level and an emotional level. Your confidence, planning and persistence in change will make believers in your change.
CEO Advisor, Inc. is a professional change agent, and we focus on your needs, goals and help you to execute on your plan. Contact Mark Hartsell, MBA, President of CEO Advisor, Inc. for a no cost initial consultation at (949) 629-2520, by mobile phone at (714) 697-3370, by email at MHartsell@CEOAdvisor.com or visit us at www.CEOAdvisor.com for more information.
Here are the Top 7 Reasons Companies Resist Change and How to Overcome It:
1. Management (and Employees) Fear They Lack The Competence To Change
No one wants to admit a fear they possess. And change requires not only overcoming fear, but all of the new processes and work that comes with it.
But change in businesses is extremely necessary at times, and this necessitates changes in a) Skills, b) Processes, and c) Employees. So this fear can be warranted at times. Some employees will feel that they won’t be able to make the needed changes and resulting transition very well. But it is management that must show true leadership when change is needed and guide your team through the changes.
The hard part is that some of these employees may be right and it is management’s job to identify this, train or make a needed replacement. In most cases, these fears will be unfounded, and that’s why change requires you to be an effective leader and motivator. Needed change in a successful manner includes new training programs as consistency in new processes and skills are vital to both the employees and the success of the company.
2. The Risk of Change is Greater Than The Risk Without Change
The risk of change may be seen as the case to both management and the staff, and here lies the real challenge. Management must identify and embrace the need for change in order to improve and grow the company. But unfortunately, procrastination is the mode of operation believing that things will self-correct and this is where the most costly situation unfolds.
Making changes requires you to decide to move in the direction of the unknown on the promise that something will be better as a result. Making a change is about managing risk. If you are making the case for change, be sure to set out in detailed, truthful terms why you believe the risk is warranted and needed. Make projections whenever you can, as this will greatly help in quantifying the results and bringing clarity to your plans.
3. Management Needs to Provide Leadership When Change is Needed
If you see yourself as a change agent and a visionary, communicating a vision is not enough. Get the management team on board with your needed changes so that you or they can demonstrate how the new way can work. This entails identifying employees and management team members to take ownership and drive the initiative. For most people, seeing is believing and leadership by example can go a long way toward overcoming resistance, with a “Can do” attitude.
4. The Old Way is Both Known to All and Comfortable
If you ask management and employees in a company to do things in a new way, as rational as that new way may seem to you, you may be setting yourself up against firm, established beliefs. But when change is absolutely needed, you and your management team have to step outside of your comfort zone and then communicate and demonstrate to your employees that the changes will result in the needed improvements in the company. Often times, this requires the help of an outside business advisor to plan, organize, support, implement and follow through on the needed changes.
5. Employees Can Get Overwhelmed and Resist
Fatigue can really kill a change effort, both for individual employees and for an organization. When you’re implementing major changes, be aware of fear of the unknown as a factor in keeping people from moving forward, even if they are telling you they believe in the need for the changes. If a company has been through a lot of upheaval, people may resist change just because they are tired and overwhelmed, perhaps at precisely the time when more substantial change is most needed. If this were to occur, be very generous with praise and with understanding for people’s complaints throughout the change process.
When you communicate clearly and regularly the need and the benefits of the change, no matter how painful the process may be, employees will understand for the most part, especially when the entire management team is on the same page and communicating the same message. But that’s not enough, and fear of the unknown can produce further fatigue. You’ve got to motivate and show your appreciation, as well, and be patient enough to let people vent without excessive unproductive negativity. But stay the course. Your clear message needs to include that you are committed to change.
6. Employees (and even Management) Can Be Skeptical About Results
It’s important to remember that few worthwhile changes are conceived and clearly communicated in their best version from the beginning. Skeptics perform an important function of challenging the change so that it can be improved upon prior to implementation. So listen to your skeptics among your employees and management team because you will gain valuable improvements to your plan for changes. And then reiterate the high level benefits of the needed changes and that their input has value.
7. Employees May Not Believe in the Changes and Know It Will Result in Substantial Work
The truth is, sometimes your idea of change is just not a prudent idea. Sometimes people are not fearful when they resist. They just see that it is not best for the company, the employees and your customers. And even if you are not all wrong, it’s important not to ignore when people have rational objections. What is critical to discern is, are they resisting to change because they truly believe it is not best for the company or are they resisting because they see a lot of work ahead.
This concept of challenging the quality of the change vs. resistance to change and more work is vital. This takes expertise, objectivity and some seasoned questioning to sift through it. To win people’s commitment for change, you must engage them on both a rational level and an emotional level. Your confidence, planning and persistence in change will make believers in your change.
CEO Advisor, Inc. is a professional change agent, and we focus on your needs, goals and help you to execute on your plan. Contact Mark Hartsell, MBA, President of CEO Advisor, Inc. for a no cost initial consultation at (949) 629-2520, by mobile phone at (714) 697-3370, by email at MHartsell@CEOAdvisor.com or visit us at www.CEOAdvisor.com for more information.
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