Many sales executives are feeling lost in today's uncharted business environment yet some sales organizations are prospering. How are they pulling it off? Forum's latest research consistently points to one of the most important factors -the influence of the sales leader. Read this report to find out the three levers that sales executives can use to enhance their chances of success.
This presentation allows you to assess your current situation with respect to implementing your company's customer experience.
Xavier Martin is a Forum partner with over 20 years of experience training and coaching in sales, management and leadership. In this interview, he examines the most important dilemmas impacting sales management today and exposes the most common pitfalls for new sales managers.
Forum is researching the acceleration of strategy execution in the midst of turbulent change (Speed, for short). This field of study is a goldmine of insights and promising leadership practices. This article is the first in a series of such insights we will share with you as our research progresses.
Many initiatives get off to a great start, only to fail. In our experience, a primary reason is that they are not properly sustained. The behavior change required for the new initiative fades with the pressures of the day. Some organizations, however, excel at sustaining the behavior change needed for strategic initiatives to succeed. This report summarizes our experience and observations on what works.
Companies that build a positive organizational climate as part of their competitive strategy are continuing to exceed customer expectations, maintain employee productivity, and innovate to gain a competitive edge. They are cultivating a positive organizational climate, says Forum's latest research, which identifies six dimensions of climate that influence the work environment and employee motivation.
The technology revolution has created virtual organizations staffed by diverse groups of people who must work together seamlessly to meet the demands of ever more sophisticated customers. Increasingly, managers at middle to senior levels are responsible for leading people over whom they may have little direct control to achieve critical outcomes. Top business leaders around the world cite five actions as the key to leading across boundaries.
Two out of three leaders feel they have inadequate preparation to lead growth. Forum's recent global research study on leadership for growth, conducted in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, provided this startling realization. The study looked in depth at leadership imperatives that drive growth, universally and with different growth strategies.
The latest technologies have created an enormous opportunity—and a financial imperative—to increase the impact of learning without taking people out of the workplace to participate in it. The array of Web 2.0 tools for enhanced learning is dazzling but how can you identify which ones are right for your organization?
In advance of the June 2010 release of our book Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution, this report is a preview of the key concepts of Strategic Speed and the statistical findings from a global survey conducted earlier in 2009 with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
In this handbook, authors Kerry Johnson and Maggie Walsh examine the challenges of change and provide insights into how to overcome these challenges.
Forum's sales research identifies the key factors that accelerate sales performance in today's business environment and recommends ways in which companies can improve their sales force effectiveness by focusing on these factors.
Customer focus is a critical component of an organic growth strategy, as recent Forum research revealed. This Point of View paper examines the importance of the Branded Customer Experience in achieving organic growth and the central role of leaders in driving it.
What factors enable some sales forces to gain competitive advantage while others stumble? The purpose of this study was to re-validate and extend Forum's extensive global research examining sales force effectiveness. This "street level" view includes input from both salespeople and customers.
Ask sales managers how satisfied they are with their sales representatives' ability to forecast sales, and you're likely to get the same reply from all of them: not very satisfied. Forecasting is one of the most vexing problems sales organizations face. Companies need reliable estimates of new business in order to hit their financial targets and manage delivery resources. Salespeople need to know how likely they are to meet their sales goals, and how they should spend their time to maximize their performance. But predicting sales is easier said than done.
How can your organization respond to the key challenges you will encounter over the next 3-5 years?
Based on Forum's customer service research, this assessment tool allows you to quickly assess your company's current level of customer service in relation to that of other companies. Use this tool to calculate the potential value of improving customer service in your company and begin identifying ways to do it.
What if it were possible for a sales manager to increase his/her effectiveness not by working more efficiently, but by choosing her tasks more "strategically?" In this Field Notes article, first published in our e-newsletter Forum Insights, Forum Consultant Jeff Baker reveals how Sales Managers can achieve a dramatic impact on their sales results.
In order to make strategic account management strategies work, organizations need three things: a new breed of salesperson, a highly skilled account team, and organization-wide commitment to the strategy. Forum provides fresh insight into the challenges and best practices of Strategic Account Management today.
Companies are eager to drive sales through the service channel, but customers aren’t always so sure they want to be sold to that way. Forum set out to learn more about how customers view cross-selling. The findings identified a set of service representative behaviors that increase or decrease customers’ satisfaction and likelihood of making an additional purchase.
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