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John Baum

December 2012 - TD Magazine

Modified behavior can’t occur without a culture that is open to change.

When Developing Leaders, Don’t Blame Training!

August 2010 - TD Magazine

In 2008, the United States spent an estimated $134 billion on employee training. Employers train employees for improving job skills, career advancement, industry certifications, and the quality of life of their employees, among other reasons. Employers presume a return on their investment in the form of more qualified...

Business Education Under the Microscope: Applying Six Sigma to Workplace Training

It’s hard to believe that summer is nearly at an end. But there is still time to not only soak in the a few extra hours of daylight, but also make great use of the longer days by checking out a few 2012 releases on how people and organizations can improve their sales effectiveness.  (And, we even included a 2011 release you may have missed.) Happy reading.  **_42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness: A Practical Guidebook for Sales Reps, Sales Managers, and Anyone Looking to Improve their Selling Skills_**By Michael GriegoSuper Star PressFebruary 2012 Sales professionals consciously look for ways to hone their skills. Some of you may not be aware that the disciplines and fundamentals of sales can impact your own personal effectiveness. Whether you are a professional enterprise salesperson, CEO, consultant, venture capitalist, engineer, teacher, student or aspiring up-and-comer, you should know the language and tools of selling in today's market.  Michael Griego, a professional sales consultant and trainer to Fortune 500 firms and leading Silicon Valley technology firms, has reduced the keys to sales effectiveness to 42 rules of successful salesmanship. These rules apply to all selling efforts, from high-tech enterprise sales to the non-technology sales.  In 42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness, you will learn  what makes a successful sales person  how to differentiate your style from the other folks out there  when to talk and when to "shut up and listen."  If you're a sales pro, use this book as a handbook to reset on the key best-practices in the new day. If you're a not, but you manage a sales team, interact with, buy from, live with, or simply recognize your need to enhance personal "sales" effectiveness, you too can benefit from rules that will help you better understand what all the fuss is all about. Enjoy it. It's a quick read which nets out 42 key nuggets and practical application of this fascinating activity called sales. **_How to Make Sales When You Don't Like Selling_**By Alan FairweatherHow To BooksApril 2012What you really need to succeed in business is customers. Everybody in your business needs to be constantly looking for them, because you'll always lose some through no fault of your own. But few people are naturally comfortable with selling - and not everyone has been trained to do so. This clear, memorable and easy to understand book contains practical information on how to do it right - and how to do it better if you are already doing it.Author Alan Fairweather spent a total of 23 years in sales, customer service and management. He worked in six different sales organizations as a sales engineer, training manager, and sales manager. Fairweather is also the author of How to Manage Difficult People and How to Be a Motivational Manager.In this book, Fairweather  will show you how to develop your sales skills from scratchmake customers come to youmake a cold call and get an appointmentmotivate customers to buy using 4 simple sales stepsdevelop related networking and referral skills. **_Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World's Sales Leaders_**By Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami, and Jon Vander ArkWileyApril 2012Finding growth today can be an enormous challenge for companies in a complex and fast-changing business environment. There are no simple solutions, but in Sales Growth, experts from McKinsey & Company provide a practical blue-print for achieving this goal by revealing what world-class sales executives are doing right now to find growth and capture it—as well as how they are creating the capabilities to keep growing in the future.Broken down into five overarching strategies, Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World's Sales Leaders focuses on the valuable lessons that power growth, including how to get ahead of the competition by taking advantage of trends and turning complex analysis into simple guidelines that sales reps on your front line need to sell better. Page by page, you'll learn how successful sales executives find untapped pockets of growth, act like locals to make the most of emerging markets opportunities, and power growth through digital sales. You'll also discover what it takes to find big growth in big data, develop the right "sales DNA" in your organization, and improve channel performance.Based on interviews of more than 120 of today's most successful global sales leaders, from a wide array of B2C and B2B organizations, the authors offer real-life examples of how successful sales leaders overcame the challenges encountered in the quest for growth.  It also contains insights on finding growth before your competitors, optimizing sales operations and technology, and developing sales talent and capabilities. Created by sales executives for sales executives, Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World's Sales Leaders book will provide you with the practical guidelines and useful insights to drive sales growth today and in the future.**The Accidental Sales Manager: How to Take Control and Lead Your Sales Team to Record Profits**By Chris LytleWileyMay 2011Get out of the firefighting business and into the business of developing the people who develop your profits. Successful salespeople rightfully become sales managers because of superior sales records. Yet too often these sales stars get stuck doing their old sales job while also trying to juggle their manager role, and too often companies neglect to train their sales managers how to excel as managers. That's the "sales management trap," and it's exactly what The Accidental Sales Manager addresses and solves.  The Accidental Sales Manager explains the "sales management trap," where you spend your days exhausting yourself with middling tasks, losing out on sales, and suffering under a team of people who lack accountability and leadership. Drawing from the experiences of scores of sales managers, this book delivers immediately applicable ideas for coaching and developing a team of accomplished salespeople who manage themselves. Understand how to communicate up and down the chain of command, so that you know what's expected of you and your subordinates become better salespeople who raise company profits. You'll learn:the seven roadblocks that keep B players from becoming A playershow to find out what is actually happening with your employees, and then manage the gap to lead salespeople from lagging sales to hitting their targetshow to recruit the best people by asking the right questions and hiring for traits rather than skill setshow to lead for commitment instead of managing for compliancehow to conduct sales meetings that elicit desired changes in behavior and measurable gains in revenue.Once you escape the sales management trap, you'll find the same level of achievement as a manager that you enjoyed as a salesperson. You drove yourself to success—now lead your sales team to record profits.

John Baum

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