A question came up yesterday on our Sales Leader Webcast about Sales capacity and I promised to answer it on the blog today. “How do you measure sales capacity and can you provide an example?”

We are halfway through the year. How do you stand against your goals? To finish strong, you must have a quick planning session. Take the time next week to take stock of where you are and regroup.

Warning - this is the most frank thing I’ve ever said to the Engage community. It comes after we launched a new offering last week, the Sales Accelerator program. It was designed to be accessible for everyone – both today’s and tomorrow’s sales leaders – with an early bird price under a hundred.

Here are seven closing practices, designed to sell more in less time which you can implement immediately with your sales organization...I promise they're really easy once you get the hang of it :)

In rethinking the sales process this way, every step of the process represents a set of tasks or activities that have to be complete in order to move the deal through the pipeline. It’s no longer the probability of close—a subjective opinion from the sales rep—but the percentage complete in the sales cycle—an objective statistic based on facts.

AND IT WORKED AWESOME!

Too often when looking at a sales team’s success, managers only look at the actual sales (the closing of the business). Of course, this is important—but the sale is a lagging indicator. If you have no sales closing today, it indicates that your team has not been performing well for months. By the time you’re at the point of no business, you’re already well into trouble. In fact, you are at the point of no return.

Sales people hear it all the time: “ABC. Always be closing.” But as a sales leader I’d recommend that you adopt a slightly different mantra for yourself: “ABR: Always be recruiting.”

No technology has ever been proven to secure deals as effectively as face to face meetings with buyers.

In sales, there's a fine line between simply being inquisitive and conducting an interrogation. The consequences of stepping over this line could cost you the sale, lose you business or - worse yet - lose you a loyal customer for life.

I have had it with tele-marketers calling my house who use terribly outdated, manipulative, boring, trite or insulting sales techniques. It's especially maddening when their gross sales negligence happens in the opening line.