In Sales Operations, Best Practices Don’t Stay “Best” For Long

A best practice is only “best” until something better comes along–and as the pace of business increases, new best practices and approaches are appearing all the time. Certainly, you want you and your team to learn as much as they can about what really works and what doesn’t…before they reinvent the wheel or repeat costly mistakes.

But Who Really Has The Time to Keep Up?

• …to conduct in-depth research on all the various issues and problems that might come up?
• …to click on tons of search engine results to find a few tips that might actually help?
• …to wade through academic research to identify the handful of tactics that could be relevant?
• …to interact with Sales Operations experts to hear the truth about making strategies work?
• …to get others to share the lessons learned that they keep close to their vest?

Well…That’s Our Business…Our Team Does The Research So You Don’t Have To

At SellingBrew, it’s our business to explore issues and problems that Sales Operations teams will inevitably have to deal with. It’s our business to stay on top of new developments and innovations in running a profitable sales operation. And it’s our business to get beyond the academic theories and find out what really works…and what doesn’t.

• Our research team gathers proven practices and lessons-learned from practitioners and industry experts all over the globe–through telephone interviews, email exchanges, questionnaires, surveys, and curated content. We pull together the real-world experiences and practical know-how of people who are working in the trenches, dealing with these critical issues on a daily basis, and being held accountable for the success or failure of their decisions.
• Then, we distill the information down to the essentials leaving out the fluff and filler to synthesize the most useful information. We identify the shared themes and practices across various industries. We determine the common problems and pitfalls to be avoided along the way. And, as former practitioners ourselves, we assess every concept, practice, and technique for relevance and practicality in a real business environment.
• Finally, we publish these concise nuggets of wisdom and insight to the SellingBrew Playbook’s ever-expanding library of hundreds of tutorials, express guides, case studies, research reports, worksheets, tools, and diagnostics—all accessible online, 24×7, from any computer or mobile device.

Our On-Demand Library Is Full Of Research On Critical Topics

• Does your team need to learn more about sales analysis?
  On that topic alone, the Playbook’s library contains 51 step-by-step tutorials, express guides, worksheets and case studies that can broaden their knowledge and expose new insights from your data.
• How about improving close rates or customer retention?
  These are constant challenges for sales teams, right? Well, there are 40+ on-demand educational resources in the library that address each of those specific issues.
• What about brushing up on the fundamentals?
  The library contains dozens of primers, guides, and tutorials covering the basics of building sales strategies, creating comp plans, improving pricing & negotiations, and much more.

And what if you’re not sure where the real problems may be, or where your best opportunities for improvement may lie? In the library, you’ll find a number of self-assessments and worksheets to help you zero-in on the right areas.

Here's a sampling of the resources you'll find in the library:

The Metrics Sales Leaders Should Be Managing

You need to track and manage sales metrics, but which metrics are the most important? In this guide based on research from Vantage Point Performance and the Sales Education Foundation, Jason Jordan reveals the ones that really matter.

Assessing Core Sales Skills in the Hiring Process

Relying on first-impressions, intuition, and gut-feel is just too risky when hiring salespeople today. This guide explores new options for infusing more objectivity and science into the process of finding good salespeople.

How Customers Evaluate a Price

We'd like to think that customers are always rational when they consider the price on a deal...but they aren't. In this guide, Mark Dresdner exposes eight factors that play an important role when a potential customer evaluates a price.

How to Improve Your Sales Pipeline Analysis

Pipeline analytics is great for reporting on current performance, but it can do so much more. This guide outlines 12 strategies for improving deal probability, velocity and value across every salesperson in your sales operation.

Seven Building Blocks of Sales Effectiveness

In sales, it can be challenging to know where to focus your attention and resources. This guide provides a framework of the seven areas where improvements have the most impact on close rates, cycle times, deal sizes, and margins.

How to Avoid Sales Compensation Gotchas

No variable compensation approach is ever going to be perfect, but you stand a much better chance if you're aware of the potential hurdles. This guide exposes the problems with various compensation schemes and explores potential solutions.

17 Insights That Improve Close-Rates & Margins

The more your team knows about how your prospects perceive the marketplace, the better the chances are for success. This guide provides the key prospect insights that can improve close-rates, margins, and long-term customer values.

Innovating to Maximize Sales Productivity

Without adding headcount, how do you pursue a host of new customers while retaining and growing a massive base of existing customers? Learn how one B2B sales organization increased their capacity, productivity and effectiveness…all at the same time.

How to Crater a Market with Cost-Plus Pricing

For one large manufacturer, cost-plus pricing was tantamount to malpractice. In this case study, learn how the lack of strategic pricing capability reduced the value of an entire market by over $1 billion.

The Pitfalls of Sales and Marketing Alignment

Sales and marketing alignment can sometimes do more harm than good. These real-world case studies expose the costly downsides of alignment and reveal the mindset that's often more effective to adopt.

How Strict Pricing Enforcement Killed a Product

Strict enforcement of pricing policies can seem like a great idea. But this comical case study sheds some light on the perils of enforcing policies that are lacking (and somewhat ridiculous).

The Ugly Truth About Lead Generation ROI

Very often in business, the truth behind problems runs counter to what the people in charge actually believe. This entertaining case study reveals the true root-causes behind one company's "failing" lead generation programs.

Using a Cost-Plus Mindset to Your Advantage

In this case study, learn how one consultant got (very) creative in order to solve a pricing problem in an highly dysfunctional organization.

How to Stop Losing Sales to "No Decision"

For many companies, the biggest competitor they have to contend with is "no decision." In this tutorial, learn strategies and tactics for addressing the real root-causes behind prospect inaction.

Targeting Your Most Profitable Prospects

In this tutorial, learn a six-step strategic process for increasing your odds of success in the marketplace by understanding which prospects you should target...and which ones you should avoid.

Delivering Answers to the Point of Sale

Our latest research has shown that more data and tools for the field won't improve results. This tutorial reveals a more effective approach for getting salespeople to use data and analytics to make better decisions.

How to Deliver Sales Training That Sticks

With the right approach, a sales training program can deliver lasting, profitable results. This step-by-step process guides you through designing effectiveness and stickiness into your sales training program right from the start.

Exposing Your Differential Value Step-by-Step

From our best practice research, we’ve cut through the complexity of value-based selling to provide a simplified, step-by-step tutorial for understanding and exposing the differential value of your offerings.

Developing Prescriptive Account Plans

Learn a powerful 7-step process for growing sales from your existing customers. See how to identify exactly where growth opportunities are and create the account plans that will capture them.

Building a Sales Ops Center of Excellence

Sales Operations has long been characterized as a tactical support function. This tutorial provides advice on moving beyond tactical support and transforming Sales Operations into a strategic driver of sales effectiveness.

Selling Value More Confidently in Seven Steps

Salespeople need to be confident in themselves and in the value of the offerings they’re representing. This tutorial helps you give your sales team the confidence they need to sell effectively while maximizing revenue and margin.

Reveal More Resources...

How valuable is it to have a whole library of Sales Operations tutorials, express guides, case studies, research reports, assessments, tools, and diagnostics—all curated by former practitioners and distilled to the essentials—just a click away when your team needs to solve a problem or address an issue?

Of course, it’s hard to say for sure. But we’re extremely confident that the Resource Library alone is worth at least ten times your investment in a SellingBrew Playbook subscription for you and your team.

After all, it’s pretty easy to see how just one effective strategy gleaned from a tutorial…or one proven tactic picked up from an express guide…or a single big mistake avoided by reading a case study…could make or save your company tens of thousands of dollars and likely a whole lot more.

For an annual price of just $599 for the first user and $125 for each additional user on your team, everyone gets access to this content-rich and ever-growing library. Not only that, but everyone gets access to all of the other features as well, including our popular webinar series, expert interviews, as well as our Help Desk.