A few weeks back, I sat on a panel at the Sales 2.0 Boston conference.

The conversation turned to sales hiring. It made me think about something I'd recently read about -- specifically, Angela Duckworth (from University of Pennsylvania) and her research on grit.

I mentioned this research and offered to work with any Sales Leader in the audience to score their reps on the grit scale and look for correlation with their best performers.

 
I recently read a fictionalized letter of resignation from a SVP, Sales (to a CEO) over on the Sales Benchmark Index blog. It is worth a full read, but here is a quick excerpt:

While entertaining, and in many instances probably quite true, it got me thinking. This head of sales had his point of view. But there are two sides to every coin, are there not?

(UPDATED: We have another post with new research on exempt versus non-exempt.)

Last week, I shared the first part in our series on trendspotting thus far in 2013. This week, Janet, Trish (yours truly), and Patrice share our perspectives on: 

~60 days in, what's everyone seeing that is changing in 2013?

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The 3, 5, 7-or-more Legged Buying Team

Whether nostalgia or fact, selling used to be a lot simpler. Continuing the trend from 2012, buyers' decision making processes are more and more complicated.

Today, there is nearly never a single decision maker. Not only do we have to convince the budget owner (we’ll save you money, time, hassle, etc.), but we must also prove our benefit the end user (day-in the-life use cases), IT (this will fit within your environment, straightforward implementation, etc.), and finance (not only does this have a positive ROI, but it is more important than competing projects).

The key to generating widespread support within an organization is being able to have effective selling conversations with a broader audience. For Sales Leaders, this means your reps now need to have the tools, training and process in place to build & muster widespread support.