The 19 Oaks Business Growth Blog

Headed to INBOUND for the first time this year and feeling a bit nervous? Don't worry! We've got some great tips to help you prepare.

Ask a CEO what their most important asset is and they’re apt to say “our people,” “our service” or “our products.” But as important as those things are, they can only contribute to the company’s success if they operate within the framework of something even more important: A defined and shared sense of direction.

When we hear news about a company’s decline or demise, one of the reasons cited most is some variation of this: They lost sight of who they were.

Does your company need to increase sales?

When sales are lagging, the first thing many business leaders do is blame the company’s sales team. They often decide that the salespeople need more training on how to close sales. But sales training won’t fix underlying organizational issues, which is why 95% of companies invest in sales training, but only 9% see meaningful results.

All of Your Employees Are in Sales

You may not realize it, but every one of your employees who interacts with your customers is a salesperson—and therefore needs sales training.

Each customer interaction can be leveraged to uncover needs and generate new business. OR it can disappoint, anger, and/or alienate your customers.

What are you doing to monitor employee-customer interactions at your company?

Working from home can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s wonderful because you can save money on gas, tolls and other travel costs, you can work without interruption, you can even work in your pajamas if you want to! However, you also risk feeling detached from office culture, being left “out of the loop,” and, worst of all, you can suffer from a major lack of motivation.

Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines declaring that tax fraud is on the rise.

When you think of tax fraud or identity theft, you rarely envision yourself as the victim. You might picture an unsuspecting elderly person falling victim, or perhaps a young person who overshares personal details online. As a businesswoman, I don’t think of myself as susceptible to easy scams. Before this week, I thought identity theft happened to other people. Unfortunately, it happened to my family and to me. This year, we were the victims of fraudulent tax filing and identity theft. Here is what happened and how we learned to fix it. I hope my story will help you avoid a similar fate.

When a company doesn’t have a defined culture that is shared with employees and buyers alike, one danger is that the strongest personalities in the company define what the culture is and more often than not it’s not a positive one.  Rather, the culture is one of confusion and chaos that gets in the way of efficiencies, brand and customer experience.

A sales operations plan is a strategy for allocating resources, sales tools, and employees of your business to achieve sales goals with a clear and measurable ROI. Does your business have a sales operations plan in place?

If so, has leadership explained the importance of the plan to employees throughout the organization? It takes time and energy to communicate the strategy of a new sales initiative and engage employees. But it is critical to your success.