Sales managers have been searching for the magic formula for sales motivation for decades. Many companies offer incentives such as cash bonuses or trips, but these are generally won by the few superstar salespeople in the organization, leaving the middle to lowest performers out of the loop and unmotivated. The truth is that sales professionals […]

What is one truth about life that also applies to your sales playbook? Evolve or die. This may sound a little harsh, but your playbook is a living thing. If it doesn’t adapt to change, it won’t survive. Too many sales leaders forget this. They recycle their sales processes and expect one approach to work […]

In startups, the best performing sales teams know that there’s no magical KPI. They need to measure what matters and make incremental improvements. Because not all leads are created equal, the most effective sales teams spend time and effort to measure the quality of the leads generated by the marketing team. But they don’t stop […]

In B2B Sales, sales performance is fast becoming a key factor for success. While an increase in sales can be achieved at the expense of profitability, an increase in sales performance offers companies better capital efficiency, higher profitability and ultimately a sustainable competitive advantage. Historically, sales representatives were measured by the total volume of sales […]

This article was first published on Sales Hacker’s B2B Sales Blog. It’s no secret that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to change the way we sales professionals work. Sales, as both a function and a profession, is no exception to the AI sea change. The real question isn’t whether sales teams will adopt AI, but how and to […]

Cien has recently been acknowledged by FinancesOnline.com, a B2B software directory, with two sales software awards for 2017: the 2017 Rising Star Award and the 2017 Great User Experience Award for top sales software. Cien – a sales productivity app for high performing sales teams – goes beyond automating the capture of activity data or […]

By Rob Käll, Co-founder and CEO, Cien Inc. They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. Until recently, I thought there was something else that was inevitable: diminishing returns. As an executive and an entrepreneur, I’ve observed the law of diminishing returns in all aspects of growing a business. Add a […]

Computers are rising. That’s not a doomsday prediction, by the way. In 2011, Gartner predicted that by 2020, 85 percent of all customer interactions with the enterprise won’t involve another human. Employees are following suit. Today’s artificial intelligence software is capable of helping employees from both a people standpoint and a hard data standpoint, marrying […]