Productive Insights

Here’s how to do it. Productive consultative sales training and process development can make the difference. Do you know IRV? If you’re a business owner or senior executive, you should. Why? One thing small and middle-market businesses are all about is increasing their value. And IRV is a straightforward way to use sales to increase that value in three ways—and to

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Companies spend all sorts of pre-M&A time on alignment. But what about after the merger or acquisition deal is sealed? There is still work to be done, especially in sales. When companies make acquisitions, they have a lot to do, from identifying redundancies in staffing, processes, and procedures to selecting which survive and which can be reduced or eliminated. Even

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The fundamental things apply in basketball, bed-making, and becoming the safest company in America. In 1965, Kareem Abdul Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) and his fellow freshmen at UCLA beat the varsity in the opening scrimmage. Interesting, to be sure, but not necessarily remarkable. Except that the UCLA varsity was a two-years-running national NCAA champion and the odds-on favorite for a

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Do you wonder whether differentiating your company will yield a significant ROI? Maybe you wonder whether your company can be differentiated at all. Most owners, presidents, and CEOs would agree that the short answer to the question “Does Differentiation Add Value?” is “yes.” So, then the focus moves to the question behind the question: “Is Differentiating Our Company Really Worth the

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How can we understand the wizardry that is today’s marketing–and what it can, and cannot, do? Thanks in part to steadily improving online functionality, marketing has changed dramatically in the past ten years. And, thanks to the pandemic, marketing has changed even more dramatically in just the past year. We’ve all seen it “in the news.” But here at Productive

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Do you use the income statement approach or the balance sheet approach? Not sure? Here’s how to know and then how to use your sales funnel to win more sales. Most salespeople, sales managers, and other business developers do know that the “sales funnel” plays a key role in making a sale. But too many do not know just what

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By Scott Kraege, Guest Columnist To Our Readers: Scott Kraege is managing director of The Heritage Group Accelerator Powered by Techstars . He’s also a former client whose salespeople participated in our consultative sales training—in fact, winning one of our annual contests—and whose sales processes we helped to develop. We applaud Scott’s work that provides such direct, hands-on support to other high-growth founders.

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The right discovery skills plus the right delivery skills build the confidence your sales reps need to deliver powerful presentations that persuade prospects to buy.   Prospective clients sometimes call us with a “sales presentation problem.” Translated, that means executives or managers have noticed that their salespeople don’t use the beautifully produced, loaded-with-information, and probably expensive PowerPoints that management has

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Why don’t we talk more about risk? It permeates business every day. But at the hundreds of meetings and events we participate in each year—both in-person and virtually—we’ve noticed that risk is rarely mentioned. Maybe risk is too much on our minds. In an increasingly uncertain world, risk is a constant companion that we just don’t pay much attention to. Maybe it’s fear

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It’s time to find out. Here’s how. How do you uncover things “you don’t know you don’t know” about your company or organization? More important, how do you determine what they mean for your success now and in the future? Do you think you know all you need to know about your company? Probably not. Most business owners, presidents, CEOs, and

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