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What Sales Teams Should Do to Prepare for the Next Recession

Harvard Business

In the 2001 recession, total sales for the S&P 500 declined by 9% from its pre-recession peak to its trough 18 months later—almost a year after the recession officially ended. We’ll focus here on what the sales organization should be doing now to prepare for the next recession, with an eye toward using new digital tools.

Sales 130
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Your Company Needs a More-Radical Board of Directors

Harvard Business

My guess is that while a poor balance sheet might cause restless sleep, it’s the thought of an incorrectly reported balance sheet that brings on night terrors. I’m not against benchmarking and norming. While benchmarks are useful inputs for compensation decisions, they shouldn’t be a straitjacket.

Company 126
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4 Self-Improvement Myths That May Be Holding You Back

Harvard Business

of all book sales in the United States. A recent report in the Journal of Management noted that of nearly 25,000 academic articles on performance, only a fraction include what psychologists call within person variance , which describes ranges, such as that between individuals’ top, average and worst performances.

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4 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing

Harvard Business

Companies have hired writers and Chief Content Officers to run departments, create blogs and other materials, and, in the process, some have assured sales people that content marketing can mean the end of cold calling. Our data also indicate that much of marketing and sales collateral is read by prospects outside of the normal work week.

Marketing 133
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2020 Database Strategies and Contact Acquisition Survey Report

Marketing and sales teams are feeling pressured to deliver authentic messaging to buyers at every point of their customer journey. This report aims to highlight the current state of B2B database and contact acquisition strategies and organizations’ goals to leverage data to fuel their go-to-market strategies in 2020 and beyond.

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How Morale Changes as a Startup Grows

Harvard Business

One cohort reports 0%–20% year-over-year annual revenue growth rates; the second is a faster-growing group experiencing 20%–200% year-over-year growth. This time, the firm ranked in the top quartile of all companies and handily beat our benchmark. However, the sales function’s happiness is markedly lower.

Culture 133
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The Most Common Reasons Customer Experience Programs Fail

Harvard Business

The reasons change doesn’t often happen are reporting paralysis, the lack of “think time,” and failure to collaborate. Reporting paralysis can occur when teams are so wrapped up in distributing data, ensuring data quality, or writing up insights that they forget the purpose of data.

Metrics 123