Senior executives share insights and perspectives on required knowledge, skills and behaviors required in the future for sales people to win.  Host for the meeting was the Chicago Chapter of the Sales Leadership Community.  Special thanks to DePaul University, the Center for Sales Leadership, and SOAR Performance Group.

Listen to or download the audio from the meeting:

Featured panelists:

Questions discussed at the event:

  • When the advisory board met, this topic of sales talent requirements to win in the future was a top priority for our panel discussions this year. Why do you believe this is such a relevant topic?
  • What have you seen in buyer behavior and process that have changed as a result of the pandemic, and what kind of changes, other than video tools like Zoom, have you implemented because of that?
  • With everything being virtual (work from home) what changes have you made to onboarding/training/coaching sales roles in the past year?
  • We’ve seen all sorts of new tools crop in the category of ‘salestech’ – what kinds of new sales technology or tools have you adopted and how have your people adapted? (examples – lead gen/prioritization, lead nurturing, meeting management/scheduling, automation, mobile, video)
  • As part of our own recommended best practices at SOAR, we’re believers that you have to align your selling process to the buyer’s buying process. If you ascribe to that approach, what changes to sales engagement have you adopted or seen?
  • When we think of sales talent requirements overall, what instructions are you giving to recruiters with respect to the skills you’re looking for?