Hiring successful sales employees is especially critical to the success of a business. Steve Fretzin, president of the search firm team discovery offers these five effective sales management techniques:

Advertising titan David Ogilvy, who died a decade ago this year, sent these thoughts scrawled in a note to a business reporter in 1991: "Our founding fathers referred to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Profit didn’t enter into it" ...

We present a case study on how one growing business boosted sales lead generation by recharging employees’ creative batteries.

We're looking to create an incentive plan for all rank-and-file employees who bring in leads that help us land new business. (That's already part of our sales force's job, so they would be excluded.) What kind of incentives work best? I'm assuming cash is popular—so how much? How should we track our incentive program?—Bill M., Las Vegas

If it’s important to be user-friendly, and if the highest form of user-friendliness is user-centric, then why aren’t you doing it? That’s the challenge posed by Dev Patnaik and Robert Becker, co-founders of Jump Associates. They do “need-finding,” which is part of their user-based business design. Three reasons to uncover your customers’ needs:

Author Maribeth Kuzmeski offers these tips to keep your customer retention program strong and build long-lasting customer relationships:

In his book, Influence: Science and Practice, Dr. Robert Cialdini shares six rules for successful persuasion, each one the result of detailed scientific research. Use these six principles to be more persuasive in your business dealings:

Even the most seasoned executives make blunders in the sales process that are easily correctible. Jim Lewis, author of Five Deadly Sins CEOs Make in Sales, recommends that you keep in mind these five selling sins:

Companies have trimmed fat, and are scrambling to find a way to keep productivity on a steady climb. Steve Fretzin, president of Sales Results Inc., says the next goal should be to improve group performance. He offers these four tips:

In today’s competitive marketplace, sales lead generation is especially important. As a result, salespeople find themselves under enormous pressure to sell better and faster. Here are some lead generation tips to consider:

When it comes to understanding your market segments, government statistics are among the best available sources of information. Here are some other smart ways to collect valuable customer research:

You may be using Twitter.com already. If not, it’s worth taking a second look. Why? Because savvy businesses are using the tool to do some of what you do already—smooth out the information flow between leadership and everyone else. Here's how Twitter can help you on the job:

Customer acquisition is an investment, but profitability is built on customer retention. With the economy floundering, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have and build customer loyalty. Guy Maser offers these five tips:

Getting an irate customer or prospect to listen is a source of frustration experienced by everyone in business. Often logic, flattery, forcefulness, and even pleading lead nowhere. Author Mark Goulston offers these techniques to improve your customer service standards:

Customer research is to a growing business what a power cord is to an electrical appliance — a necessity. Here are five surefire ways to collect valuable research:

Using Web survey software, a business can gain immediate access to research, allowing it to quickly address customer issues. Jeffrey Henning, founder of Vovici, which offers comprehensive survey software, says there are four areas a survey should take into consideration:

According to authors Chip Bell and John Patterson, satisfactory isn’t good enough these days — customer service has to blow away the competition. Here are three ways to build a legion of clamoring fans:

We are at an unprecedented time in our business history, with four generations of sales staff selling to four generations of buyers. Helping your sales reps understand the differences among generations and how to adapt their whole selling approach and style will increase the pipeline, win more deals and shorten the selling cycle.

Consider these three tips for better customer service:

Few people would dispute that treating customers well is essential to business success. “The customer is the reason you have a job,” asserts Renee Evenson, author of Award Winning Customer Service. Evenson offers these tips for good customer service:

Instead of networking with potential customers, consider networking with other businesses that can help you succeed, suggests Alan Bayham, president of Bayham Consulting, LLC. With this approach, the companies within your circle of influence refer customers to each other and also share skills and expertise to enhance their own business. Bayham offers these tips to make your sales lead generation endeavors with other businesses succeed:

Unfortunately, some authors and “sales experts” continue to perpetuate age-old myths about selling that need to be dispelled, says Douglas Smith, founder of Douglas Smith & Associates. Here are three of the biggest myths:

Your appearance doesn’t matter when selling over the phone. But when speaking to a prospect over the phone, there are some important things to watch out for:

Web sites don’t last forever. Some changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, but patching can take you only so far. Here are five signs that it’s time to revamp your site.

Would you recommend that a friend buy medicine from Johnson & Johnson? Insurance from AIG? Do you trust Google? These are the kinds of questions people answered about 153 American companies...