Business Background

• Market Growth: Luxury car market continues to expand driven by increasing income, affluent population, and desire for premium features (source: J.D. Power)
• Shifting Consumer Preferences: SUVs and crossovers outselling sedans their versatility, practicality, and perceived status (source: Automotive News)
• Technological Advancements: Electric vehicles (EVs) gaining traction such as Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi leading the charge (source: IHS Markit)
• Competition: Intense competition among established brands and emerging players like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors challenging traditional luxury brands
• Economic Factors: Macroeconomic conditions influence demand, and strong economy generally favors luxury car sales

Business Background

• Supermarkets regain ground: Despite the rise of discounters, supermarkets are seeing a resurgence as the main grocery store for 40% of shoppers [FMI Trends 2024].
• Online grocery holds steady: The rapid growth of online grocery shopping has plateaued, but it remains a significant factor. More people are using digital tools for planning and comparing prices before heading to stores.
• Focus on efficiency: Consumers are looking for ways to save time and money. This translates to a rise in meal kits, click-and-collect services, and loyalty programs.
• Potential Kroger-Albertsons merger: This looming merger could significantly impact the grocery landscape, potentially leading to store closures and price adjustments.

A new partnership between advertising platform Innovid and SiriusXM Media is bringing digital audio into the spotlight by integrating it into the same ad server tools used for video, display, and social media campaigns. For local media sellers — from newspapers and magazines to billboards, digital, and TV — this signals a major shift in how digital audio will be valued in ad models going forward. The collaboration promises better measurement, clearer attribution, and more trust in the value of audio advertising, especially for local markets. With new tools offering deeper insights and cross-channel consistency, digital audio is stepping into a more equal role within the ad ecosystem.

These events below provide excellent opportunities for

• Ad agencies to build campaigns and promotions
• Local media sales professionals to sell advertising to retailers

These events attract large audiences and offer high visibility for brands. By aligning advertising campaigns with these events, retailers can effectively reach and engage their target customers.

Organizations, to their detriment, often overlook opportunities to spotlight exemplary behavior—ethical behavior in particular. Increasingly remote workforces, with limited non-essential communication, likely worsen the situation. And the situation as it stands isn’t that great. Most of the time, the focus of employee recognition is not on ethics but on metrics related to the bottom line, or subjective perceptions of overall performance.

How one company used existing remote team management experience to take the rest of its sales staffers remote and set them up for long-term success Remote work went mainstream in 2020, and the forced experiment showed us that working from home doesn’t have to derail productivity. In fact, a 2020 survey from FlexJobs shows that 51% of respondents said they feel more productive in their home office than at a traditional workplace.

Even when this CEO didn’t hit all of his objectives, keeping a “go big” mentality helped him get closer to where he wanted to be. It might sound elementary, but our anecdotal evidence shows that companies actively setting big goals typically leads to business growth and sustainability.

The best sales teams get into an aligned operating rhythm and execute using agreed-upon best practices. So many sales organizations operate with frontline sales managers “doing their own thing.” It reminds me of the times I spent watching my step-daughter’s Pee Wee/youth soccer games when she was growing up. She played in an all-girl league, and wherever the ball rolled, the ponytails followed.

Mindfulness, a key component of Buddhist philosophy, has become quite in vogue today. Get on the right path by asking yourself one question. As a leader, it is critical to be mindful and present in interactions with your many stakeholders throughout the day. While this is very easy to understand in theory, it is incredibly difficult to do in practice.

It’s become high fashion to declare the future of selling is “virtual.” While F2F, telephone, text, and other approaches will continue to exist, everything is moving to virtual. Usually, there’s a whole bunch of data to support why this is important. For example, sales people can make back to back sales calls through the whole day.

Could you be solving the wrong sales problem? In other words, is the culprit behind a lack of sales the real issue or an easy “scapegoat,” which is masking the real problem? If this is occurring in your business, or any business for the matter, it could spell trouble. Trying to “fix” something that isn’t broken only to have the real problem go unaddressed is a recipe for disaster.

Building trust virtually, finding qualified leads, getting in front of the decision-makers — these are all challenges that salespeople face. And as a sales manager, you’re finding innovative ways to address these issues. However, to become more effective in your role and provide a better overall direction for the entire team, it’s important to know the current challenges that sales managers face as well.

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with an executive. It was a large organization. By most measures, it was extremely successful. Year after year of good (perhaps not great) revenue growth, good profitability. They checked all the boxes the financial markets tend to care about and it was reflected in their stock price. But the executive was uncomfortable. As we peeled back his concerns and started looking at the data, we discovered some interesting things:

Lead Change is a leadership media destination with a unique editorial focus on driving change within organizations, teams, and individuals. Lead Change, a division of Weaving Influence, publishes twice monthly with SmartBrief. Today’s post is by Michelle Ray. Six days before the world shockingly and unexpectedly shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was enjoying a lovely breakfast with a young woman named Chelsea.

Imagine you are tapped on the shoulder to lead an upcoming training program for a cohort of soon-to-be first-time managers in your organization. You’re probably flattered, excited and just a bit nervous. While you’ve been successful as a manager, it’s daunting to think about how you will translate your experiences into lessons these new managers can learn from and apply.