Ray Makela

Improving Sales Performance | Change Agent | Speaker | Author | Coach | Forbes Contributor

As Managing Director of the Talent and Training service line at SBI, I help mid-market and enterprise companies transform their sales teams into peak performers with training solutions customized to their challenges and culture. 

I started my management consulting career 30 years ago as an Organizational Change consultant at Accenture, and I have carried that passion for helping organizations implement effective behavior change with me across many different executive roles.  I also believe effective change includes investing in front-line managers to ensure the desired behavior changes can be reinforced and coached in the future. 
 
Your sales reps need the right selling skills to make every customer interaction count. And your sales managers need the skills to reinforce and coach those key sales behaviors.
 
When you take this dynamic, customized sales training approach, you get the super-charged performance that unlocks consistent and growing revenue.
 
That’s why leading sales organizations choose @Sales Readiness Group.
 
We provide award-winning training programs designed to develop the underlying selling and sales management skills that are pivotal to creating a top-performing team.
 
If you're serious about improving your sales team’s performance, message me here on LinkedIn to schedule a complimentary consultation.

CEO and Managing Director

Sales Readiness Group (SRG) is a Seattle-based professional training and development firm that delivers industry leading sales and sales management solutions. Our programs are designed and delivered to produce sustainable behavior change and improve the performance of sales teams.

Leveraging our extensive curriculum library, our programs are custom-tailored based on each client’s unique development needs. These programs promote skills adoption and retention through a highly engaging, interactive program methodology and blended training delivery methods – onsite, online and on demand. 


Managing a sales team is one of the toughest jobs in the GTM org.

Managers are overworked, overscheduled, and drowning in data.

And in many organizations, AI is just adding to the burden—another tool, another dashboard, another process to manage.

More tools. More data. Same problems.

In reality, frontline managers already spend ~47% of their time on admin, reporting, and opportunity management  — and only a fraction on coaching and deal strategy.

We need AI to fix that, not make it worse.

Here’s where to focus instead:
👉 Give managers time back
Leverage AI to automate admin, reporting, and CRM hygiene

👉 Make coaching more focused and insightful
Use AI to pinpoint where reps need help, what skills are lacking, and where patterns can be addressed at scale

👉 Stop “pipeline storytelling”
Use AI as an early warning system to identify risk early and actually move stuck deals

If AI doesn’t change how managers spend their time, it’s just another expensive distraction.

We break this down in our latest report:
https://lnkd.in/gzUY-2xx

Dave Lingebach, Craig Riley, Rick Karlton, Charlie Dorrier, Nick Toman
SBI, The Growth Advisory

As CEO and Managing Director of Sales Readiness Group, I help mid-market and enterprise companies transform their sales teams into peak performers with training solutions customized to their challenges and culture. 

I started my management consulting career 30 years ago as an Organizational Change consultant at Accenture, and I have carried that passion for helping organizations implement effective behavior change with me across many different executive roles.  I also believe effective change includes investing in front-line managers to ensure the desired behavior changes can be reinforced and coached in the future. 
 
Your sales reps need the right selling skills to make every customer interaction count. And your sales managers need the skills to reinforce and coach those key sales behaviors.
 
When you take this dynamic, customized sales training approach, you get the super-charged performance that unlocks consistent and growing revenue.
 
That’s why leading sales organizations choose @Sales Readiness Group.
 
We provide award-winning training programs designed to develop the underlying selling and sales management skills that are pivotal to creating a top-performing team.
 
If you're serious about improving your sales team’s performance, message me here on LinkedIn to schedule a complimentary consultation.

I really enjoyed this conversation with Christopher Kingman, CREP, where we discussed the Revenue Enablement Society's new Certified Revenue Enablement Professional (CREP) program.  

This isn't about checking a box, this is about making revenue enablement more strategic, more impactful, and more rigorous as a discipline. 

Thank you Chris for taking the time to chat with us. We're excited to see this program in action. 

#RevenueEnablement, #CREP

Experience alone does not build the skills required to lead modern enablement.

Christopher Kingman explains why structured development and formal certification matter if enablement is going to evolve into a true profession. The Certified Revenue Enablement Professional Program is designed to bridge field experience with academic rigor and close real skill gaps.

This is about raising the standard, not adding another badge.

Watch the clip: https://hubs.li/Q0469G5n0

#SBIGrowth #SBIPodcast #SalesTransformation #GoToMarket #ValueSelling

This was such an engaging and insightful conversation with Caldwell Hart, CPSM CPSD from Avetta  on strategic negotiation.  

Having been a Chief Procurement Officer and a strategic sales executive, Caldwell has been on both sides of the table. Listen in to hear his unvarnished, inside tips for negotiating with procurement and positioning your solution for success.

In sales, negotiation is only the beginning. The real test is the relationship that follows.

If you optimize for getting the deal done instead of building trust and alignment, the relationship will fail before it begins.

Strategic procurement teams remember how you negotiate because it signals how you will behave after the ink dries.

This is why the best sellers anchor the conversation in long-term value, not short-term wins.

🎧 Hear the full conversation with Ray Makela and Caldwell Hart on the SBI Podcast.

https://hubs.li/Q0438HcC0

#SBIGrowth #GrowIntelligently #PredictableGrowth #CommercialExcellence

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