In the last sales management training post, I left you hanging like a cheap ornament on a Christmas tree (which I just took down yesterday and still have pine needles all over my living room)…

The truth is I was catching a plane back East and I just ran out of time to get all 7 steps into the first post.

Then Christmas came, then New Years….

Enough of the excuses, here are the rest of the 7 steps to sales management coaching here.

This is a great way to start off the New Year and really get some momentum going in 2012.

And it all starts with good solid sales management coaching.

As you may recall from our previous post, the first three steps to effective sales management coaching Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a tragedy that sales management coaching is the most underutilized skill in the sales manager’s bag of tricks.

The even greater tragedy is that if sales managers did actually take the time to coach their salespeople, and did it right, the effectiveness of those salespeople would quickly improve.

In survey after survey done with thousands of sales managers from around the world, “lack of time” consistently comes up as the number one reason why sales managers don’t coach their salespeople.

In those same surveys, the second reason why sales managers don’t sales coach is that when they’re pushed on how to actually coach their sales teams, the majority have very little idea how to do it.

This is largely because they have never received any formalized sales management training on coaching.

The Sales Management Coaching Dilemma

So how does a sales manager make time for sales coaching and do it effectively at the same time? Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, in a very non sales management training related move, we made the decision to leave home, travel cross country for a year and homeschool our two grade school boys.

We figured that instead of paying the $20,000+ per year to pay for the to go to a perfectly nice private school on Cape Cod, we’d save that money, indulge in our passion for travel and see the country instead.

So as part of that, we decided we would take our kids out of school for a year and home school them along the way…even though neither of us are teachers.

Sales Management Training and Homeschooling

All summer long, as we visited National Parks, new cities and had a real good time, we knew September and “back to school” would soon arrive. Both my wife and I work from home so we figured with the kids the ages they were, now was the time to do it before they (or we) got too old.

The real  difference for me was when September rolled around…back to school time.

Uh oh.

As the guy who used to be a sales management professional in the medical and other health related industries, Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to sales management, if you cannot motivate your sales force, then you are done.

And when it comes to motivation, no one has gotten more press on motivation than Abraham Maslow.

Don’t know who Maslow is?

Well as a sales management professional, you should.

At the very least you should use a few of his tips to motivate your sales force.

Sales Management Motivation Maslow Style

If you don’t know, Abraham Maslow is commonly known as “the father of modern motivational theory” and is one of the only theorists on motivation whose ideas have actually withstood the test of time…in spite of hundred of eggheads who have tried to dispute his theories.

In short, Maslow states that each person is motivated by a series of physiological and psychological needs that he put into his “Needs Hierarchy Theory”.

These needs are listed from basic to advanced, the lowest common denominator being these five:

1.Hunger, thirst

2. Sleep

3. Safety, security

4. Shelter

5. Health

As a sales management professional, you have to figure that most of your sales force has these five basic needs covered, right?

So what does Read the rest of this entry »

You’re finally reached the end of the second interview.

You asked all your sales management interview questions.

The salesperson has asked all their questions back to you. Hopefully for you, none of them were really stupid ones.

If they were stupid, then don’t read any more…because you’re not going to make an offer.

However, this interview was a good one and you really want to make an offer and get them on board.

So now its time to talk about the “elephant in the room”.

Its time to talk money.

Sales Management “Elephant” Strategies

In the first interview, when the subject of money, base salary, commission, bonus, shiny beads and trinkets…or any other form of compensation comes up, deaf ear it.

Yep, don’t hear it. Pretend Read the rest of this entry »