One thing’s for sure: Cork Walgreen REALLY knew how to sell.

In one of our previous posts, we talked about how Walgreen’s Drugstores figured out how to sell more stuff and become one of the top-performing stocks in the last forty years in the process, beating Intel, GE and Cisco! Their formula for success was simple: have the best, most convenient drugstores, with a high profit per customer visit. A simple formula, no doubt and that‘s the formula for creating the single most successful company in terms of market return in the past forty years.

What  Walgreens did is what you as a sales manager must do as well. If you are to fully distinguish yourself from the competition just like Cork Walgreen, then you’ll need to think about what you can be the best in the world at – and then funnel all your energies into pursuing that one thing. Figure out what one thing you do better than anyone else and teach that one thing to your salespeople over and over and over again. (more…)

When do you do your best work? When you feel bad or when you feel good?

The obvious answer is when you feel good. No one feels like doing much of anything when they feel bad.

When people don’t feel so good, they end up doing very little….not a good situation for you.

So it begs the question: does the salesperson brimming with confidence sell more than the salesperson who lacks confidence? The answer may seem obvious, but why do so few average sales managers spend the majority of their time building their people’s confidence up instead of ripping it down?

It could be that many sales managers are former sales salespeople themselves and  “seagull sales management” (swoop in, dump on the rep, then fly away), is all they know.  In this case, unfortunately, ignorance begets more ignorance… (more…)

What is the highest performing stock in terms of total return over the course of the past 40 years?

Its not Microsoft. No, its not Cisco Systems. Its not GE. It’s not even Intel.

You ready?

Its Walgreens Drug Stores.

Walgreens? You gotta be kidding me! The drugstore chain? Yep, its true. How they did it is even cooler than that fact that they did it in the first place.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins investigates how they actually did it. And the answer is very simple. All that Cork Walgreen, the founder of Walgreens did is that he took a long hard look at what his business did really well and then channeled all his energies into that one thing. In essence, he figured out exactly what Walgreens could be the best in the world at and channeled all of their efforts into achieving that one thing. (more…)

Richard Branson, the eccentric founder of Virgin Airlines and multiple other businesses is the epitome of  “unconventional” businessman. He does things HIS way, he does things the way he feels are right…and with a billion or so in the bank, he’s been more right than wrong.

How he lives and manages his businesses are by making massive goals, taking massive action and doing things “unconventionally” to achieve those goals. When everyone zigging…he’s zagging.  One of his famous quotes:

“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unconventional challenges and trying to rise above them…from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it.”

This unconventional style is how you need to think and act as a manager who craves top sales results. The truth is that there are so many management gurus who have written tomes and dissertations on exactly how to motivate people, all in search of the “one thing” that does it all with minimal effort. The real truth is that there is no ONE way to do it. Motivating to trigger explosive sales growth is the sum of hundreds, if not thousands of decisions that you make on a daily basis. (more…)