Sales Management | How To Be A Flexible Sales Leader

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Dan

dancing sales manager Sales managers are hired to solve problems. They’re also hired to lead, but they end up spending an enormous time solving problems within the sales team. Say a sales person is showing consistently poor performance? Take it to the sales manager. Quarterly sales stink? Let the sales manager handle it. Hiring a new sales person? Let the sales manager take that one.

You can’t solve everything, although you may feel that you should – your ability to coach your salespeople so that you help people solve their problems instead of you solving people’s problems.

All sales managers believe in the magic behind good sales coaching. But an amateur or an average sales manager’s coaching style is rigid. It is solid and won’t budge. The sales people under him are forced to adapt to his specific coaching style. Continue reading →

Masterful Reprimands – The Best Sales Management Training

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Dan

reprimanding sales manager As effective as Masterful Praisings are in reinforcing good behavior, reprimands are as effective at curtailing bad behavior.

We call em, you guessed it…”Masterful Reprimands”.

Although they are basically concept, just on opposite ends of the spectrum, there are big differences in the approach.

For your “veteran” salespeople, this tactic is particularly effective in changing ingrained bad habits and behaviors. How many of these guys have you got? Continue reading →

Gain Your Sales Reps’ Trust By Adopting A Servant Leadership Style Of Management

Posted on September 18, 2010 by Dan

salesperson serving Everyone loves a good boss. On the contrary, people hate to work for someone they don’t get along with. That’s a problem right there. A top sales manager should be able to connect with his or her sales reps. If you can’t do that, if you don’t have the talent or patience to try and get to know your sales reps, then you might as well forget about being a top sales manager someday.

One way to connect with your sales people is through open communication – the kind of dialogue that encourages sales reps to think and find the solution themselves.

Carol Super says this about sales management. “The best managers have an attitude of ‘I’m here to help you.’ When they propose something, they make the employee feel that what they’re proposing is in the employee’s benefit even if it’s a sacrifice.” Carol Super is a sales trainer and professional speaker in New York City.

It’s called “servant leadership,” leading by maintaining a humble and responsive tone to the needs of your sales reps, and showing curiosity for their opinions and ideas. Continue reading →

Let Sales Superstars Be Sales Superstars: No Way Out Of The 80/20 Rule

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Dan

If you’ve been reading and implementing the advice in these posts, you’ve done a great deal of talking with your underperformers and have maybe even gotten rid of a few of them. Tough choices, no doubt.

You’ve then most likely spent considerable time training the remainder of your team, starting with your two most talented sales people and moved on with recruiting for some new recruits.

Once you’ve finally built or rebuilt your team of superstars, (a lengthy process in many companies as we all know), what’s next for you to do?

Start looking for more sales people with the same qualities as your sales superstars. But even when. Even if you managed to put together a team of 10 or more superstars, a rare feat, there’s still going to be two sales people who are better than the others. Continue reading →

Pareto’s Legacy: Adapt Your Strategies Based On The Talents Of Your Best Sales People

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Dan

The 80/20 rule—or the Pareto Principle—tells us that our best results, 80% of productivity, would come from just 20% of our efforts. As a top sales manager, how do you work around this knowledge so that your team of 10 sales people could improve itself to be on par with your two best sales superstars?

This time we’ll discuss a real-life example of how the 80/20 rule has helped a manager transform employees by focusing on excellence.

Here is the thing – top sales managers should have a knack for sensing sales people with real talent. They must have a good nose for it, the ability to smell a sales person’s determination to become excellent and above average. Without this, then the person is simply looking for another job to fill his or her time. No one wants to hire somebody who’s only looking for a paycheck.

Why is that? Because those kinds of employees are most likely underperformers. And top sales managers are aware that if they spend too much time on underperformers, they have less time guiding the good to become truly great. Continue reading →