Do Your Sales Managers Make These Common Mistakes?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by ralphburns

The best, high-performing sales managers are a different breed. nail

They notice stuff.

They notice what their salespeople are good at…as well as what they’re not so good at. They then leverage the stuff they are good at to coax even greater performance out of their salespeople. They largely minimize the weaknesses.

The average sales managers sees those same weaknesses and thinks that he can fix them. He spends all his time doing just that.

That’s why he’s an average sales manager.

Let’s show an example… Continue reading →

How A Sales Manager Can Immediately Become A Sales Leader

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Dan

sales people shaking hands What’s one of the highest compliments you can pay to someone you know?

There are a lot of nice things you could say…

“He’s a real nice guy”
“She’s very kind”
“He’s really funny”

The list goes on and on.

But when you Continue reading →

How A Top Sales Manager Gets Their Salespeople to Sell More Stuff!

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Dan

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… Continue reading →

Motivate Your Salespeople Like Richard Branson

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Dan

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. Continue reading →

Why A Top Sales Manager Needs To Be On All His Reps’ “Pre-sets”

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Dan

You have to be more popular than Howard Stern.

You also have to be cooler than Opie and Anthony too.

Why? Because one of the most critical elements to successful sales management is to always make sure you are tuned into the radio frequency of your salespeople.

Here’s why. There’s only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let’s not get too technical here…).

This is the “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you’re not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio…or worse yet, turn off the radio completely! Continue reading →