What Saving Private Ryan Can Teach You About Sales Management

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Ralph

sales management war In sales management, sometimes things get hot.

Uncomfortably hot at times…

Most sales leaders have no idea when a major argument breaks out.

They panic instead.

The Sales Management Argument

Your sales team is arguing over a hotly debated sales management issue at one of your sales meetings.

If its a really hot issue, then chances are it has something to do with money or bonus. The hottest sales management issues you face will involve one or the other:

“We’re getting screwed on this new compensation plan”…

“The sales tracking system is missing my sales”…

“Management just cut year end bonuses”…

“I’m not getting paid on all of my sales”…

Or any number of myriad sales management issues you have to deal with, that you have no say in…but have to diffuse somehow.

Things are getting out of control.

Your salespeople are angry, upset, unruly.

People are yelling, they’re angry.

You, the sales leader have lost control.

What do you do?

Do you start yelling?
Do you antagonize?
Do you tell em all to “all of you…shut the hell up!!!!”?

You should do none of that.

You “diffuse the time bomb” instead.

Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) does it brilliantly here in Saving Private Ryan…

What Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) Knows About Great Sales Management

How does Miller Continue reading →

Sales Management Training | How The NFL Is Just Like Sales Management

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Ralph

sales management training and the nfl Ahhhh….it’s football season again.

I love football, there’s just no better sport to watch.

And now that the season is in full swing, this can only mean certain things:

The Indianapolis Colts are in first place in the AFC South
The Detroit Lions are in last place in the NFC North

Uh….hold on for a second….

As of this writing, the Indianapolis Colts haven’t even won a game yet…and Detroit (with the exception of a last minute comeback form the 49ers and would have been undefeated and tied for first in the NFC South) is 5-1 and in second place in the NFC South!

How things change from a year ago….

Its kind of like your sales management business a few years ago before this “world recession” thing hit.

Sales Management Blindside Hits

One day, you’re humming along, customers are placing purchase orders, your reps are making money, sales are flowing then, WHAM! Out of nowhere a global recession blindsides you and your business.

Sales start to tumble, your formerly contented customers are haggling you on price at every turn, low-priced competitors start to steal your market share, your boss starts to lose his cool, your sales reps start leaving for “other opportunities”….

Your sales management ship has suddenly sprung more leaks than Continue reading →

Sales Management Training | How to Discipline Without Being a Dick

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Ralph

sales management dick No sales management professional really wants to be a dick.

But sometimes, you gotta be a dick.

And that “sometimes” occurs when your sales reps are no longer listening to you.

It usually happens when they think your sales management leadership is weak.

Don’t worry.

It’s happened to me and it has happened to every sales management professional who’s reading this post at least once (and there are a few of them) :-)

So what do you do when they start “tuning you out”?

Do you:

Crack down hard and make em all “bow to your every command”?

Just continue as if nothing is happening?

It’s a tough choice. A choice that will in fact determine your sales management leadership for months to come.

So as the Elder Knight states in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, you must not Continue reading →

Sales Management Training | How to Use Humor in Your Sales Management Speeches

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Ralph

sales management humor I once took a sales management training course on how to give speeches. The well-meaning sales trainer told us the best way to “warm up” the audience he said was to open your speech with a joke.

“A priest, a rabbi and a sales manager walk into a bar…”

Excited at the prospect of finally finding the key to great sales management speech-making, I ran out that night to my local Barnes and Noble and bought myself a joke book.

Being not a particularly good public speaker, I memorized a few jokes and then tried it out at my first sales meeting after that sales management training.

When I told the joke it was a disaster. I stumbled on the setup and flubbed the phrasing in the punch line.

I bombed big time.

Why?

First off, Continue reading →

Sales Management Training | Kill Your Powerpoint Now!

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Ralph

All us sales managers love our power point slides.

In fact, we love them way too much its killing our sales management leadership.

As soon as you fire up the LCD projector, find the right setting so your presentation actually shows on the screen instead of only on your computer (hit “function f8″ by the way)…chances are pretty good, you’ve already lost them.

As Jerry McGuire might have said, you lost them before you even said hello…

Unless they’re in the mood for a nice afternoon nap, salespeople by and large, hate power point slide presentations. They just don’t want to hear you talk to the screen about sales figures from Q4 in yet another snazzy pie chart engineered by Bill Gates’ programmers. Continue reading →