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 →

Sales Management Motivation Is Easy…But Do We All Do It?

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Dan

Sales Team Meeting I’m continually amazed at how many sales managers have absolutely no clue what actually motivates their sales reps.

Although I suppose I shouldn’t be, I’m even more surprised to the degree that this ignorance pervades the highest level of the sales management food chain. Let me explain… Continue reading →

From Product-Centric To Solution-Centric: Sales Training Isn’t Everything

Posted on September 12, 2010 by ralphburns

If you think the world’s CEOs and top sales managers don’t know squat about being solutions-centric than product-centric, which is why they’re struggling keep their heads above water, you’re dead wrong. The principle of adopting a solution-centric business model has been around some time. Everybody is doing it. But even so, why are we still having the same problems?

It’s easy to say, “We are changing our business tactics from product-centric to solution-centric. Starting tomorrow, we are going to sell not products to our customers, but solutions.” From the perspective of a sales person, it sounds about right, but it really isn’t. Focusing to be solution-centric merely at the point-of-sale means nothing if the company still retains its product-centric DNA.

What the average sales manager imposes are “pseudo solutions”, temporary fixes disguised as long-term solutions. Continue reading →