Sales Management Training | How to Gripe Without Losing Your Job

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Ralph

sales managment training mistakes

We love talking about sales management training mistakes.

I’m not sure why, but humans seems to love to rubberneck at car crashes, revel in the latest scandals and watch gladiator matches.

Well, maybe not the last one…

I have no idea why this really occurs.

I do have a theory however.

My theory is its because when we watch these things on TV or read about them in the newspaper, we gain comfort in the fact that it’s not us who is doing the screwing up…it’s someone else’s problem.

Someone once told me that this is the reason why The Jerry Springer Show is so popular.

Because when we watch the car crashes that happen on that show we say to ourselves:

“Hmm, I guess my life really is pretty good after all…at least I’m not like THAT guy!”

I think they’re right.

Sales Management Training on Mistakes

Here we have long been advocates of telling sales management professionals what Continue reading →

5 Sales Management Errors That Make You Look Like An Ass

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Ralph

Sales management professionals unwittingly look like asses all the time.

I know, because I’ve done it plenty of times.

One time, I showed up for a sales meeting in front of my entire sales team with my fly wide open (I even had the t-shirt hanging out a little bit too).

Thank God for Dustin MacPherson who coughed “FLYIN LOW!!!” as I entered the room.

Dumb…horse’s ass.

Well, actually embarrassing is more like it…that could be entire series of sales management blog posts on sales management mistakes.

Looking dumb is inevitable, you just can’t avoid it – we’re all human and were going to make mistakes.

But as a sales manager, when you start making the same mistakes over and over again they make you look like an ass…and that’s when it becomes a real problem.

And when you look like an ass on a regular basis, your sales management leadership goes right down the crapper.

So in an effort to help you not to look like an ass in front of your sales team on a regular basis, in this sales management training here are five things Continue reading →

The Sales Management Trick to Motivating A Players

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Ralph

a player sales management I once had a salesperson who just wanted to be left alone.

He was one of my top salespeople, an A player, and I figured he knew best.

“Leave well enough alone”, I thought. And I happily spent my time coaching my other, less effective sales reps; the ones who “needed me”.

I figured this was a pretty solid sales management strategy.

That is, until he left to go to the competition in his third year with the company. It was almost exactly a year after I had become his sales manager.

I always regretted that “leaving him alone” decision and I learned never to do it again…especially after he started eating our lunch in the territory he vacated to go to the competition.

The Sales Management Dilemma of The A Player

Your sales people probably tell you that they want to “run their territory as if it’s the business”. They think they’re in charge of their own destinies and all I have to do is just 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 →

How Mistakes Make You a Sales Management Genius

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Ralph

sales management mistakes I have a very close friend who is an incredibly successful internet entrepreneur.

Despite the fact that he toils in a highly competitive and cut-throat market, he has achieved an unprecedented level of success his peers could only dream of.

Last month, he made an enormous mistake. It was actually a catastrophic mistake. He was doing a project for one of his clients and documenting its success on his blog and he took his eye off the ball and just plain screwed up.

Instead of hiding from it, burying it, never mentioning it, he did the exact opposite of what most people would do:

He discussed it openly on his blog for his thousands of readers to see.

Curious about this decision to publicly “come clean”, I asked him why.

His answer: Continue reading →