How to Manage The Egotistical Salesperson

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Ralph

The sales person with an ego the size of Jupiter is notorious in the sales management world.

That’s because most sales managers think of them as incredibly difficult to manage…or are they?

If you feel this way, you’re not alone. Many sales management experts would agree with you.

But in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Its unfortunate that most sales management training focuses on the problems associated with these kinds of sales reps. But with the egotistical sales rep, they are really the easiest for you to manage…you just have to know how.

Not sound like a Freudian sales management training psychoanalyst, Continue reading →

7 Killer Tips: How to Get Your Salespeople to Sell More Effectively

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Dan

One thing’s for sure: Cork Walgreen REALLY knew how to sell.

In one of our previous posts, we talked about how Walgreen’s Drugstores figured out how to sell more stuff and become one of the top-performing stocks in the last forty years in the process, beating Intel, GE and Cisco! Their formula for success was simple: have the best, most convenient drugstores, with a high profit per customer visit. A simple formula, no doubt and that‘s the formula for creating the single most successful company in terms of market return in the past forty years.

What Walgreens did is what you as a sales manager must do as well. If you are to fully distinguish yourself from the competition just like Cork Walgreen, then you’ll need to think about what you can be the best in the world at – and then funnel all your energies into pursuing that one thing. Figure out what one thing you do better than anyone else and teach that one thing to your salespeople over and over and over again. Continue reading →

Sales Management Training | Who else wants to be an excellent sales manager?

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Dan

So what exactly is excellence to a salesperson?

Not an easy question to answer.

“Excellence” probably means different things to everyone.

Because every salesperson has different potential and differing talents (some better, some worse), each salesperson’s level of excellence varies widely.

In “The Secret of Setting the Bar High” we discussed that a sales manager sometimes needs to be a dictator.

And when it comes to sales performance, the top-performing sales manager is positivey “Stalin-esque”. He is completely INFLEXIBLE on what he wants from his sales reps. However, he is completely FLEXIBLE on how each rep will go about getting it.

Even though the potential of each salesperson is varied, the level of excellence in sales is very clear, quota is the only true measuring stick. So, here it is:

1. If a salesperson has never achieved quota, excellence is hitting quota, period.

a. However, after the sales rep hits quota two or three times, the goal of excellence then becomes #2.

2. Any goal that both exceeds quota and is also a stretch for the salesperson, while at the same time being realistic.

What is far exceeds? Let your salespeople tell you this one. Your job is to play editor-in-chief when they tell you.

Reel them in if they shoot too high and crank them up if they shoot too low.

My experience has been that most salespeople, somewhat eager to “impress the boss”, set their goals way too high. With unrealistically high goals, these salespeople end up just getting frustrated while simultaneously engendering skepticism and losing interest in your message.

They soon become discouraged and disengaged. Safeguard against that by being extremely critical of their direction.

Learn more valuable sales management tips by clicking on the form to the right of this post – Ill send you the FREE Video and Audio on How to Motivate Your Sales Team.

Add a comment to this post and tell me what you do to prompt your salespeople to achieve excellence.

To learn even more about sales manager training, get our free ebook.

Sales Management Training on how to become a “roving sales leader”

Posted on March 18, 2009 by ralphburns

roving-sales-leader Management By Walking Around (MBWA) took the management world by storm in the 80′s.

The author of this ground-breaking management theory was Tom Peters.

He was immediately hailed as a “leadership genius” and touted as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal.

MBWA is really just common sense… Continue reading →