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Okay, so let’s admit it, your sales reps hate it when you call them.
Admit it. They dread the completely unsolicited, the not you returning their call to them, call from you. They hate it because it means only one thing for them, which is typically, more work.

So you say something like this, “If you wouldn’t mind, we have a really short time frame on this but I need you to get me x, or I need you to email with a report on your activities from the past week, or I need you to….” any number of sales management bits of information that you may need for a higher level sales meeting or maybe for your boss, or your bosses boss, and you’ll typically just launch into whatever it is you want to them without any idle chit chat or that kind of stuff and just start demanding any information that you need.

And I know that you probably do this, and your sales managers probably do this, and we all do it, because our lives are busy, we have a lot of demand on us, and we’ve got a boss breathing down our neck to continue to push sales in the right direction and drive new sales revenues.

Here’s a crazy twist:

Have you ever just called any one of your sales managers out of the blue, and just ask them if there was anything that you could do for them?

Most of them would probably just die of shock when you called, and I’d be willing to bet because they are so used to you just calling to ask them to do something, the may not even pick up the phone to begin with because that see that it is you calling in.

Because of that, there reaction will be positively priceless and priceless in a good way.

So turn the tables, and make some serious deposits in the trust account.

Or if you feel like you don’t have the trust of your sales people, re-establish the trust, or establish it right from the beginning, by using the following techniques.

The first time that you do it, they will be completely flabbergasted. They probably won’t even know what to say. That’s a pretty good indication that you should keep doing it in a regular or semi-regular basis.

Remember, one of the most important parts of the trust account is reinforcing the concept that both you and they actual want the same exact thing. Namely you want them to be as successful as they can possibly be, because if you’re successful, then they are successful.
It is really that simple.

Here’s the “how I can help you” phone call and how it would go:

You would call up your sales person as say, “Hello Sandi, this is Ralph”.

And Sandi, your sales person would say, “Oh hi Ralph, how’s it going?”

“I had a few minutes and wanted to call and see if you needed help with anything.”

And typically the “Sandi”, in this case, they get into an absolute state of shock.
And they don’t really know what to tell you and they will think of something eventually.
And she may say, “I don’t think so, but well there is something that I wanted to discuss with you.”

Maybe it’s not something that they can specifically do for you, but at least you are reaching out to them. That is usually not what happens in sales leadership in general, there is none of that, “putting your hand down to raise people up”. Sales people really do appreciate this, and if you are having issues with trust, I know some of our members email me and ask me specific techniques in addition to the concepts that we teach inside of the academy, but trust is a really important part of you as you as a sales manager, to establish trust, or maybe you have lost trust or maybe things have happened along the course of your career with your sales people, this is a great opportunity for you to re-establish trust.

So turn the tables and make some serious deposits in the ‘ole trust account.
The first time that you do it they will be so flabbergasted that they won’t know what to say.

A quick story, when I was writing this pod cast, I was thinking about an incidence when I used this, and I tried it on one of my salespeople a while back. It had the exact desired effect of what we are talking about here.

I didn’t do it all that often, but when I did do it, it was a tremendous way to build up trust and to keep them motivated.

After I had made that call, she called me back and she said, “I have never before had a sales manager call me out of the blue and ask me if they could help me, and I am so happy that you are my manager.” That is what she said! She was extremely motivated. And we had a deep and profound level of trust between us.

And these are the sorts of things that you can do on an ongoing basis.
Not only to keep people jacked up and motivated in an environment which is a difficult economic environment right now, but it also establishes or re-establishes trust between you and them.

Our second technique is if you screw up, admit it. A lot of us have the problem that you have difficulty admitting that you have made a mistake.

I’m not sure who this anonymous guy is, but he has a quote:
“More people would learn from there own mistakes if they weren’t so busy trying to deny them”

I think that it is a great quote.

You actually build credibility by admitting that you have made a mistake.

I know that it is not an easy thing to admit.

But as a sales manager that has crap thrown at them all of the time with constant pressures to perform and bosses breathing down your neck to continue to move sales levels in an upward trajectory, you aren’t going to get everything right all of the time.

And if you screw up, its okay, you can just admit it. And if you admit it outright to your salespeople, you build more trust and you keep then motivated because you become more and more transparent and people like to work for people who are transparent, that they can identify with. If you are an authoritative type of sales manager, this may be difficult for you because you do not want to admit when you are wrong.

Trust me when you say it, when you do admit that you’ve made a mistake, you actually do build a tremendous amount of rapport and also trust with people which keep them wanting to work harder for you which is our goal. You want to establish a level of trust with your sales people so that they go to the wall for you, and do extra things and make the extra effort for you, that is the difference between mere goodness and greatness.

Also, there is a downfall to this: beware of making the same mistake over and over again. If you are continually saying “I’m wrong, I’m wrong”, and you are continually making mistakes you are also undermining your leadership. If you do that your sales reps will think that you are just plain incompetent, and that’s not the direction that you want to take. Beware of taking this tip too far and making a big deal out of admitting your mistakes. Sprinkle it in among one of your tools as a sales leader and you will certainly not only build rapport but you will also build hefty deposit in the trust account.

Our third technique, and this is awfully difficult to do at times, it is so hard with Blackberry’s and I Phones, and text messages, and all the different ways that you can get in touch with sales people, and if your company is an email-centric company this is even more of a challenge, and if your company leads through email, this is a way that you could really differentiate yourself.

In a study performed in 2007 it was found by year end 2009 41% of the time that an employee spends on a job would be time spent responding to email. And by the end of 2010 that would be up to 52%. So out of an 8 hour day, 4 hours of the average day would be spent responding to email.

With the portability and the ease of email it’s no wonder that this is the case. Especially since it is so mobile now, as you have a hand held device, I am sure that you respond to emails constantly including nights and weekends and after hours, and I am guilty of it, I admit it, because it is just so easy to anonymously pound out an email instead of dealing with the realities of actually talking to someone about a complex issue. It is just so safe, it so efficient, you can do a lot, you are multi-tasking but in the same way that this is a convenient technique it is also a technique that undermines your leadership and your ability for your sales people to trust you. Establishing trust is a hard thing to do when the only way that you communicate with your people is through your Blackberry.

As an ambitious sales manager, or an ambitious general manager who oversees a bunch of sales managers, it is critical for a sales manager to establish actual human contact with their reps. And they can’t do this by email, no matter how human you make those emails to be, with smiley faces and other stuff they put in there to personalize email.

To lead effectively you need to get into the grill of your sales force; talk to them, understand their views, consider their solutions and work together to take the right corrective course of action or the right strategic action.

To let you off the hook, you are probably responding to the majority of emails either, after normal working hours or maybe you are squeezing them in when you have very little time, and in these cases email is very handy.

I know that many times you are responding to an initial email chain and you know that you should probably call. In those cases, pick up the phone. If something tells you “gee I should probably call”, then that is an indication that you should pick up the phone and call. Don’t fall into the easy trap of going into Outlook and responding to that email or blasting out a respond “to all” instead of actually talking to people individually, especially your salespeople.

Get out in the field with your sales people, get to know them, and get to know their customers and witness them first hand in their environment. And do not lead by email, whatever you do. Pick up the phone and make that connection with your sales force.

To review the 3 techniques to establish or re-establish trust with your sales people:

1. Call them out of the clear blue, and pull the crazy twist asking them what they need, they’ll fall over from shock, but that will be a desired effect. Do this intermitted when you have some time especially if some of your sales people are on the under-performing side. This is a very effective technique to motivate and establish trust.
2. If you screw up, just admit it. People love working for other people that are transparent and real. When you admit your mistakes you become more real to them, and you reinforce you sales leadership as well as you establish or re-establish trust, especially if it’s lacking.
3. Pick up the phone instead of trying to respond or lead through email. Pick up the phone and call people especially when you are dealing with uncomfortable situations.

Those are our 3 techniques to re-establish trust with your sales people to super charge your sales revenues.

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