Effective Sales Team Motivation - A Sales Manager’s Guide to Understanding Motivation
Management, Sales No Comments »Before I got married, the most consistent piece of advice for me and my fiancée was, “You must have trust”. Nobody told me how to get trust - only that I had to have it. They didn’t tell me why I needed trust - only that it was necessary to build a successful marriage.
Sales leaders say the same about motivation.
To be successful in sales, motivation must be present. Of course, motivation means different things to different people. For some sales leaders it means a lack of follow-up and follow-thru by a salesperson in the sales process. For others, it means not consistently prospecting. To some, it may mean a salesperson is not developing knowledge about the new products and services to sell.
How Sales Managers Can Make Meetings & Sales Teams Far More Productive With This One Strategy
Business Management, Sales No Comments »Sales managers spend a lot of time in meetings and attempting to motivate their sales teams. Much of this time is truly wasted and not invested because the focus is on existing problems such as failure to increase sales, declining customer loyalty, etc instead of focusing on solutions.
Problems in any organization are far easier to identify and in many cases re-identify. However, determining solutions and then executing those solutions is far more difficult. Possibly that is why there are endless meetings and far fewer results happening in many businesses. Sales Coaching Tip: Problem re-identification is another word for insanity - doing the same thing over and over again hoping for different results.
Most company executives decide to spend money on training because it’s popular, especially when economic times are good. There is a view that it’s “good,” and it’s also something that responsible leaders are “supposed to do” to prepare for the future.
Unfortunately, training becomes the first activity to be cut when times get tough. There is also no objective measure that calculates the business case of return on investment for training.
A lot of business is conducted on the golf course between the fairways and the putting greens. Golf is a great analogy for how you approach sales or even the overall sales process.
Every golf course has traps to keep the golfer from successfully reaching the golf pin using the pre-determined number of strokes. When selling your products and services, you also discover sales objections or traps that keep you from successfully earning the right to do business.
The question to be asked is three-fold:
Sales Dashboard - What Real-Time Data Sales Managers Need to Manage Successfully
Performance Management, Sales No Comments »What does a dashboard on a car do? It provides information to the driver about fuel, speed, miles traveled, and other relevant information. This data is helpful while driving a vehicle.
Anybody that has driven or has traveled in a car knows that car dashboards give information that facilitates in making better driving decisions. For instance, indicating low fuel levels should alert the driver to refuel at the nearest gas station. The driver can also gauge how far away the car is from the intended destination by reading the miles covered or avoid traveling in the night if the battery levels are low.
Start Managing Using Your Sales Team’s Talents & Stop Focusing on Their Weaknesses
Sales No Comments »From you role in sales management, do you manage from a perspective focusing on existing talents (strengths) or from non-talents (weaknesses)? If you truthfully answered from a more negative than positive perspective, then can you answer this question:
Why do winning teams win because of their strengths or their weaknesses? Possibly, now is the time to change your management style especially if you wish to increase sales and have a high performance sales team.
“Do not demand accomplishment of those who have no talent. Do not charge people to do what they cannot do. Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities.” - Sun Tzu, Great Chinese Military Thinker
We cannot blame our sales managers if this thought is lost on them. Sun Tzu had written these words 2500 years ago in an essay “The Art of War” and moreover it was in China. But it is wonderful to note that how appropriate and useful are these words in today’s business world, especially in sales.
Treat Your Salespeople As Well As You Treat Your Customers!
Employee motivation, Sales No Comments »Treat Your Sales Staff Like Customers
In many organizations, people claim that marketing and sales are “joined at the hip.” Have you ever thought about your sales staff as customers? Henry Ford thought of his employees as customers for his cars. He wanted to pay them enough and charge the buyers so little that his employees could afford to buy the cars that they made.
However, what I am suggesting here is that we should go even farther with the sales staff - we should literally treat them as customers of their company’s management.
Whole new ball game…selling to top management.
Selling to your customers’ top management is a whole different ball game than presenting products to middle managers or purchasing agents. The people at the top of the corporate hierarchy may not be directly responsible for buying products or services, but their backing or recommendation can clinch a deal.
When calling on top managers, realize this: Their time is valuable and needs to be respected. Any time that executives spend with salespeople just adds hours to their already busy days, so the last thing they want is to meet with a salesperson who’s unprepared. Any salesperson meeting with an executive should have a definite agenda of what is going to be covered and how long it should take. You have to show that you care about the executive’s time.
By far the single biggest concern I hear from managers I work with is, “How can I get my people to do more?” Their number one challenge is how to ensure their employees are motivated. For the answer to this question we turn to the sales professional.
Superior salespeople do many things well but one thing stands out. They get into the head of their prospect/customer! They start where their customer is-cognitively, emotionally, even physically. How do they do this? By becoming curious-asking questions and listening intently-about their customer’s:
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