Sales Management

When I accept a consulting assignment, I insist on administering psychological tests to each of the managers and salespeople in the organization before I arrive on site.

I am no stranger to psychological testing. I majored in clinical psychology in college, worked in a clinical environment in my first job following graduation and brought testing with me when I joined the business world.

Psychological testing is about the closest thing to a crystal ball I have found to predict future behavior.

Don’t misunderstand me, psychological testing is not perfect. It is not as accurate as, say, a blood test. However, it is by no means inaccurate, either. In fact, when I review an employee’s psychological testing results with them, most are amazed at how much insight I have into their strengths and weaknesses from the way they filled out the test.

In my company, we ha...

If an outside sale is truly a sales process, then there are steps involved for each sale. Since we agree on this fact, it makes sense to manage salespeople towards each of the steps in the sales process. The best way to manage these steps is taking them one at a time, moving forward each step toward the sales close. Essentially, you want to begin with the end in mind which Steven Covey suggests as the second habit of successful people.

Too often a sales manager loses track of the importance of the sales process and focuses on the activities. I remember when I was selling copiers how the sales managers’ focus was only on my sales activities. This tyrant of a sales manager challenged me each day. My calendar needed to show 3 appointments, 20 cold calls and 50 telephone calls. The fundamental belief that sales activity would lead to sales was flawed. It wasn’t the activity that mad...

Perhaps you have driven past the road signs for new developments proclaiming they are "Master-Planned". Maybe, you live in one. Master-Planned Communities usually incorporate extensive recreational amenities like lakes, golf courses, and expansive parks with bike paths, and jogging trails. The original planners may even incorporate office parks and hotels/motels into the community's plans. This balanced plan enhances the value of the properties and makes them more valuable and enjoyable to live and work in.

The Sales Planning Question

If you stepped back with me for a minute and took a bird's eye view of your sales plan, would it be considered a Master-Planned Sales Plan? Let's imagine that your original sales plan was to support 550 core customers. The strategy was to develop a community of customers that would increase your bank account and capitalize on the capab...

Many managers and executives sabotage employee performance systematically and regularly.

Why would they consciously or unconsciously sabotage organization success with this destructive management style? Change can be either a curse or a blessing. Most people fear, dislike and resist any change that they perceive threatens their security, future success or well being.

Regardless of the best corporate intentions or agendas surrounding any change in policy, procedure, re-organization or expansion, employees from the boardroom to the lunchroom tend to think the worst when change appears on the scene. Regardless of its purpose, need or anticipated outcome change is often a saboteur of individual performance and organization productivity and profits.

In order to maintain and or increase market share, competitive posture, or long term financial stability, while keeping c...

Unfortunately, the task of selling never becomes any easier and as competition continues to intensify, sales people will face issues that can be extremely difficult to deal with i.e. decreased product uniqueness, increased competition within ‘safe’ markets, longer sales cycles and shorter product life spans. Every organisation that intends to survive in the re-engineered environment which arrived with the new millennium must, in my view, respond to those realities

During the seventies, eighties and nineties, it was common for large corporations such as Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Compaq etc to put their new sales recruits through a twelve to eighteen-month training programme. Today, salespeople consider themselves extremely fortunate if they receive an initial two weeks of induction training or product familiarisation workshops.

So what has changed? Have companies discovered...

Do want to be known as "The Expert" or "The Guru"? Do you want to advance your career and income? If you answered yes to both of these questions then you need to become a “Top Performer” in your profession. Whether you are now a Manager, Executive, Consultant, Sales or Service Specialist, then Communication and Questioning skills will be one of the keys to your success. Experience and knowledge in your area of specialty may make you an above average performer, but to be a “Top Performer” start implementing the following 13 Communication and Questioning skills and action items today.

Top performers are successful by being honest, respecting a clients intelligence and focusing all their energies on how to make a difference in a clients life. After reviewing the following “Top Performer” Communication skills and action items, you will know how to be more effective, efficient, and s...

Presence is the ability to empower and influence others into believing in you, trusting in you and jumping on the bandwagon. You give them the energy they need to bring to pass the results you want. You help them see themselves in the future carrying out your vision. They become excited and energized by your passion and enthusiasm. They are magnetized and motivated by your charisma. What's more, they are lifted and inspired by your optimism and expectations. In essence, with influential presence on your side, you're a source of empowerment, encouragement, inspiration and permanency to your prospects.

For some, charisma is a mysterious attribute. It's challenging to describe someone who exudes charisma because there's really no way to quantify the effect this kind of person seems to have on others. It seems it's a black or white issue; that is, you...

Optimism is more than a positive mental attitude. It is not constantly saying positive things to yourself and hoping they will come true. Rather, true optimism is a frame of reference that governs how you look at the world. Optimism means having expectations that, for the most part, things will eventually turn out OK. Being optimistic means that you really believe that you will be able to accomplish everything you set out to do. Influence and optimism come together when you can transfer your hope and courage for the state of the world, the product or yourself into the minds of others in such an irresistible way that they will be inclined to follow you.

Influential optimism means that you see the positive in all situations. Rather than focusing on disappointment or negative feelings, you look for ways to move forward. People want to spend time with ...

Most companies are looking for ways to manage their most important business relationships more effectively and more efficiently. It is not easy to do and it is not always enjoyable to do, but when a major account strategy works well it is extremely satisfying.

Major Account Management is a broad subject and this series of articles is designed to help make the management of major accounts;

Easier

More Enjoyable

More Effective

Starting Point:

There are many definitions of major account management but my favourite and one I have used throughout my work, is from The Financial Times:

“The art of developing long-term relationships with selected customers”

It is simple, clear and it shows us what is important.

This summary looks at each part of this definition i.e.

o Major Account Management is an art not a form...

An inspired and motivated workforce is essential for any business that hopes to stay ahead of the competition. But just how do you motivate people? What kind of leadership do people respond to? And how can you improve the quality of leadership in your business?

The Inspiration Gap:

In a survey of more than one and a half thousand managers, people were asked what they would most like to see in their leaders. The most popular answer, mentioned by 55% of people, was ‘inspiration’.

When asked if they would describe their current leader as ‘inspiring’, only 11% said yes. The two attributes that people actually mentioned most often when describing their leaders were ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘ambitious’. As well as this thirst for inspiring leadership, there’s also evidence to support the idea that companies with inspiring leaders perform better.

The Sunday Times pu...

If you’re like most hiring managers, you may have made the mistake in the past of hiring a sales person because you had too few candidates, and as a result of that, you “wished” and “hoped: that the candidate that you did have would turn out to be a great sales performer. We all know that when we wish and hope that someone is going to turn out to be a superstar, this often comes back to bite us. I’ve experienced this in the past, and I know a lot of other sales managers and vice-president’s of sales who have experienced this in the past as well.

One of the key things that we absolutely have to do when we have too few candidates is to be doubly rigorous about the process that we put our few candidates through, in order to make sure that they’re fully vetted. This means adding more people to the interviewing team and pushing back on our own natural tendency to want to justify a...

Our company specializes only in hiring sales and marketing people, from front line contributors, to mid-level and all the way up to the executive level. We hire sales representatives, account managers, national accounts executives, directors, and vice presidents of sales and marketing. Through that process, we’ve developed a tremendous amount of expertise in these two functional areas that most recruiters don’t have. In addition to that, our sales and marketing team expertise comes from accumulating over a hundred years in the trenches of sales and marketing, actually working for companies and building and leading many successful sales and marketing organizations. When we approach sales and marketing, we approach it with deep experience. This is what you should look for in a sales & marketing recruiting firm.

Most recruiters don’t have that kind of experience in this partic...

Does your company have a good sales performance planning process? Are your people on your sales team fully benchmarked against a measurable set of annual goals? Do they understand exactly what it is that they’re tasked with over the next year, to drive revenue growth for your company?

We find that many companies under-perform in doing proper sales performance planning with their sales people. As a result, their sales representatives under-perform and so do their companies. If your company is moving towards its fiscal year end, now’s the best time to engage in sales performance planning with your sales team; particularly if you’re having a kick-off event to celebrate the end of your fiscal year and start a new one. It’s a great time to make sure you’ve set proper objectives and talk with each team member about what their upcoming revenue, margin and activity goals will be for...

I dedicated my first book: Gross Margin: 26 Factors Affecting Your Bottom Line, to my best-ever boss. He was my best-ever boss not because he was easy to work for. The opposite was the case. He was the toughest boss I ever had and because he was so tough, I produced far more than I would have ever produced had I worked under a boss who was more interested in how much his employees liked him than he was in how effective they were on the job.

I accomplished enormously more for both my company and myself than I ever dreamed possible because I had someone who cared enough about me to squeeze everything out of me that I was capable of giving. Sometimes you have to make this a game. If one tactic doesn't work, you have to try another and then another until you push the right button.

My second book, 30 Ways Managers Shoot Themselves in the Foot, was dedicated to another tough man...

Nothing disarms and invites an audience in more than humor. We are instantly drawn to people we think are funny. We enjoy listening to humorous individuals and hearing what they have to say. Humor grabs attention, creates rapport and makes a message more memorable. It can also relieve tension, enhance relationships and motivate people.

If you've got an important message to share, humor can give you a huge advantage. The actor John Cleese once said, "If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth." Don't use humor just to get a laugh out of your prospects. In humor, there is so much potential for influence. Armed with humor, you can provide special insights or teach important principles.