Losing your most profitable sales relationships is a concern for every professional. To protect this relationship, you must help your customers identify realistic and observable indicators of your solution’s value. If you don’t, you’re linking your personal success with dozens of factors that are totally out of your control. The way I like to help … Read full article
After you make a sales presentation or deliver a proposal, you must stay present in your prospects’ lives. The longer a prospect takes to make a decision, the greater the possibility that fear will develop when you’re not there. Therefore, to effectively handle your buyers’ fears, you need to regularly talk to them to see … Read full article
Are you directive, or supportive? A bottom-line driver? Or a cheerleader type? Hopefully, you are a combination of all of the above. Being flexible is the key, and your flexibility needs to be rep-specific. Consider the skill and will of the individual salesperson. What does this rep lack: skill, will, or both? And then ask … Read full article
Your role as a sales manager is NOT to do all the selling. Your role is to develop an elite, high performance sales team. Coach your sales people to continually get better at helping their customers buy. To do that, you need to focus more on developmental coaching throughout the sales process, not just at … Read full article
How do you manage a Prima Donna? One thing to think about is how the Prima Donna got that way to begin with. Often we sales managers create Prima Donnas by leaving them alone over many months, taking a “hands-off” style (which is a nicer way of saying a lack of management) rather than continued … Read full article
Successful salespeople have a common focus. Customers! If you don’t satisfy your customers, your competition will. As a Teacher in sales, you help your customer implement your solution in such a way that ensures maximum value. When you commit yourself to exceeding your customer expectations, you place service above self and contribute to the success … Read full article
Why is it that so many sales managers don’t coach their salespeople? Surprisingly, it has little to do with a lack of coaching and leadership skills. Below are three common reasons, and some ideas on how to change this problem. Reason One. Sales Managers are Focused on Selling, Not Coaching Many sales managers rose through … Read full article
With the 3rd quarter recently completed, the time to sit down with your team members and review their performance is likely at hand. Here are three questions you should ask each of your salespeople during your next one-on-one: 1) What are you getting from me that you like and find helpful? 2) What are you … Read full article
Our sales management training program is more comprehensive than other sales management training programs. Others place significant emphasis on a few aspects of the sales managers’ role, such as how to coach the sales process and how to hire salespeople. While our program also includes these necessary modules, we provide much more, simply because the … Read full article
A common mistake sales managers make when coaching salespeople is to give them a laundry list of things they need to improve upon. Most of us only have the capacity to improve one or two things at any given time. You don’t want to overwhelm your sales reps because you may damage their self-confidence. Give you … Read full article