A quick, easy, and straightforward way to measure your sales team is to rate each rep on a scale of 1 to 5 on two different factors: Competence to sell and willingness to be coached. Given that your time for proactive developmental sales coaching is limited, you want to focus 1-on-1 coaching on the salespeople … Read full article
The newly minted sales manager was once a high-performing sales rep who dutifully implemented the boss’s suggestions. Sales managers assume the reps now reporting to them will do the same, and follow their suggestions. Sales managers who fail to follow-up create a team culture that’s lacking in accountability. Without accountability there can be no team … Read full article
Untrained sales managers become high-paid, administrative assistants to the salespeople. Untrained sales managers think that if they solve the problems salespeople bring to them, the reps will automatically sell more. Not true. Sales managers need to expect salespeople to solve their own problems. When a salesperson comes to the manager with “a monkey on his … Read full article
Untrained sales managers focus on what they know best, selling. They spend their time working on the largest deals… or jump in to take over customer meetings… (in both cases stifling the learning curves of their reps). Untrained sales managers don’t define standards of performance… so they don’t coach to standards… which leaves the sales … Read full article
For many salespeople, attempting to obtain referrals can be frustrating and unproductive. Customers often provide either poor referrals or none at all. Many salespeople underestimate the risk that buyers feel when they’re asked to supply referrals: you’re asking your customer to put their personal credibility on the line. Another difficulty is that your customer may … Read full article
Your customers’ level of satisfaction is based on how they feel about these four questions: 1. Am I achieving the results I expected? 2. Is the product or service performing as expected? 3. Did I pay a fair price? 4. Does the way I’m treated by your support people make me feel important? The first … Read full article
A sales team typically consists of a few leaders and lots of followers. So does a ranch, where the herd follows along behind the one cow with a bell around its neck. Many salespeople, especially those with less experience, emulate the example of the bell cows on your sales team. If one of your bell … Read full article
Many of us sales managers try to manage results. We wait until our sales rep has a bad month before we decide to get involved in “coaching” them. Then, when a rep produces a bad month, we rush over and smother them with our sales coaching trying to get their production back up quickly. Sales … Read full article
Questions every sales managers should consider in their strategic/team development plan include: Which salesperson is ready to step up and assume the lead role on this team? If I were to set a team goal to increase sales by 30% over the next 12 months, what obstacles would stand in our way? Is there anyone … Read full article
Hanging on to low producing salespeople is detrimental to your sales team! Untrained sales managers aren’t coaching reps on a consistent basis. This leads to the manager not understanding why the sales rep continues to turn in a poor performance. The sales manager then reacts to a rep’s poor production by “buying” the rep’s excuses, … Read full article