Inside Our Head

While delivering our Sales Management Leadership workshop recently, a medical equipment sales manager in the audience raised his hand and said, "I see myself as more of a "player-coach." I asked him to elaborate.

He went on to share a recent example when he was working with one of his more productive and experienced salespeople. They had just concluded a meeting with a physician in a hospital and were walking toward the exit. Their next appointment was not for another two hours, so the sales manager asked his rep, "Is there any reason why, now that we're inside this hospital, you aren't going to pick up the house phone over there and call a few more prospects for appointments?" Calls made from a hospital's in-house phone don't get screened like calls from outside the building.

The salesperson replied, "Physicians don't like to be interrupted in that way, so I don't do that."

Where-upon the player-coach marched to the nearby house phone, picked it up, and succeeded in scheduling an appointment with the first person who answered, a physician. "See, the house phone works," he said. He made a few more phone calls for the salesperson, and then the two of them went on their way to her next appointment.

Indeed, this sales manager was a player-coach. He did demonstrate to his salesperson that once in the hospital, the house phone is an effective tool for setting new appointments.

But the sales manager made a big mistake - he demonstrated how to perform an important sales task, but he didn't obtain commitment from the salesperson that she would start making these types of calls in the future. In sales vernacular, he made a great demo but he didn't "close the sale" by obtaining commitment.

Every sales coaching discussion should conclude with a request for commitment to change. And, every coaching discussion should include a follow-up step by you. By following-up, and inspecting what you expect, you show your commitment to helping the salesperson be the best he or she can be. And, you send the message to your sales team that your expectations of performance are not to be taken lightly.

July's Sales Management Leadership open enrollment workshop was a big success! The "overall effectiveness" rating from participants' program evaluations scored 4.75 out of 5, which equates to a rating of 95%. A few comments from program participants include:

A Director of Sales for a digital marketing solutions company headquartered in New York City says: "Kevin kept it lively and engaging. I think good instructors can make or break a session like this. In this case, Kevin knocked it out of the park! Great job."

A new sales manager for a medical equipment company says, "This class is great for new sales managers. The fundamental teachings are important."

A VP of Sales for an industrial manufacturing company says, "Held my attention – opened my eyes to new ways to look at leading, developing and motivating my salespeople."

With the success of July's workshop, we're really looking forward to our next Sales Management Training Seminar to be held on December 1-2, 2010 in Salt Lake City at the Airport Hilton.

We look forward to seeing many new faces at this great workshop for sales managers!

Click here to enroll today.

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 I need to let go? Who is my low performer?
What step of the sales process are we weakest in, and what specifically can I do to correct this?

Every good sales manager needs to spend time focusing on issues such as team morale, individual rep motivators, career planning for sales reps, etc. Get a strategic plan for developing your sales team.

There are actually 29 specific time-wasters that a lot sales managers suffer from. Sales managers become buried in busy work, putting out fires and feeling overwhelmed.

They're working harder than ever--unable to catch up--and no time for their number 1 priority: sales coaching.

The result? The individual on the team with the most highly developed sales skills--the sales manager--has zero time for coaching the sales team. No time to teach his or her talents, skills and energies to those individuals on the team who need and want it the most.

If you are one of these sales managers, we can help you! Our consultants at TopLine Leadership are highly successful, experienced practitioners of effective sales and sales management behaviors. We've trained over 35,000 sales managers, and tens of thousands more salespeople, for many of the most successful sales organizations in the world.

Sign-up for our 2-Day Sales Management Workshop. Get on the path to sales success.

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, assuming the rep will turn it around soon. But by this time the problem is too old to fix. The opportunity to correct this problem occurred months ago, and the sales coaching opportunity was missed.

Most sales managers know this. She blames herself for the rep's continued failure to perform and, out of guilt, gives the rep even more time on the job to fail some more. The manager's acceptance of one salesperson's mediocrity brings the entire team down.

People who recently bought from you after scouting the competition are a rich source of information. It's worth talking to them to see what they can tell you about how your product or service compares to the rest of the market. Ask them if they would explain why they chose you, what strengths they perceived. If you know them well, ask if they will send you copies of your competitor's proposals.

Often times, professional salespeople overlook the importance of current clients. These past clients are more likely to buy from you in the future... ask them for more sales! Your sales training initiatives must include sales training for current clients. This is a great method for building the great sales team you want and need.

In this time of economic struggle, creating a unified sales force with a common sales language and single sales message becomes imperative if your company is to achieve its goals.

When you bring together different sales cultures and levels of sophistication within a newly-merged organization the result is often reduced sales, erosion of trust with customers and ineffective sales coaching of the sales process.

Your sales force is your frontline of contact with your customer. They carry your corporate message, your philosophy, and deliver the value you offer. They are the implementers of your marketing strategy. It doesn't matter who you are, if your sales team is giving conflicting signals, rather than a consistent message, you erode your name and what you stand for.

Without a common selling language, companies may find they are fielding "bands of selling nomads," salespeople that complicate, rather than simplify clients' lives.

This is particularly true if your company has national accounts with multiple client locations, and multiple salespeople calling on that account. Varying communication styles, standards, and levels of expertise can cause clients to go elsewhere if another firm is more coherent and efficient in its sales approach.

Sales Management Leadership Seminar: July 14-15, 2010

Does your company have one or two sales managers who would benefit by learning new skills to develop an elite, hi-performance sales team?

Just nine seats are still available for our next open enrollment Sales Management Leadership workshop at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno, Nevada. This session will sell out, so call us, or sign-up today.

A similar questioning track can help you, the sales coach, diagnose sales skill deficiencies.

For example, you could debrief a rep's first meeting with a prospective customer by asking the salesperson:

What problems does that customer have that we can solve?
Why is the customer experiencing these problems?
What will happen to the customer if they don't do anything about them?

Now, listen to the quality of answers you hear. Did the salesperson perform diagnostic questioning as effectively as you could have done? If not, why not? If the sales rep doesn't get better at this skill, how will it impact their sales results? The answer to these questions must be understood by not only you, but each salesperson on your team.

You will improve your effectiveness as a sales coach by slowing down, asking more questions and developing needs. Sound familiar?

Most sales managers coach too fast. When coaching, we don't help sales people find their own answers.

Managing a sales team is a much different set of skills than selling, but in at least one respect, the same skills which helped you become a great salesperson can, when applied, help you become a more effective sales manager, too. Your ability to diagnose customer needs can and should be applied to help you become a better sales coach.

While coaching salespeople, we sales managers often don't listen to everything salespeople want to tell us - we jump in with a "diagnosis" and "prescription" before they're done talking. Just as slowing down the sales process can help your customers buy faster, slowing down as a sales coach can help your sales people learn and develop faster!

As a salesperson you asked a) about customer problems, b) why the customer was experiencing this problems, and c) what will be the likely effects on the customer if they do nothing to solve these problems?