Sales Leadership: Developing the Complete Sales Leader

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

How To Get Useful Information From a Salesperson’s Professional References

Checking personal and professional references from a prospective salesperson’s resume can be a deeply frustrating experience.  Even if you can reach the applicant’s former manager, the feedback you’re likely to get will border somewhere between utterly bland and completely useless.

That’s just a byproduct of the modern American legal system – if they were to say anything that could be helpful to you, but even the slightest bit detrimental to the applicant, they open themselves up to the possibility of a harmful and expensive lawsuit. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for you to find out what you want to know… it just takes a different approach.

Instead of just calling up and asking whether the salesperson was a good employee, or whether they would hire them again given the chance, try the technique we recommend: find the appropriate contact in the company, make a little bit of small talk so that they can feel comfortable asking a couple of questions, and frame your inquiry something along different lines.

For example, suppose you have an applicant named David that you’re thinking of bringing on board. You could ask: “I’m going to be David’s coach here at our new company if he is hired. What advice would you give me on how I can help him succeed?” Similarly, you can ask, “What areas should I be focusing on with David?”

Because neither of these questions is asking for a specific reference, or for a recommendation about whether to hire the person or not, they come across as being far less threatening. They also allow the manager to elaborate on his or her insight without being strictly negative or positive. In other words, they get to the heart of strengths and weaknesses, but without putting them in a legally-vulnerable position.

Does this method take a little bit more time and effort than simply checking dates of employment and ensuring that a prospective employee wasn’t terminated from his or her last job for something horrible? Yes, it does. But at the same time, it allows you to get a perspective that you just can’t get from going over a few issues on a checklist. If you want to build a better sales team, you’re going to have to make a serious long-term commitment to the effort. Getting more useful information from references is just one of the steps.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

An Often Forgotten – But Always Critical – Sales Management Task

As we’ve already mentioned, sales managers usually feel like they have enough responsibilities to take care of on any given day – and in fact, maybe too many. But in between customer service issues, managing a sales staff with lots of personal and professional challenges, and keeping one eye on the numbers, there is one thing you absolutely, positively, have to be sure you do…

And that’s to set the right tone and example for your sales staff.

That sure sounds simple, but it’s an understanding that, once you reach it, has extraordinarily powerful implications. It’s not enough to be a sales manager, you have to be a sales leader. The difference is profound; managers set schedules, check up on quotas, and follow-up on problems with client accounts. Leaders, on the other hand, take the direction, set the tone, and otherwise create the path that everyone else will follow.

Are you embracing your role as a leader, or treating your job as supervisory position, where you’re simply focused on “hitting the numbers” and letting things run their course? The answer to that question probably says a lot about where your salespeople are, and where they are going to be in the near future.

As the leader, you will model the behaviors that you expect your team to follow, and attract the kinds of salespeople you will eventually be working with. There’s no way around it: if you want everyone else to walk the walk, you are going to have to do it first.

You have a lot of hats to wear as a sales manager, and it’s important that you do them all well if your team is going to grow revenue, keep customers, and perform at the highest levels of service. Never forget that you are the leader of your team first and foremost, however; because the moment you stop acting the way you want your producers to, they just might stop too.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

What Could Your Sales Team Learn in Two Minutes?

When it comes to sales training, a lot of managers mistakenly think they only have two options to choose from: bring in an outside training organization, or handle the training themselves.

Certainly, both of these should be a part of your sales training mix. As the leader of your department, it’s your job to be sure your team has the knowledge and skills it needs to compete for business, and no one knows your industry and situation better than you do. And at the same time, there is definitely something to be said for having someone with a new voice and perspective coming once in a while and freshen things up.

But it’s important to know that there is a third way, as well, and one that can be just as effective: having the members of your sales team teach each other.

In our book and workshops, we advise sales leaders start holding weekly “sales huddles” where producers can talk about issues and challenges they are facing in the field, give feedback on winning techniques, and otherwise raise topics that concern their selling situation. The only catch is, these meetings should take no longer than 20 minutes – and preferably less – and that each person can speak for no more than two minutes at a time.

This last point often surprises people, and understandably so. Don’t your salespeople need longer to fully explain themselves? Believe it or not, they usually don’t. That’s usually an adequate amount of time to talk about what’s going on and get some feedback, and short enough that most of your salespeople won’t be tempted to skip the meeting out of fear that it’s going to put them behind in their work.

Beyond that, getting a steady stream of two-minute thoughts, perspectives, and pieces of advice turns out to be just the thing to keep your sales team energized and thinking creatively. It’s not so long that they have to get bogged down considering every idea and implication, but it’s long enough for them to pick up an idea and see the benefit. And as the weeks roll on, so will the two-minute increments – meaning that your salespeople are always getting a little bit better week to week.

Short sales huddles are a great way to break up the monotony of weekly meetings. But aside from just making things more interactive, you might be surprised at just how much your sales team can learn in two minutes or less.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

Weekly Sales Huddles: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help Your Sales Department Find New Revenue

As salespeople and managers go, few things are as dreaded as regular sales meetings. Very frequently, they are a hassle for supervisors to put together, and often a waste of time for the producers who have to attend. Couldn’t there be a better way to stay in touch with your sales team and train them on the things that matter?

It turns out there is, it just takes a little different way of thinking. Over the course of our decades of experience working with sales departments, we have found that meetings can work, but only when they have the right tone and format. To turn your once-a-week get-together into a more dynamic exchange, we recommend you try something we call the weekly sales huddle.

Here’s how it works:

Set your weekly sales huddle for a time when you’re salespeople would have difficulty reaching their clients prospects anyway (we like Monday mornings, but your timing may vary). This is to discourage producers from skipping out on them because they have other important work to do.

Limit them to 20 minutes, no longer. These are meant to be a “shot in the arm” for your sales team, not a full-blown training exercise. Besides, keeping things short will encourage you and your team to be brief and crisp, which is good for your energy level.

Give each sales person in your team the opportunity to talk about what’s working, what isn’t, and the challenges they are facing in the field. Having the chance to share opportunities and problems with each other and in their own words is a great way to not only identify potential problems, but also to get your salespeople sharing ideas and solutions with one another.

However, ask each person to speak for two minutes or less. Again, you don’t want your weekly sales huddle to disintegrate into a chat over coffee, or a two-hour complaining session. Raise ideas, get feedback and solutions, and then move on. If the problem is really that big or important, you can always schedule another meeting for later or talk about it next week.

If you’ve been looking for a cure to the common sales meeting, the weekly sales huddle could be just the thing to re-energize your team. Bring up the concept with your producers and give it a try – you might be shocked at what 20 minutes can do for their energy level and enthusiasm.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

Good Time Management Is Good Sales Management

When sales managers think of the things they would need to work on in order to be consistently excellent, they tend to come up with topics like motivation, product knowledge, and the ability to teach their producers to provide unbeatable customer service. These are all important.  Nevertheless, they sometimes ignore some of the more subtle, mundane aspects of becoming a sales leader… aspects that are just as important to their long-term success, and their team’s.

One of these is time management.

As we are all already far too aware, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for us to do all of the things we would like to do as managers. And so, if we are to accomplish anything at all, we have to set and keep priorities. The better we can define those priorities, and the more efficient we can get at doing things we need to, the higher our productivity goes – and the greater sales our departments can generate. Very simply, good time management is good sales management.

With that in mind, here are four things any sales manager can do to get more control over each day:

Learn the basics. It’s ironic, but many of us never take the time to read a book on time management, or take in a workshop on the topic, because we just can’t seem to find the time. But if you want to become an excellent sales leader, not to mention get control of your calendar and inbox, you have to start somewhere. So, find an option that works for you and take a few hours to learn the basics of time management.   (Consider David Allen’s Getting Things Done – perhaps the leader on this topic).

Empower your salespeople. It isn’t your job to make sure your sales people hit their numbers by constantly popping in the office or watching their every move. Instead, it’s up to you to set the right expectations and make them accountable for the results. Learn to be less of a sales manager and more of a sales leader – it will free up some of your time, and open up a new world of possibilities for your sales team.

Start each day fresh. By far, one of the most practical tips we can give any sales manager is to clean off his or her desk before heading home for the day. That’s not to say that everything has to be finished, of course, but that it has to have a place. Instilling this habit doesn’t just make you more organized, it allows you to come into the office with a lot less stress and trepidation. Give it a try.

Focus on what matters… not what’s important. No, this isn’t a fortune cookie riddle. There’s a subtle but important difference between what matters, the development of your sales team in your territory, and what’s important, the numbers and revenue your department is generating. Lots of managers lose out because they focus solely on the figures. If you can learn to pay attention to the underlying causes of success or failure – and create a team of stronger salespeople in the process – the results will always take care of themselves.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

Are You Measuring The Sales Metrics That Matter?

If there is one thing that just about every sales manager on the planet can relate to, it’s the feeling of getting up close and personal with a lot of numbers. Regardless of whether your department is big or small, whether you sell shoes or superconductors, we would be willing to wager that when upper management wants to talk to you, it’s in reference to new orders, revenue streams, profit margins, and other pertinent business figures… and that you pass similar measurements on to your sales team.

In other words, you judge them by how much they are selling. For many managers, so long as they’re hitting the figures, life is good; if they lag behind for too long, things get difficult. But couldn’t there be a better way to keep your eye on the bottom line?

As it turns out, there is. Instead of simply measuring your team’s sales metrics, like a sales manager would, try thinking like a sales leader and take a look at the metrics that matter.

The first step is to break old of the tunnel vision most managers have on sales and revenue. Granted, these are important – extremely important, in fact, since they keep the company in business – but trust us when we say that, if you keep an eye on some other critical figures, these will take themselves. That’s because the numbers we’re talking about are the metrics that come first.

And what are these? It depends a bit on your selling situation, but typically they are the number of “prospecting calls made,” “proposals submitted,” or “demos performed.” By focusing your attention on the amount of activity your salespeople are creating, rather than the results that are generated from that, you can get a better feel for what they have in their sales pipeline, and what kinds of new orders and accounts are going to be showing up in the near future.

At the same time, this approach allows you to better diagnose problems as they creep up. If one of your producers is generating lots of proposals, but few new orders, then you can more easily focus on where their potential weakness lies – something you wouldn’t have gotten from raw sales figures.

The second step to watching the metrics that matter is in treating your individual salespeople like… well, individual salespeople. Because each member of your team has his or her own strengths and weaknesses, and his or her own territory, it doesn’t make sense to measure them all the same way. Instead, you’ll want to focus on what each one of them is trying to achieve, and then make sure you’re tracking what they’ll have to get done along the way.

Sales management, to a certain degree, is always going to be at least a little bit about keeping track of the numbers. That doesn’t mean you have to only watch new accounts and revenue, though – by watching the metrics that matter week by week, you give your team a much better chance of hitting the ones you need to see at the end of every year.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

The Simplest Way for Any Sales Manager to Improve Customer Retention

We have all heard that it costs most businesses five to ten times more to gain a new customer than it does to keep one they already have. So why, as sales managers, do we have such an easy time forgetting it?

There are probably a few reasons, but we aren’t alone in our culpability. Because finding new business is the key growth in any organization or industry, few things set CEOs and board members on fire quite like the prospect of shiny new accounts. In fact, if there’s one thing you’re likely to hear from the men and women that are farther up the hierarchy, it’s that they would like your sales team to do everything possible to bring in new business.

Nevertheless, It’s important that you don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. Existing customers are the lifeblood of your business, and if you have trouble remembering that, think about it this way: what would you do if your dozen best clients left tomorrow?

For most companies, that scenario would spell disaster. And luckily, it’s probably not all that likely. Still, as the sales manager, one of your key roles is to ensure that your sales team doesn’t lose accounts. One great way to do that is by conducting regular customer business reviews.

How often you should hold customer business reviews depends quite a bit on your industry and relationships. What is critical, however, is that they be separate from your normal sales calls. What you’re looking to do is set appointments with the men and women who decide to buy from you regularly and see how things are going, not only with your service, but with their careers and organizations in general.

There are two important caveats when it comes to customer business reviews: first, make it clear that you’re showing up just to see what’s new, not to offer them anything in particular. Again, you don’t want your review to come across as a thinly-veiled sales pitch. And secondly, it’s important that the rep who manages the account take the lead during the meeting. You need to be there, obviously, but at the same time you don’t want to diminish your sales person’s standing with the client. You’re just there as an observer to make sure everyone is happy, and to answer any questions that your rep might not be able to.

At a time when more and more businesses are shifting their customer service operations overseas, and account managers are having to service more clients than ever, taking the time to conduct a customer business review is a great client retention strategy. It shows the people who buy from you that you care enough to listen, and that you’re committed to maintaining a relationship that will go the distance.

Take the time to find out what’s going on with the accounts your department serves. It’s probably going to cost you some of your time and attention, but not nearly as much as finding a new set of buyers would.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System

LEADERSHIP SERIES: Research suggests that Sales Leadership is the difference maker between good performance and superior performance. And how sales leaders embrace five essential roles is critical to the success of their teams. We hope you find this series of short informal discussions around sales leadership useful and thought-provoking.

Inside Out Coaching: The Key to Getting the Most Out Of Your Sales Team

It’s almost ironic that one of the very best tools in the sales manager’s repertoire is something we’ve all seen in experience, but few of us ever put to practice in our working lives: inside out coaching.

If you are thinking that you don’t know what inside out coaching means, then you’re probably both right and wrong – you are certainly familiar with the concept, but might have heard it called something else.

Basically, inside out coaching is just what it sounds like: reaching inside the individual members of your sales team and pulling their very best work out.

How is this accomplished? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not simply a matter of motivation, bonuses, incentives, or attentive management. Instead, what it takes is a demonstration that you utterly and completely believe in their skills and talents, and the potential both have you have for their work with the customer.

If you’ve ever played a sport in school, or had a teacher or professor who took a special interest in your talents, then you probably already know what we are talking about. Having that role model who can get you to work harder than you ever have before, and not simply for a paycheck or to achieve some arbitrary goal, is what inspires so many of us to new heights.

That’s the reason that it’s inside out coaching, rather than inside out training, or inside out management. Whereas the other two would indicate something you do to your sales staff, coaching is an activity you conduct with them. As small a detail as that might seem, it makes all the difference.

The key to making this dynamic work in the real world isn’t in saying a lot of things, then asking a lot of questions. Just as a prospect who’s given the space and time to talk about his or her needs will eventually tell you how to close the sale, a salesperson who is asked the right questions – and given the freedom to answer at length – will almost always reveal where his or her own strengths and weaknesses are.

And when that happens, it’s your job as the sales leader to draw out their best work based on what you hear. For example, you might find out that a certain salesperson needs to make more calls, get to the office earlier, or do a better job of following through on customer service commitments. But since you’ve discovered these areas for improvement together, it isn’t a matter of criticism or demanding more work – you’re coaching them to stronger sales performance.

If you really want your staff to sell up to their potential, then realize that you can’t make them do it… you have to be a great coach and let them do it. Inside out coaching is the best way to do that, and a strategy that smart sales leaders put to use consistently.

© Sales Effectiveness, Inc. – All rights reserved

Learn more about the Catalyst5 Leadership System