Over a year ago Derrick posted on Radio Shack’s faux pas regarding the emails they sent to their employees telling them that they had been terminated. If you would have told me then that this trend would be on the rise, I would have never believed you. Unfortunately, a recent survey of 752 people found that 75 of them had experienced or knew someone who had been terminated/laid-off via email. Maybe it’s me, but does anyone else out there think that this is beyond inappropriate? Firing or laying off an employee is never a fun thing to do and I have had my share to do, but emailing some one… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Managers Must Set Expectations
I had a sales manager many years ago whom I really disliked. We had little in common, he went out of his way to annoy and he was cheap. I mean really cheap. Anyway, he did one thing that changed me as a salesperson – he asked me for qualified information on any prospect I put on my forecast. It sounds simple, but trust me, it was effective. He wanted to know why they were on the forecast, who was the decision maker, what was their budget, what was their time-frame and who was our competition. I was selling high-tech, capital equipment so this information was crucial to advancing a… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Correcting Others
Another managerial trait this week that we measure when assessing sales manager candidates. A critical aspect of successful sales management is the manager’s ability to hold salespeople accountable. At times that can be like herding cats, but it is still mission critical to developing a top-notch sales team. Correcting OthersThis ability confronts controversial or difficult issues in an objective manner while having non-emotional discussions about disciplinary matters. This trait is directly related to the manager’s balance in their ability to evaluate others and be empathetic. A manager with strength in this trait can usually provide constructive criticism to another in a way that it is not received as insulting or degrading. The… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Leads Stall
Selling Power offers up an article that explores reasons for bloated pipelines. That never happens in sales, does it? The article – Warning: There€™s a Gash In Your Pipeline – presents some excellent suggestions for why this happens and how to correct it. Robert Kear, SPI€™s chief marketing officer, observes that the lead generation challenge stems partly from the erroneous view that lead generation is a quantity problem; that the more leads you can get, the better. Instead, he says, the lead generation challenge is about maximizing value awareness with the right potential buyers. Right. It is a qualitative issue. I enjoyed Kear’s solutions offered in the article. But the last… Read More
Continue ReadingTeam-Based Intelligence
Ok, I haven’t heard of this book until now, but it sounds most interesting – Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work. The book is profiled in the BusinessWeek.com article Building a Better Team. From the author: Teaching an Anthill to Fetch is a metaphor for the challenge of creating a significant level of collaborative intelligence in a system. It applies equally whether it is a team, a business, or an entire organization. The title also poses a question: Is it possible to create change at a micro level that will have s(sic) predictable large-scale effects? In my opinion it is. I think he is on to… Read More
Continue Reading2 Performance Problems – Mismanaged and Misemployed
Since we work in the sale hiring and management arena, we get the chance to see a sales position from both sides – the sales management side and the sales person side. It is a unique perspective that we discuss often internally. Like most people, we tend to look at what goes wrong in these situations and we really see 2 items that lead to performance issues within the department: Mismanaged – Sales Manager sideThis problem is quite severe and certainly is the greater of the two problems. A sales manager who mismanages salespeople has a tremendously negative effect on an entire company. The most common problem is disengagement. A sales manager… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Conveying Role Value
This week we focus on another important sales leadership trait. We’ve seen this trait firsthand have the effect of holding a sales team together during turbulent times. Conveying Role ValueThis ability draws upon a variety of traits (empathetic, interpersonal and leadership) to instill in an employee a sense of value for the task at hand. It is the ability to convey to another the value and importance that a given role carries with it. This is not a measurement of a person€™s ability to understand a role€™s value, but to communicate that value to another or group of others. A sales manager with strength in this capacity will be able to effectively… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Realistic Goal Setting For Others
As the unfortunate recipient of some heinously impossible sales quotas in my day, I am most intrigued by this week’s trait as it pertains to Sales Managers (and a few from my past that I would enjoy assessing on this topic). Realistic Goal Setting For OthersThe ability to set goals for others that can be achieved using available resources and operating within a projected timeframe. This trait includes the ability to utilize previous measurable performance in the establishing of goals and/or quotas. A sales manager with strength in this capacity is adept at understanding the potential of another individual, weighting the requirements of a job against their abilities and setting realistic/attainable goals for… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Is Not A Game
From the JustSell.com newsletter: Sales is not a game. Nothing about it should be left to chance. An effective process that ensures progress toward the goal of bringing in new customers and retaining current customers is what you and your team should strive for. Your process should be methodical, predictable and hold you and/ or your team accountable. Excellent. Unfortunately, we encounter many sales departments that have no process. We are strong proponents of a selling system. The last thing a sales manager needs is a team of lone wolf salespeople attacking the market with different processes. Good luck with the forecast in that scenario. The system should be flexible… Read More
Continue ReadingHow Many Calls Does It Take To Close?
That is a pertinent question in successful selling and one we always ask when profiling a sale. Many sales managers that we talk to would like to have a one-call close sale no matter what the sales cycle. That misalignment always leads to a unique discussion. Selling Power offers a good article on this topic in What€™s the Purpose of this Call? I found this excerpt to be quite revealing: Consider this example. Fournies was recently speaking at a national meeting to salespeople whose product was a $25,000 chemical analysis machine sold to hospitals. He asked his audience how many calls it took to sell their product to a hospital… Read More
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