Take Your Sales Team from Good to Great with Sales Management Training

Take Your Sales Team from Good to Great with Sales Management Training

I recently reread Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t and found that many of his ideas can help you improve performance of your sales team.

Collins’ book answers the question: How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Using tough standards, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of “comparison” companies that failed to make the leap from good to great.

Over five years and 15,000 hours of research, Collins and his team deduced the key determinants of greatness – why some companies make the leap and others don’t. Here are a few of their findings and what, I think, Collins’ findings mean to you and the development of your team.

Good is the enemy of great

Some sales teams will never be great because their sales managers settle for being good. It’s easier than being great. We have also found that a lot of sales manager do not send their salespeople to any sales seminars.

First Who… then What

Collins expected to find that Good to Great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. What their research discovered, however, was that the best leaders first got the right people on the team, de-hired the wrong people, and got everyone in their optimal position… and then decided what the vision and strategy was. The saying, “People are your most important asset” is incorrect. It should be changed to, “The right people are your most important asset.” Then, put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Application questions: Is there anybody on your team who shouldn’t be? Do you have any team members in a less-than-optimal position, a person whose skills are not being fully utilized? What, and when will you rectify these situations?

Confront the brutal facts, but never lose faith

One of the most important findings from Collins’ research is that breakthrough results come about by a series of good decisions, diligently executed and accumulated one on top of the other. You don’t need to be perfect, but to be great you do need to make many more good decisions than bad ones. And good decision-making requires accurate information, which can be difficult to obtain. Collins writes:

Indeed, for those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.

Winston Churchill understood the liabilities of his strong personality. He was concerned that he wouldn’t get accurate information from his subordinates, so, during the darkest days of World War II, he founded the “Statistical Office”, a separate department outside the command structure that fed him the most accurate, indeed brutal, facts of the war. Churchill also possessed the second requirement of greatness — an unwavering faith that Britain would survive and thrive, even when things looked so bleak.

Application questions: What’s one great dream you would dare to dream (for your team) if you knew you could not fail?

Your “Stop doing” list is more important than your “To do” list.

Many sales managers lead busy lives, accomplishing task after task after task. Interestingly, the leaders studied in “Good to Great” companies made as much use of “stop doing” lists as “to do” lists. They continually asked themselves:

What can we do better than anyone else? What type of opportunities are we passionate about? And, what segment of customers allows us to make the most profit?

Good to Great leaders instilled the culture of discipline – by teaching their team where to focus, and what to ignore.

Application questions: What opportunities, or customer segments, can your team make a compelling case of being the best choice? Which of these opportunities are most profitable, and why? Finally, what can you become passionate about?

Is your team brilliant on the basics? If not, you may be losing sales you should be winning. At TopLine Leadership, we help salespeople re-focus on the fundamentals of effective salesmanship, and sales managers to master the basics of management / leadership. We can help you and your sales team with these concepts with our sales management training seminars and coaching. 

Basic Accounts Bookkeeping At Home Saves Assessment Tax

Basic Accounts Bookkeeping At Home Saves Assessment Tax

The financial benefits of preparing basic accounts bookkeeping records and producing the self assessment tax return can be overlooked. Starting bookkeeping at home is an option for anyone self employed and is important as the self assessment tax paid each year is typically the highest financial outgoing. Bookkeeping home accounts is worth the effort and does not require a high level of technical accounting or tax knowledge. Sole Trader Basic Accounts Bookkeeping Sole trader basic accounts require the simplest form of bookkeeping. Sole trader basic accounts bookkeeping require little more than retaining supporting documents of sales income and expenses and creating two lists of financial transactions. Producing the basic accounts in the format of an income and expenditure statement is sufficient to complete the self assessment tax forms. An income and expenditure statement is the total sales made during the financial year with the expenses listed by type of expense and deducted to leave the balance as the net taxable profit or loss. Starting Bookkeeping Home Accounts The first stage in starting bookkeeping is to collect together all documentary records of receipts or sales received. Review the documents and if incomplete use other sources of third party evidence such as bank statements and deposits t achieve an accurate total. Stage two to producing the home accounts is a similar process of collecting together the supporting evidence of purchases made and expenses incurred. Again if incomplete examine other potential sources of evidence such as bank and credit card accounts. Bookkeeping home accounts is just that, keeping books at home which is the home accounts. Bookkeeping is a function that many self employed business people can benefit from financially. Basic Accounts Bookkeeping Can Save Accountant Fees A significant proportion of a bookkeepers fee or the accountant fees for small business is the sorting of receipts and listing them in order, in effect doing the basic accounts bookkeeping. Accountant fees are better spent on financial advice and tax matters than producing the basic accounts themselves. The basic bookkeeping task of sorting the sales and purchases documents can produce real savings in the accountant fees. Most accountancy firms would actually prefer to receive their client records in a basic accounts presentation to enable the accountant provides a higher level of accountancy services. Save Self Assessment Tax by Understanding Basic Accounts When a sole trader adopts a positive attitude in preparing the bookkeeping basic accounts other benefits accrue. Preparing the basic accounts increases the perception of profitability and may encourage the small business owner to prepare the bookkeeping more often. By being aware of profitability financial problems may be noticed earlier and low profits will stimulate the competitive nature of sole traders and self employed businesses to improve the financial performance. The self assessment tax liability for self employed people is a major annual issue. Understanding the basic accounts will pose tax questions in regard to capital allowances which need to be claimed in the self assessment tax return. The increase in tax knowledge should maximise tax allowance claims thereby reducing the self assessment tax liability.

Guide to careers and courses.

Real Estate Accounting – Best Deal to Improve Accounting Tasks

Real Estate Accounting – Best Deal to Improve Accounting Tasks

Anyone in the real estate business would know for sure that Real Estate Accounting is the cause of headache, stress and tension. This is because real estate accounting is a lot different from the normal accounting for other businesses. It involves a lot of professional help as the standards and procedures are way different. Since it’s a requirement to maintain a fair set of accounting books, Real Estate Accounting become important to the business. In making the accounting more important sometimes the entrepreneurs themselves forget the business and keep track of the account which often leads to heavy losses. Neglecting the business is not a solution to solve these problems nor is hiring a very expensive profession. The professional will charge a heavy fee and in these times of recession and on going depression, a CPA comes in as highly expensive. Real Estate accounting firm gives one a just the right way out.

Real Estate accounting firms solves all your real estate accounting troubles in a minute and the best advantage about them is that they are a lot cheaper then a normal CPA professional. Below are reasons why one should hire the help of Real Estate Accounting than of any other source and how it might be profitable for the entrepreneur as well as the business.

The first advantage of Real Estate accounting services is that they are cheap. Way cheaper than normal professional. Hence with the current economy and the cost cutting methods this is a perfect way out. One can stay in the market, compete with the peer group companies and also make healthy profits with just a simple informed decision of hiring Real Estate Accounting. Another benefit is that since it’s a firm and handles the accounts of many companies it knows which policies are the best for the company and how to maximize profits by manipulating accounts.

The second reason why one should hire Real Estate Accounting is because accounts are like the face of a company and a lot of people read the accounts. Stockholders, stakeholders, creditors, debtors, clients, prospective investors, banks and the government look at the accounts of a company. Thus to make these people interested one has to make the accounts look attractive and Real Estate Accounting is a sure shot way to achieve that.

Real Estate Accounting makes the entrepreneur relaxed and tension free as he knows that the boring and mundane issue of managing accounts is now handles by professionals at half the cost. The entrepreneur can now think of the core aspects of the business such as growth, acquisitions and staying a step ahead of the peers. This way the funds as well as the business are well handled.

Lastly, Real Estate Accounting is a boon for small firms as well as big ones as outsourcing increases on a daily basis and the real estate market is falling sharply. With business firms going bankrupt and insolvent due to the falling rates of real estate, Real Estate Accounting becomes a god sent.