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. 

Sales Managers Must be Good Coaches

If you’re not satisfied with your sales status look to the coach of your team – your sales managers. Here’s a way to check how good they are.

1. Does your sales manager know where his/her sales will come from by account, by product / service for 2008? Or is it about, “Here is my number. Let get out there and sell, sell, sell.” Ask each one to explain where the sales for 2008 will come from.

2. Does your sales manager know how to motivate each of his sales people? Yes, money is key, but money goes to the family. Money is about survival. But what really get the sales person going. See if your sales manager can answer this question about his sales people.

3. Does you sales manager coach and mentor. Coaching is telling his people what to do, i.e. get to the ultimate decision maker. Mentoring is showing them how to do it, i.e. show how to use your main contact to network you to the ultimate decision maker.

This requires discussing sales call plans and pursuit strategies. Then making sales calls together – not for the sales manager to sell, but to observe, give feedback and lay-out a behavior modification plan. How often does you manager do this with each sales person.

4. Does you sales manager turn-over and recruit effectively and timely. In other words does he purge the bottom 10% each year and constantly seek new recruits. Most managers are reactive. When someone leaves, they then seek a replacement. Unfortunately, because of 1-3 above, the better people (maybe not the best) leave and then the manager starts recruiting. This leaves you with the poorer performers and the new hire becomes what ever was available.

Like a college football coach, your sales manager must be good at recruiting good talent and then showing this raw talent what to do and how to do it. Don’t ever get sucked into the “experienced sales person”. Experience only means someone has been doing it before. It says nothing about how good one is, especially selling your products and services. That’s where the coaching and mentoring becomes critical. As in football and all sports, coaching and practice is critical and ongoing.

5. Finally does your sales manager hold your sales people accountable? That is when a forecasted sale isn’t made, is there a discussion that holds the sales person’s feet to the fire? Are there consequences as well as rewards? As my old football coach use to say, “I don’t want excuses, I want results or else you don’t start.”

Now it’s your call. Is the person responsible for the most important element of your business – sales – capable and doing what it takes to get you where you want to be? Or do you need to step up and take actions of training your managers or hiring new ones – and then training them. If professionals like Tiger Woods and every other athlete needs coaching, your sales managers do as well.

5 Good Reasons to File an Income Tax Extension

With not much time remaining until the April 15 IRS income tax deadline, many Americans are scrambling to finalize their income tax returns. This year, a growing percentage of taxpayers will choose to file an IRS income tax extension, which will postpone their tax deadline to October 15.

If you’re considering filing an income tax extension, you’re not alone. The IRS recently estimated that 10.2 million of the 140 million tax filers will file for a tax extension this year. What’s more, approximately 2 million of those extensions will be electronically filed online.

File Later tax extension service – a popular website where taxpayers can file their income tax extension – compiled the following list of reasons why taxpayers should consider joining the growing trend of taxpayers filing a tax ex tension rather than stress about getting their returns completed by April 15.

Although the IRS doesn’t care (or ask) why millions of taxpaying Americans file for extensions every year, you may find these valuable:

1. Accountants and tax professionals are much busier in April than they are in October. Getting the proper amount of time with an accountant gets harder and harder the longer you wait leading up to April 15. Extending your income tax deadline to October 15 will give your accountant or tax pro that extra time to focus on your tax return, which may mean extra tax savings in your pocket.

2. Filing an income tax extension may reduce your chance of audit. IRS auditors have quotas they need to meet every year on the number of returns audited. Returns are sorted for auditors by filing date, and most auditors will have met their quotas before they get to extended returns.

3. Getting paperwork together to complete your taxes isn’t easy. Organizing that shoebox of W2s, 1099s, mortgage interest statements, and receipts can take longer than you expect. Giving yourself the extra time needed will ensure you’re taxes are done right, and extending will give you extra time to track down any additional deductions so you’re getting the biggest tax return possible.

4. For business owners, funding retirement plans such as Simplified Employee Pensions (SEPs) or SIMPLE IRA’s can be expensive. Filing for an income tax extension will also extend your deadline to fund these types of retirement plans.

5. It’s easy. Your income tax extension can be filed in less than 10 minutes using an online provider like File Later. The process is completely paper-free, and your extension will be e-filed, meaning you’ll get an email confirming the IRS has approved your extension, and you’ll have 6 more months to finalize your tax return.

And remember, even though you may be interested in the reasons to extend your income tax return, the IRS doesn’t care or ask. As long as your application is filed correctly, your extension will be granted by the IRS and your new tax deadline will be October 15.

Is it patriotic to pay taxes? And if so, who the most patriotest Americans? Who are the least? How many words are in the tax code? How much do patriotic Americans pay to prepare their taxes? How long do you have to work in a year to earn enough to pay your taxes? The answers to these and other questions add up to one big W-2 WTF. Produced by Meredith Bragg. Written by Bragg and Nick Gillespie.
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