Hospitality Sales & Management International


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SMM 2 | 3 Proven Sales Management Techniques To Establish Trust With Your Salespeople

On this week’s episode of Sales Management Mastery we’re going to talk about what’s in it for you to placing deposits in the trust account, plus three proven methods to establish trust with your salespeople so that you can drive your company’s sales revenues. Today we’re going to talk to you about the shear importance of why this is such a critical part of your overall sales management strategy. Whether or not you are a new sales manager, a tenured sales manager, a business owner listening to this, who has a bunch of sales managers that report to you, VP of Sales, CEO, establishing trust with your front line salespeople is important with your front line sales people is a part of good sales leadership but also great sales motivation, and everything sort of flows from it. And it’s the first thing that you need to do is establish that trust or re-establish it. On this show we are going to give you three proven techniques that will allow you not only to re-establish or establish trust so that you can drive your company’s sales revenue.

And our real goal here is to give you some honest, straight forward techniques and strategies that really do work. Everything that we’re really going to be talking about on this show really comes back to this basic foundation of trust. And think about it as you are building a house. Trust is the foundation. You can’t really build the house, and start putting up walls, or doing any other work on the house, unless you have a strong foundation first. So you have to dig it out, pour the foundation, and that’s really what the trust account is all about.

Today we’re going to give you 3 tactics to use in order to establishing that trust.
Whether you’re an old sales manager or a new sales manager or any other person involved in a sales organization, it’s extremely critical for you to establish that trust so that they don’t tune you out, and tune into your sales message.

You’ve probably been asking yourself, “What are these trust accounts going to do for me?” at least for right now. And that’s quite alright because when I first learned this concept, and then refined it through years of being a sales manager is that it was a relatively new concept because I had I thought that as soon as I became a Sales Manager that all I’d need to do start dictating and telling people would do. And I failed miserably, and it was the worst six months of my life because I realized that people don’t listen to because of what you tell them, they listen to you because of how it resonates with them.

That message that you’re given to your sales reps whether it is a leadership message, a motivational message, a management message; only resonates with them if they trust you enough to tune into you.

And we’re going to talk about tuning into the right frequency with your sales people and those sorts of things in later shows. But it turns out that producing great sales results has everything to do with trust.

What stands out to you most when you mention “trust account”? It’s that first word: trust. And trust is that one sole element that just can’t be absent in a relationship between anyone, whether in your personal or professional life.

But especially between a sales manager and a sales rep because sales reps, if you’ve been a sales rep, and have worked your way through the ranks, you know that you wanted to do things on your own, in your own way. And you always felt like you had the best answers to most of the questions. The best sales reps are open to suggestions, but in order to be open to those suggestions, they have to come from a credible and trustworthy source and that’s what we’re trying to establish.

As the saying goes: trust is the glue that binds people together in groups because it’s that thing that holds us together. If you ever had friends, or business associates that you couldn’t trust or they breached your trust you either didn’t want to do business with them, or you started to tune them out.

So it’s sort of a fragile balance as a sales manager, and as a management professional to make sure that you are always putting deposits in the trust account.

Because trust is hard to earn, it’s easy to lose, and when it’s lost it’s nearly impossible to regain. And that’s the reality of human interaction. So we have to be careful not to make large withdrawals from that trust account, and constantly make steady deposits instead.

Forming a relationship built on trust allows your sales reps to act so that the rules of the game aren’t constantly changing.

Then they know that your message is going to be consistent and that they trust what you’re saying then they know that there’s some stability in what you’re saying and what you’re doing. They know that your actions are consistent and congruent to what your words are. And if those to things are off, if your actions are different from what you’re saying, then you end up losing trust.

And when you have consistent actions with consistent words that you are dictating to your sales people, it encourages peace of mind. And when your sales reps have peace of mind, they become willing to exert extra effort and place themselves on the line for you, and the team, and the organization in general. Peace of mind is very, very important and that’s why establishing trust is so critical.

First establish trust then reinforce that trust by looking for the smallest opportunities to make deposits into those trust accounts. There are lots of ways to do it such as praising them for job well done is one way to do it. But there are many, many ways that you can do this.
And the beauty of it is that when you are making deposits in the trust account you are also motivating. We are going to talk a lot about motivating in this pod cast, but specifically trust has a foundation of motivation. If your sales reps don’t trust you, and you are constantly taking withdrawals from the trust account, then your motivational powers are significantly reduced.

If you are consistently enhancing that trust, then your motivational powers as a leader are greatly enhanced. So it really is a parallel concept in motivation.

Another thing to keep in mind when you’re talking about establishing trust is to always treat your sales rep as the end unto themselves. And what this is separates the men from the boys. Never treat them as a means to an end. They are not just a tool for you to get what you want. They are the journey; they are not the end point or the destination. So treat them as an end unto themselves. When you start to use your sales reps, then the sales reps will start tuning those sales managers out. So creating trust is very important, it encourages peace of mind, and it is a very critical way to motivate and lead your team to where you need them to be.

Let’s get into 3 proven methods to establishing trust with your sales team.

The first is to evoke the law of reciprocity. The law of reciprocity is a rule that states this:

If you do something nice for someone, then human nature dictates that the recipient will feel compelled to do something nice for you in return. It is in essence, you reap what you sow. And this is an irrefutable law that you should teach your sales people as a sales technique. It’s particularly effective because human nature dictates that at the precise moment that you do something nice for someone, the other person feels compelled to return the favor. This is just a law of human nature,

If you do something for them, then they do something nice for you in return.
I had a neighbor the other day take in my trash barrels because I was late getting home. And you know what I am going to do next week? I am going to take in his trash barrels. That’s the law of reciprocity. We are using this principal in order to establish trust, with the goal of driving sales.

So, we aren’t manipulating this rule, we are just using it to our advantage. And that’s really what this whole show is about, it’s talking about the laws of human psychology and how we can use them to get what we want which is success for your organization.

So be careful on this one, however, not to call this out as soon as you do it. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. You can’t say, now that I’ve done this for you, what are you going to do for me! I know people that do that, unfortunately, and it’s really annoying. And it makes you not want to do anything for them again because it isn’t a win-win situation, you just keep giving.

You will eventually get more in return. Don’t keep tabs, don’t keep score because its really important not to do that because when the time is right they will repay you, you don’t have to ask for it or keep score, this is what the law of reciprocity is all about.

So the idea is to do something that allows them to feel that they must do something for you in return, so be subtle and don’t dictate. You can do this all the time with your sales people. The most important part of this law is to remember that reciprocity is implicit, meaning that it is implied, it’s not something you should call out on.

If my neighbor said, “Gee, I brought in your barrels they other day, what are you going to do for me?”, then that’s not reciprocity, that is negotiation. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about doing things for people that will help them, because usually it comes back to you and usually it comes back even more than what you’ve given.

If you’ve ever read the book the “The Go Giver”, I highly recommend you picking it up, by Bob Berg and John David Mann, it is a tremendous book about the Law of Reciprocity in essence. In this particular case we are using this law to get the best out of our sales people or for your sales managers to use this law to get the best out of their sales reps.

So number 2 in our proven methods to establishing trust is:

Let the Sales Rep take all of the credit for all of the good stuff.

Harry Truman said, “People always perform well if you don’t worry about who takes the credit”. You as a sales manager, have to make sure your sales managers understand this, if a sales rep goes out and makes a sale and the sales manager is out on the call, and comes back to the office and tells everyone how HE made the sale, how great do you think the initiative and motivation will be for that sales rep to go out and do the same? If he’s a very good sales person he’ll continue to go out and do the same.

But, is he really motivated to start telling people and makes himself feel good about what he’s done when he knows that the sales manager is trying to take the credit?

So don’t worry about who takes the credit. Your sales managers get paid for how well the sales people do. In most organizations there is a tie in to bonuses and incentive compensation.

Never take the credit for the good work of the sales people. Remember, one time in your career, you were probably a pretty good sales person, maybe you’re an entrepreneur and your built your business, you got promoted into management, you brought in new business, maybe you won a bunch of awards, and you had lots of individual glory. But they way to get the best out of as a sales manager, is not to put yourself in the spotlight. It is to put the sales person in the spotlight, and even give them undue credit for things. We will talk about how to lead and coach.

The time for individual glory really has passed. Your role is to look good by helping others get results for themselves.

Your job, getting results through others, is not getting direct results on your own. Unless your structure is completely different, but in 99% of the cases, and the members to our Academy Program, the sales managers lead, and the pay and compensation and bonus is tied into how effective the sales person is.

The glory for you comes as the proud manager or the proud business owner, who watches from the sidelines when sales people go out and do it on their own. Sales people need a lot of ego gratification, because there’s a lot of crap that they are dealing with out there, so give them the credit for the good stuff, it will just help establish more trust in that trust account, and it also motivates them at the same time. Motivating and trust account depositing are very much intertwined.

The better your sales people perform, and the more they do it own their own, the better you and your company look. If you’re a new sales manager this is probably really hard to change. I really do think that sales is an ego driven vocation, without question. Have confidence in your own competence to perform as a great sales manager on your own, don’t feel insecure or threatened by the work of your people, because the better they look, you are going to look more and more brilliant because they are bringing in more business under your tutelage.

Let them take all the glory, and when you do you’re putting more deposits in the trust account. In the end your trust account balance will be overflowing. The biggest balance at the end of the day wins because that’s the sales manager with the biggest balance has the most motivated sales people.

Number 3 in our proven methods to establish trust with your sales people:

No one likes to be told what to do, but suggest instead.

I’ve never known anyone, and personally for myself I hate to be told what to do, that’s why I started my own business, and became an entrepreneur is because I couldn’t take direction very well. I was a sales person for many years and didn’t like to be told what to do. My wife is in sales too and she doesn’t like to be told what to do, especially by me. People love to thing that they are in control, they love to think that are in control at all times.

If they are being told what to do all the time;

They’ll be plenty of times that you’ll have to tell your sales people, no question about it in not uncertain terms, what they need to do in a give situation. There will be times for it. How you say it, is the most important part, and it’s not the fact that you have to tell them what to do, because you are going to have to tell them sometimes, but How are you going to do it? That’s how you can put more in the trust account and motivate them at the same time.

Ben Franklin once said, he’s one of the greatest statesmen of the modern era, and proven sales man, having built many business and retired a very wealthy man, would advocate, “When at all possible, avoid giving direct orders.”

If you’re a new sales manager, this is going to be tough to do, because you going to want to tell everybody what to do, but avoid giving direct orders when at all possible.
Never dictate, or decree, instead imply or make suggestions. This is a great way to put more deposits in trust account, and motivate and empower your sales people too. Remember, one of the things that we want to do is create a high performance, low maintenance sales team.

You want to be off doing other things; planning strategy, helping yourself get promoted, you want to be looking at the thirty thousand foot view; you don’t want to have to do the job of your sales people especially if you’re running a big company and all of those sales people report to you.

Instead of telling them what to do, request, imply or make suggestions.

Instead of saying, I want you to go to the O’Neil account and tell them x,y, z.”

Change that slightly and say, “It might be a good idea if you went to the O’Neil account and…”

Or maybe say something like this, “If I were you I would do this at the O’Neil account…”

Or another one, “You may want to consider talking to the O’Neil account and saying this…”

The sales rep listens to that and says, okay, he’s not dictating to me what to do, but he’s giving me a suggestion and I’m going to decide whether it is the right thing to do.

You want to empower these people, and motivate them and lead them, and coach them and establish trust with them by doing little things like this. It’s not in what you say; it’s in how you say it.

Here’s another great suggestion, if circumstances call for you to absolutely make a suggestion instead of telling them what to do, or correcting them immediately, replace your normal response with just an answer to, “okay, can I make a suggestion?” or “May I make a suggestion”, this just softens them up the dictating part of telling them what to do part of your job.

This method is far more effective, and less dictatorial than saying, “No no no…what you need to do is this…”

Now if the sales rep is brand new, and they don’t know what they don’t know, they just came out of training, yes, you have to tell them what to do. But gradually over time, you’re going to wean them off of that, your not going to tell them as much. Remember high performance, low maintenance sales people is what you want to have. Then you as a sales manager, you as a GM, sales become more and more on auto pilot because your sales people are doing things automatically.

Once you actually make a suggestion, then if they don’t do it, then you could always come back to that after and say, “hey I thought we agreed that you would do this”. So the key word in the sentence is “we” decision instead of a “you” did this decision, the sales person memory is refreshed with that interaction that you have come to this point together, not just you as their boss. So they feel far more empowered, and they’ve taken ownership of the decision. Taking ownership is a very, very powerful technique in producing high performance low maintenance sales people.

So just as a review.

1. Evoke the law of reciprocity
2. Let the sales rep take all the credit for the good stuff
3. No one likes to be told what to do, suggest instead

 

Hospitality Sales & Management International


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3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Sales Firing Again – Activities For Sales Managers & Leaders

There is no question that in these economically uncertain times, sales leaders will need to get a whole lot smarter and more shrewd if they are going to keep their existing customers and they are going to need to be a whole lot more crafty if they are to win the slim pickings that are still out there to be had! That being said there are some fundamental sales management strategies that when implemented are guaranteed to generate sales within the next 90 days.

Strategy #1

Your first strategy will seem so simple and so easy that you are bound to say to yourself; “Is that all there is to it?” Please do not be fooled. Whilst the strategy below may seem simple, when done exactly as I have described below, it delivers some amazing results. So don’t question, just do! It has been proven that, when effectively applied, the practice of regular one-on-one Sales Performance Coaching is the fastest and most effective vehicle to drive your sales growth. One-on-one Sales Performance Coaching is a powerful, time-tested, behaviour-changing, sales acceleration strategy and is the foundation on which permanent and consistent growth in your business is built. Whilst there are many different processes and skills to be an effective Sales Performance Coach , there are 2 activities that you can apply that would have an immediate impact to your sales drive.

Sit down with each of your salespeople either in person or by phone, ABSOLUTELY NO LESS THAN ONCE A FORTNIGHT. Depending on the state of your sales pipeline, you may need to ramp that up to once a week. Here’s exactly all you need to do…

1. IN DEPTH review the week/ fortnight just past. When you are done …

2. IN DEPTH plan the week/ fortnight coming up.

That’s it, that’s all, that’s the lot!

What does IN DEPTH MEAN?

IN DEPTH means just that. As an example, when prospecting for new business opportunities either with existing customers or new prospects, your salespeople must complete some primary due diligence and be able to answer some or all of the following questions before even fronting up or making the sales call. By having answers to the questions below will afford them the best opportunity for success. Your job in coaching them IN DEPTH is to ensure that before they invest their time and your money going to see a prospect, they are extremely well prepared. Imagine if you asked your salespeople some or all of the questions below before a business development call.

“So you are going to see Bob at ABC ….”

1. What have you learned about ABC?

2. Who are all the “players”?

3. What does your research tell you about the critical issues that ABC is facing right now?

4. What is the evidence that they are facing these issues?

5. What do you believe the potential impacts of those issues to be? What evidence do you have that they are dealing with this issue?

6. What are their current constraints in solving that issue (in relation to time, people money)?

7. What is our answer for solving the issue?

8. What are the current market trends in their area?

9. What do we know about other companies that operate in the same space as they do?

10. What are ABC’s key strategic initiatives?

11. What would their decision constraint criterion be in relation to time, people money?

12. How may we be in a position to help them?

13. What questions do you have prepared to elicit needs?

14. How do you plan on positioning the company and what it is we do?

15. What information should you bring back from your visit, to move this opportunity to the next stage of the sales pathway?

16. What is the objective of the sales call?

That is what I mean by IN DEPTH! Can you imagine just how much better prepared your sales people would be to take advantage of the opportunities out there with this kind of IN DEPTH probing?

Strategy # 2

Look for sales closest to the “bulls-eye!”

Imagine standing front on and facing the circles of a target. Imagine the “bulls-eye!” in the middle is where the money is. The circle just out side the bulls-eye represents your existing customers, let call them A’s. They are the ones closest to the money. The next circle represents those customers that have bought from you occasionally, let call them B’s. The circle just beyond the B’s are your C’s and they represent those prospective companies you have targeted but have yet to buy from you. Then outside of your C’s we have the D’s. These are prospects we have yet to consider.

Once again, as simple as this practice may seem, it is often neglected. When we need more sales, where do we go looking? Out there in D, E, F, and G land. Start looking for business closest to where the money is. Your sales opportunity is to expand your influence within your A and B customer’s organizations and earn a higher percentage of their business. According to the 2008 CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report only 33.6% of C.S.O’s interviewed were able to farm additional revenues from their existing customer base, and that was last year during a comparatively good market!

Your role as sales manager is to help your salespeople identify where you have previously left money on the table. What are the opportunities with your A, B and C companies? Go work there! Let your Marketing department figure out how to bring the D, E, F, and G prospects in to where the C’s, B’s and A’s reside. If your salespeople can’t answer the questions in Strategy 1 with your A’s B’s and C customers, you have work to do. Have your people renew old relationships. Have them beat the bushes for new opportunities you have yet to capture with your A’s, B’s and C customers. They live closest to where the money lives. Go get em’!

Strategy # 3

Go to work and re-engineer your current sales process, if you have one. If you don’t then get one! The latest research from the CSO Insights’ 2008 Sales Performance Optimization Report shows that ‘process-centric’ sales teams outperform non-process-centric teams for every measurable metric.

Sales team performance and effectiveness has been shown to increase by as much as 40% when sales teams have a clear, proven sales process visible to them. The chances are extremely good that if you currently have 5 salespeople on your team, you most likely have 5 different sales processes going on all at once! What other part of your business runs on multiple different processes? Imagine running your business with half a dozen different accounting processes, or multiple IT or customer service processes? Sounds silly doesn’t it? Yet sales teams do so all the time.

Whilst you can reengineer your current selling process, the exercise is not for the faint-hearted. It may be advisable that you bring in professional expertise to ensure the greatest success. You may just be too close to your own current sales methodology to see the gaps or dysfunction.

So there you have it 3 practical ideas you can implement right now to get sales firing again. At the very least run strategy #1 for 90 days. If you will do that, sales will start to flow again.

Hospitality Sales & Management International


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Sales Management Training: Protect Your Company From (sales) Identity Theft in 3 Simple Steps?

Business Development Officer? Business Procurement Specialist? Did you know these types of titles for salespeople can ultimately rob your organization?

As a Sales Management Training Consultant, I often notice business cards from salespeople with titles that require some effort to decipher. As I inquire further about their role, eventually it pops out – “I’m in sales”. It makes me wonder, when did “Sales” become a five letter word that can no longer show up on one’s business card? It gets deeper…

Building high performance sales organizations is my specialty. Much of my success is a result of a startling discovery made years ago – there is no proven correlation between Personality and Sales Productivity. This discovery enabled me to lead a team that transformed a B business unit into a B business unit in 18 months for a Fortune Global 500 company. How? We recognized anyone can succeed in sales despite personality. Sales is simple if you learn how to master sales behavior intelligence and develop your salespeople accordingly. Sales is about behavior and our proven sales system is built on the 25 behaviors that is proven to impact sales productivity – Sales Identity is one of the behaviors we measure.

What is Sales Identity?

Sales Identity measures a salesperson’s pride of the sales profession. If a person views selling as noble, they are considered to have a strong Sales Identity. The opposite is true for those who view a sales position as something to be ashamed of, they are considered to have a weak Sales Identity.

Selling is noble, we all sell everyday whether we realize it or not. However, selling is often perceived negatively because of bad experiences. To some degree, society tends to cast a negative light on people in the sales profession. Due to the strength of society’s misguided views, some sales professionals feel shame and are compelled to hide their sales position and adopt deflected titles such as, “Business Development Officers” or “Procurement Specialists”. Such behavior is proven to be costly, read on…

Some people refuse to accept the notion of selling altogether, even though they are in fact trying to close a deal. A classic example…

Recently I was on a flight to a sales conference in Atlanta and I struck up a conversation with the gentleman next to me. Our idle chit chat led into a careers conversation. He shared with me how he worked for a major home improvement company in charge of the distribution centers in 4 states in the South and Southwest. After explaining my role as a Sales Management Training Consultant and how I help sales teams and salespeople. He immediately responded with “I could never be a salesperson!” We continued our conversation and he explained to me that he was preparing for a major presentation with the Executive Team of the company because he felt he needed an additional Million allocated to his budget for the following year. He went on to demonstrate to me how the organization “would ultimately benefit from the additional spend with a better Return on Investment (ROI)…”

As he was explaining this to me, I began to smile and chuckle. Initially, he probably thought I was being rude. Then I asked him “So, you are trying to convince the Executive Team to give you an additional million for your budget, correct?” “Yes.” He replied. I then added “And you can support the benefits of doing so, correct?” “Yes” he replied again. “Are you sure you’re not a salesperson?” He sat back in his chair and smiled, I could see the light bulb turn on. My point dawned on him. I eventually gave him some coaching on how to think more like a salesperson and improve his sales presentation.

Why Measure Sales Identity?

Measuring Sales Identity can ultimately save your organization a substantial amount of money long term. How?

Organizations all over the globe are challenged to hire high performance salespeople, not doing so can be costly in terms of sales results, hiring and training costs. Recent studies show, the average cost of hiring a poor performing salesperson has swelled to over 0,000/year. Think about it, how much are hiring mistakes costing you?

Research shows – salespeople with weak Sales Identity will under perform within 6 months of joining an organization and ultimately “self select” out of the sales profession within 18 – 24 months. In fact, we found people with weak Sales Identity prefer to apply for “sales” positions with deflected titles because they insinuate less sales accountability.

Unless detected, salespeople with weak Sales Identity will struggle and steal valuable resources from your organization via increased turnover, higher training costs and poor sales results. Here are 3 simple steps to protect your organization going forward:

Step 1: Remove the Identity Crisis

A surefire way to jeopardize long term sales productivity is to have your organization struggle through a sales identity crisis. If the role is a sales role – title it as such. Top performing salespeople absolutely love sales and prefer to be called – Sales Representatives. Having deflected titles attracts weaker performers who will struggle to get out of the ranks of mediocrity long term.

Step 2: Monitor Your “Motivational” Costs with Sales Reps

If you find your sales organization spending more time on motivating sales reps within the 6 – 24 month window of being hired, you may have a Sales Identity issue. Depending upon the severity, there may be hope.

Step 3: Know What You’re Hiring, Prior to Making the Offer

Hiring mistakes pertaining to sales positions can be costly! Use an assessment tool that measures the Sales Identity of your candidates prior to hire.

Personal Accountability in Sales Management Training

For over 200 years the US Constitution has served as the system of fundamental laws and principles of our society. This amazing document has served as the cornerstone of our democracy. A reflection of our Founding Fathers’ core values, the Constitution has kept our society on track since 1787, and has certainly contributed significantly to the growth and success of the United States.

What is the Constitution of your sales team?

Have you, as yet, identified and communicated your cornerstone? If I was to ask five of your salespeople to describe to me what is expected of them in areas other than sales results would I receive five different answers?

The Production Equation: B+A=R.

Behavior plus activities equals sales results. Or, another way of saying this is that every successful sale is the outcome of a series of behaviors (how something is done) as well as activities (how many times a behavior is performed).

Unfortunately, many of us sales managers try to manage results. We wait until a rep has a bad month before we decide to get involved in “coaching” them. So then, when a rep produces a bad month, we rush over and smother them in coaching trying and get their production back up quickly. Sales managers who try to manage results are like a driver of an automobile who only looks in the rear view mirror… chances are they will be surprised when they collide with something that is unexpected. Looking only in the rear view mirror is not an effective way to drive a car, but it happens to be the way that many sales managers drive their sales teams.

Sales results can’t be managed, but behaviors and activities can.

To be the best sales manager you must get in front of the result, get the best sales management training possible, and put in writing your expectations of the behaviors and activities that contribute to sales results. 

Think of this issue – a team without well-communicated performance standards – from your salesperson’s perspective. As a salesperson, you have a clear understanding of the sales quota results expected of you, but you’re unsure exactly how to produce those results. So you do what you think you should. You “make it up on the fly.” Then, because nobody tells you you’re doing it wrong you assume it is acceptable behavior. So you keep doing it, and form bad habits. It’s an unproductive cycle.

How to Draft your Sales Team’s Constitution

Think of your top salesperson… what specific behaviors does he/she do that contributes to sales success? For example, “makes at least five new business prospecting calls every day.” Then, what attitudinal qualities does he/she have which contributes to success? For example, “attempts to solve problems before seeking help.”

Make a list of behaviors and activities that describe your top salesperson, and then share this list with everyone on your sales team. Have each of your salespeople assess themselves on a quarterly basis against these behaviors and activities: Meets, Exceeds, Needs Improvement. Then, sit down one-on-one with each salesperson, discuss his/her self assessment, and put a plan in place to improve those.

Four Components of a Sales Constitution are as follows: Written Well communicated Understood by everybody Equally applied

Sales Management Training; is it Really Necessary?

Sales Management training is not as common as it used to be, as more and more organizations think the sales management should already know it all. However, lack of training is the root to most companies’ bottomline problems.

Sales management training is just as important, if not more than, salespeople training.

Top executive management are the leaders of the sales force and need to be constantly demonstrating the appropriate behaviours for their salespeople to follow. It is really a monkey see, monkey do situation.

Are your sales leaders demonstrating appropriate behaviours?

Do they have goals and a plan of action to accomplish those goals? Are they disciplined, motivated, energetic and enthusiastic. Are they the type of mentor that you would like to have? Are they going on prospecting calls with their sales executives, or even handling accounts on their own?

Are they debriefing after a prospecting visit and providing feedback / coaching? Are they investing in their team or are they investing their time in moving upwards in the organization?

Without proper training, sales management is not half as effective as they can be. However, like most training, for the training to be effective it also needs to be customized to organizational objectives, it needs and should be conducted on an ongoing basis with one on one coaching.

Sales Management training should include following a sales results system, and demonstrating that system with their salespeople on an ongoing basis. For example, if sales executive management is always telling their salespeople what to do, who owns the idea and who is committed to making it happen? Also, what are the salesperson going to do with the customer – tell them as well?

What if sales management training provided a system whereby sales reps would be engaged, come up with ideas, take ownership and make it happen. Then who is committed? Is that not the way you would want your salespeople to be with your prospects and customers – engaging and buying from you versus telling and selling where there is no ongoing relationship.

Most organizations provide sales training, which is great, particularly if it is ongoing, but they forget salespeople management in the process. It will help management to hire top producers, and then allow them to motivate, mentor, coach, delegate, obtain ownership and commitment, build high performing teams, run effective meetings and provide for ongoing training, creating more winners.

Sales management training is the foundation to ongoing sales results from selection, to coaching, training, rewarding and promoting. It is absolutely necessary!