We love talking about sales management training mistakes.

I’m not sure why, but humans seems to love to rubberneck at car crashes, revel in the latest scandals and watch gladiator matches.

Well, maybe not the last one…

I have no idea why this really occurs.

I do have a theory however.

My theory is its because when we watch these things on TV or read about them in the newspaper, we gain comfort in the fact that it’s not us who is doing the screwing up…it’s someone else’s problem.

Someone once told me that this is the reason why The Jerry Springer Show is so popular.

Because when we watch the car crashes that happen on that show we say to ourselves:

“Hmm, I guess my life really is pretty good after all…at least I’m not like THAT guy!”

I think they’re right.

Sales Management Training on Mistakes

Here we have long been advocates of telling sales management professionals what NOT to do when they are managing their salespeople including:

• The 5 biggest sales management mistakes
• Sales management errors that make you look like an ass
• Even how to not make a mistake when making a sales hire.

I guess, we’re just like everyone else in that its good to write about what NOT to do.

It feels kind of…safe.

But one of the biggest sales management mistakes a sales manager can make is griping to his salespeople about how bad things are…especially when he knows exactly how bad things are.

Get a bunch of salespeople in a group, perhaps a sales meeting and just listen to the how they talk to each other.

They gripe.

Get a bunch of sales managers in a room together and you’ll see the same thing happen.

They gripe just as much…

So if you are a sales management professional, how are you supposed to gripe without alienating and demotivating your sales people in the process?

That’s easy.

Here’s a short video clip on how to gripe without losing your sales management job… But at the same time keeping your sales team focused on the task at hand, no matter how grisly or ugly it may be.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Where to Use This Sales Management Training Griping Technique

The ability to gripe without losing your job is certainly a lost art.it’s not that we have few opportunities to gripe, as a sales manager, you have plenty of opportunity to gripe…it’s just that no one will listen to you.

You’re sales, there are no excuses, right?

Here is a partial list of where you can use this griping strategy from the video above:

• Upper management just doubled your quarterly quota without telling you

• Operations just blocked your last sale because they can’t take on additional personnel.

• Finance to shut down your proposal because the profit margin was 28% instead of 31% as required by corporate policy.

• You just lost two salespeople to the competition but management will only let you hire one to replace them.

• You just landed the largest account of your sales management career and the guys in processing forgot to ship the order and it sat on a courier’s desk for over a week

• Your travel expenses budget was just cut by two thirds for the last half of 2012 and you have five overnights coming just in the next two weeks.

• Seven of your 10 salespeople missed their quota last month by greater than 20% and hopes look dim for covering this month.

• Your best sales rep just left to work for the competition.

• Upper management just rolled out the fourth “initiative” of the quarter and nominated you to spearhead the charge.

• Finance just told you to cut off your second-largest account from any further sales because they are over 90 days due.

Of course, this is only a partial list. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of other opportunities to use these sales management griping strategies.

Whatever you do though, don’t gripe in front of your salespeople. If you do, pose a hypothetical scenario by Capt. Miller does in the above video…

Remember, gripes go up.

Sales management

I know, because I’ve done it plenty of times.

One time, I showed up for a sales meeting in front of my entire sales team with my fly wide open (I even had the t-shirt hanging out a little bit too).

Thank God for Dustin MacPherson who coughed “FLYIN LOW!!!” as I entered the room.

Dumb…horse’s ass.

Well, actually embarrassing is more like it…that could be entire series of sales management blog posts on sales management mistakes.

Looking dumb is inevitable, you just can’t avoid it – we’re all human and were going to make mistakes.

But as a sales manager, when you start making the same mistakes over and over again they make you look like an ass…and that’s when it becomes a real problem.

And when you look like an ass on a regular basis, your sales management leadership goes right down the crapper.

So in an effort to help you not to look like an ass in front of your sales team on a regular basis, in this sales management training here are five things you want to avoid as much as possible in your sales management career:

1. Claiming credit for the sales management wins of your sales people

Sure, we all want the glory of getting credit for the big sale, however, one of the best ways to look absolutely foolish in front of your sales people is to consistently take credit for their excellent sales efforts.

Salespeople are simultaneously egotistical and at the same time insecure. No sales person loves to play second fiddle and get one upped by the boss. Give credit where credit’s due, and don’t take credit for the great stuff that your sales people do give them credit.

As Harry Truman once said:

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”

2. Constantly talking about when “you were a sales person”

This is what we call making the fatal sales management mistake with your salespeople. No sales person likes to talk about how great you were when you were sales person – they only like to know how great they are as a salesperson right now.

So get over yourself and forget about how good you were when you are a salesperson… You no longer are! They don’t care. They only care about how much you can help them to become a great salesperson.

Also, “nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care”, so don’t waste your time trying to find ways to make yourself look so smart by bringing up how great you were back in the good old days. Set your ego aside and help them.

Its just that simple.

3. Taking over the sales call of your top sales people because YOU are the sales manager

This is one that a lot of new sales managers and new sales management professionals get in trouble with.

The reason why so many sales managers are promoted into sales management is because they were excellent sales people; this becomes a liability often times when in the sales call.

The new sales manager, eager to prove himself to the A player, he takes over the sales call for the perfectly capable sales person, making himself look foolish in the process.

Sure, there are gonna be times when you will need to take over a sales call for floundering salesperson.

However, when you were with your best sales reps this is not that time. Keep your mouth shut, take some notes and critique what they do instead of butting in.

4. Accusing your salesperson of making a mistake when you haven’t done your research

This happens way too often incorporate America.

We’ve seen this movie before: the salesperson makes a mistake. The sales management professional accuses there sales person of making the mistake because of negligence.

The salesperson gets ticked off because it actually wasn’t their fault. Maybe the operations department made the mistake (its always convenient to blame them).

When in fact, if the sales management  pro had just inquired about what actually went wrong – they would have found out that the sales person was not responsible.

So many sales managers are very eager to place blame on their sales people – but the far more prudent thing to do is to shoot first then ask. As opposed to shoot first then ask later.

There’s nothing that sacrifices the loyalty and trust of your sales people like this egregious error and it makes you look like an absolute fool in the process.

5. Being badly prepared for sales meetings

There’s certainly a lot to do as a sales management professional, and prepping your speech for the next sales meeting is certainly not high on the priority list.

Make it the number one priority though.

It’s so important because in these meetings, this is where you exert your sales management leadership and it’s crucial that you prepare extensively – whether they be once per week or once a quarter.

It doesn’t matter. Prepare for them no matter what to make sure you know your stuff.

Winston Churchill was said to have “spent the best years of his life composing his impromptu speeches“.

So if he did it, you should do it as well.

Of course, some sales management professionals are better public speakers than others so someone need more time and someone needs less time.

Winston Churchill was a pretty good speaker…I think you’ll agree – and he realized that public speaking was so important for his career he practiced this extensively. When it comes to public speaking, preparation and knowing your stuff is absolutely critical to your success in sales management…otherwise you’ll end up looking foolish.

Get what we think (and we’re a bit biased, of course) the best sales management training on the planet, by joining the Sales Management Mastery Academy by clicking here.

It’s not because of the economy…

It’s not because of lazy salespeople (we’ll always have those)…

It’s not because you’re getting squeezed on price because everyone is looking for the lowest price…

It’s because most sales organizations are still using the old and tired way of measuring a salesperson’s effectiveness: sales quotas.

The Sales Management Myth of the Sales Quota

Nearly 100% of all sales management organizations assign sales quotas.

However, less than 10% of all sales organizations assign prospecting quotas.

And as you know as a sales management professional…you reap what you sow. So if you’re serious about sales management success, then you must measure that success one play at a time.

As a sales manager, when you demand your salespeople to do something they don’t like to do, oftentimes those commands are ignored. And when you assign measurable objectives for each sales person by either the week or the month, many of your sales people may call your micro-manager.

The truth of the matter is that sales people tend to gravitate to the things that they like to do and are the easiest to do and they will avoid the hard things. Many of those “hard things” are things that will help them make money and bear their quotas.

And its your job to nudge ‘em…and measure ‘em.

The overarching  goal of the sales management professional is to help sales people be successful in difficult tasks like prospecting. Which because no sales person likes to do it, the sales manager needs to measure it.

Enter The Sales Management Prospecting Quota

So instead of assigning sales quotas, start assigning sales prospecting quotas. For example you might adopt some of the following quotas:

• Get 10 C-level business cards per week

• Get five new name accounts per week

• Write 10 proposals to do prospective accounts in one month

• Have five new meetings with VP level or higher executives per week

• Make five brand-new sales presentations to new accounts per week

When you start assigning activity quotas instead of sales quotas, you will see your sales teams productivity starting to improve. As the expression goes:

“What gets measured gets DONE”

And as the sales management professional, you need to measure the activities of your sales people, especially the tough and least popular ones that lead to sales like sales prospecting.

Sales quotas simply don’t work to affect behavior of sales people, but behavior quotas do. So start assigning new kinds of quotas at measure specific and measurable activities and behaviors which will lead to the attainment of sales quotas and beyond.

And once you start doing that, you’ll not only be managing like an unconventional sales manager, but you and your sales team will start getting unconventional results as well.

He was one of my top salespeople, an A player, and I figured he knew best.

“Leave well enough alone”, I thought. And I happily spent my time coaching my other, less effective sales reps; the ones who “needed me”.

I figured this was a pretty solid sales management strategy.

That is, until he left to go to the competition in his third year with the company. It was almost exactly a year after I had become his sales manager.

I always regretted that “leaving him alone” decision and I learned never to do it again…especially after he started eating our lunch in the territory he vacated to go to the competition.

The Sales Management Dilemma of The A Player

Your sales people probably tell you that they want to “run their territory as if it’s the business”. They think they’re in charge of their own destinies and all I have to do is just perform certain tasks and they’ll make their numbers.

They say they want to be left alone.

If a C player says this, is this a good strategy?

Most sales management professionals would say “no way” on that one. In fact, they would probably start working with them twice as much because they said it!

But if an A player says this, what do most sales management professionals say?

They welcome it, thinking “less work for me!”

In actuality, its the WORST thing you can do as a sales management professional…

Sales Management Is Not About “Leaving Them Alone”

Leaving your A Players alone is a recipe for disaster.

This is primarily because of “The 20% Gap”.

In his book More ProActive Sales Management, Skip Miller states that the 20% Gap is a death sentence for any high performing sales person because it clearly shows the lack of sales management expertise of most sales managers.

The reason for the 20% Gap is because for A players, as Miller states:

“A players take one year to learn, one year to master, then one year to look for something else to do”.

This result is a 20% Gap in sales productivity in year three.

In year tow and into year three, A players start “believing” their own press clippings and then stop doing many of the things that go them to the top of the heap in the first place.

The Sales Management Law of the A Player

If you have been pruning out your C players over time and boosting the productivity of your B players, then chances are pretty good you have a good group of upper tier performers.

This is an ideal scenario to help you reach sales management nirvana.

Jack Welch says in his book Jack: Straight from the Gut, he and his management team would routinely clean house of his C players every year, removing the “bottom 20%”. They ended up building one the longest lasting and formidable corporations the world has ever known in General Electric.

With the A players that are left standing, there are certain things they both do well and are supremely confident in. They make great contributions in meetings, they consistently exceed quota, make excellent presentations and oftentimes position themselves in an ideal position for promotion.

Even though A players have extremely high levels of skills, these are not the things that keep them motivated over the long-term. This kind of sales person eventually becomes complacent after their many successes and starts to believe that they’re even better than they really are.

That same talent and drive to get things done in years one and two, starts to diminish at the end of year two and into year three.

That’s when the 20% Gap occurs.

Sales Management Strategies for A Players

So what do you do about it?

Most sales management professionals make the horrendous mistake of leaving well enough alone…just like I did.

They have a few A players that are on “auto-pilot” and they tend the flock elsewhere.

They spend an inordinate amount of time with their C players, spend even less time with their B players and the least amount of time with their A players.

The problem is that spending more time with your worst salespeople or even your average salespeople sends a powerful message that you validate mediocrity!

In a not so subtle way, it tells your salespeople: “the crappier a salesperson you are, the more of my time I’m going to give you”.

You are unwittingly reinforcing mediocrity, or worse outright failure…

Plus you also are far less productive as a sales management professional because you are never augmenting the superstar sales efforts of your best salespeople.

You end up spending most of your time on your “lose” projects instead of your “wins”.

It’s kind of like spending all your time yelling and reprimanding one child while the other well-behaved one goes completely ignored.

It’s a “self-reinforcing” message: “the more you stink – the more attention I give you”.

Is this really the right message to be sending your sales team?

What The Best Sales Managers Do To Cure The 20% Gap

Simply put: the best sales managers in the world spend the most time with their best people.

Not only have I seen this work firsthand, but it was also proven as fact was validated in the Gallup study of thousands of front line managers world wide in Marcus Buckingham’s book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.

There’s an old expression:

“Feed the stallions and starve the ponies”

In Jack Welch’s case, he fires the bottom 20% each year and spends all his time developing his best people.

As a sales management professional, you need to do the EXACT same thing.

And that way, you’ll beat that that 20% gap…and turn it into a 20% rise instead.

The truth is I was catching a plane back East and I just ran out of time to get all 7 steps into the first post.

Then Christmas came, then New Years….

Enough of the excuses, here are the rest of the 7 steps to sales management coaching here.

This is a great way to start off the New Year and really get some momentum going in 2012.

And it all starts with good solid sales management coaching.

As you may recall from our previous post, the first three steps to effective sales management coaching were:

1.      Change Your Sales Management Coaching Mindset

2.      Ordinary Questions Are Sales Management Coaching Opportunities

3.      Identify “The Situation”

Now, lets get onto numbers four through seven….

4.      Uncover “The Solution”

Now that you have identified “The Situation”, you now need to prompt the salesperson to arrive at their own solution. After all, don’t we all love our own solutions than someone else’s?

And of course, the sales rep that comes to his own solution is far more likely to carry it out to its successful completion.

This is also done by the sales manager asking more open-ended questions:

• “So if you could this call over again, what would you change knowing the fact that you didn’t listen much?

Since John has already identified “The Situation”, his reply would likely be:

• “I probably need to ask more questions to my customer and fully focus on what he saying, that way I could sell him more effectively”

In order to get very specific on questions you’ll want him to ask next time he is in this situation you may ask:

• “What questions would you like to ask to your customer?”

Once John identifies, the questions he should ask, you can have him write them down for future reference or you can discuss them more in depth.

5.      Take Action

Now you’ve both identified “The Situation”.

John has created “The Solution”.

The next step is to build a bridge from the last sales call to the next sales call and put all this into “Action”.

Simply start off the “Action” part of the coaching session by asking an open-ended question like:

• “John, this afternoon we are going to see Mr. Y, how are you going to implement what we just discussed about in this previous visit?

And John’s reply would say:

• “I am going to ask him a question about his future business strategy”

At that point you may even prompt him to tell you which exact question he would then use from your “Solution” session. To take is one step further, you can even have him write out specific questions on a notepad for him to refer to.

6.      Follow Up Sales Management Coaching

After the Situation, Solution and Action have been taken, you now have the opportunity to follow up.

So after that next call with “Mr. Y”, you can now discuss how well he did with some simple open-ended questions as well. Many of those questions can be taken from the “Situation” kind of questions like:

• “How do you think you did with your questions with Mr. Y?”

• “How much more do you know about Mr. Y’s business based upon your call with him?”

From there, you simply engage in a conversation about how John fared and suggest further solutions.

7.      Offer Sales management Coaching Suggestions

In your coaching sessions there will be times where your sales reps cannot think of a solution on their own. In these cases, you’ll have to make suggestions.

When sales coaching though, be careful not to dictate or demand. The key to acceptance of the solution is to get the sales rep to think that they came up with it themselves. Once you achieve this, then buy-in and follow up is far easier.

So let’s say you run into a roadblock with the “Situation” step above, make some suggestions, but preface those solutions with:

• “It might be a good idea if you…”

•  “If I were you I would…”

• “You may want to consider…”

In some cases, sales reps will bring up solutions that just doesn’t make sense or you know will not work. In those cases, replace your normal response with:

• “May I make a suggestion?”

After they agree, then offer your suggestion. This method is far more effective and less dictatorial than: “No, no, no, what you need to do is…”

Don’t worry about sounding weak or spineless, it doesn’t matter.  If they don’t implement your suggestion, then take it up with them by saying:

“I thought we agreed that you would do…”

The key work in this sentence is “we”.  By making the decision a “we” decision, the salesperson refreshes their memory of the interaction that you and they had decided together, not just you as their boss.

The chances of consistent follow up are that much greater now that they have taken ownership – a very important concept discussed in later sales management training.

So what do you do to actually coach your salespeople? Nothing?

Chances are that’s exactly what you do. But 2012 is a new year and this is your opportunity to NOT leave your sales reps hanging….

if you have not already, get our free sales management training and start your 2012 off with a slew of fresh ideas to get your sales team going in the right direction.

The even greater tragedy is that if sales managers did actually take the time to coach their salespeople, and did it right, the effectiveness of those salespeople would quickly improve.

In survey after survey done with thousands of sales managers from around the world, “lack of time” consistently comes up as the number one reason why sales managers don’t coach their salespeople.

In those same surveys, the second reason why sales managers don’t sales coach is that when they’re pushed on how to actually coach their sales teams, the majority have very little idea how to do it.

This is largely because they have never received any formalized sales management training on coaching.

The Sales Management Coaching Dilemma

So how does a sales manager make time for sales coaching and do it effectively at the same time?

Below are the first three of seven sales management training steps so you CAN find the time to do effective sales coaching. And when implemented, will help you to dramatically improve your sales team’s performance.

 1.      Change Your Sales Management Coaching Mindset

In spite of what many sales managers think, sales coaching is not a separate sales management activity. Instead, it can be easily incorporated into how you interact with your sales force on a daily basis.

You just need to be on the lookout for it.

If you think of sales coaching in terms of “sales coaching moments”, you’ll never coach anyone because, yes, you most likely will not have the time.

The best sales coaching opportunities come to you every single day, you just need to identify them as such and seamlessly integrate sales coaching into your interactions.

Best of all these sales coaching interactions can range from the mundane to the complex.

View every phone call, every sales meeting, every sales call, every email as an opportunity to coach. When you do that, you’ll soon be sales management coaching almost non-stop.

2.      Ordinary Questions Are Sales Management Coaching Opportunities

Unless the salesperson is asking you a question of extreme urgency, like: “Boss, there’s a fire in the mail room where is the nearest emergency exit?”, you should resist the urge to answer ordinary questions.

What is an “ordinary question” you ask?

Its any question your sales rep asks you that doesn’t involve crisis, danger or the prospect of imminent demise…

Its the questions you get dozens of times every day.

So instead of answering those questions, ask a question right back to them like:

• “What do you think you should do?”

Then, once they answer your first question, and then ask a follow up question like:

• “So if you did that would that solve the issue?”

If they say no and you agree, then ask:

• “Then what else could you do?”

What eventually happen is that the salesperson starts to think (imagine that) and more importantly begins to learn their way through the solution, with your helpful sales coaching guidance.

3.      Identify “The Situation”

Some sales management coaching sessions provide you with a more formalized way to coach your salesperson.

These kinds of more formal coaching sessions may be after you sit in on a sales call or perhaps overhearing a phone conversation. In these more formal sales coaching sessions, the first thing you do is need to identify “The Situation” that needs to be coached on.

Let’s say you have a salesperson named John who frequently interrupts his customers during sales calls, not allowing the customer to answer or speak about his problems.

After seeing this behavior first hand, you first ask an open ended question to identify “The Situation”.

An ideal question to start may be:

• “What do you know more about this customer?”

If John is honest, he’ll likely answer with:

• “Frankly I do not know much about this customer after this visit”

This is when you would then ask another open ended question to identify “The Situation” even further:

• “How did that happen then, John?”

John answers:

• “I didn’t asked a lot of questions and I talked a lot – apparently I need to listen more to my customers”

You would then reply:

• “I agree, this is a skill we need to focus on”

“The Situation” has now identified. More importantly, the salesperson identified it themselves. A successful management sales coaching session should always begin with the “buy in” of the sales rep.

Next week, we give you sales management training steps four through seven. Stay tuned.

We figured that instead of paying the $20,000+ per year to pay for the to go to a perfectly nice private school on Cape Cod, we’d save that money, indulge in our passion for travel and see the country instead.

So as part of that, we decided we would take our kids out of school for a year and home school them along the way…even though neither of us are teachers.

Sales Management Training and Homeschooling

All summer long, as we visited National Parks, new cities and had a real good time, we knew September and “back to school” would soon arrive. Both my wife and I work from home so we figured with the kids the ages they were, now was the time to do it before they (or we) got too old.

The real  difference for me was when September rolled around…back to school time.

Uh oh.

As the guy who used to be a sales management professional in the medical and other health related industries, my “teaching assignment” was math and science. And because I write and teach for a living, I was also responsible for grammar.

Bear in mind, I have never taught homeschooling…after all, I’m a sales management training guy, so homeschooling is really not my thing.

The funny thing is that as a complete novice home schooling “teacher”, I fell into the exact same sales management traps that so many sales managers fall into when teaching, coaching and leading their salespeople.

What does homeschooling have to do with sales management you ask?

On the surface…nothing. But if you really look under the hood, they are actually very similar. And you make the exact same mistakes as well:

1. Lack of Preparation

Despite what I preach as a sales management training guy, I was never fully prepared for any of my lessons. I just showed up and winged it.

Even worse, I set zero expectations for the class. In many cases, I only realized what I would be teaching, or at least which workbook I woul have the kids do only a few minutes before the lesson started. Never a good plan.

Always prepare ahead of time.

You fail to plan….you (yes, I know its cliched) plan to fail.

2. Highlighted Weaknesses and Forgot Strengths

A capital boo boo here.

When I first started correcting homework, nothing gave me more satisfaction that marking a big red “X” right smack in the middle of a wrong answer.

HA HA! (I would think to myself) I am so smart and you are so stupid!!!!

Is this a good way to correct mistakes? Not really. Is this a good way to instill confidence and build up my students self esteem so they feel good about themselves and self motivate to push to new height of academic greatness?

No way.

I have written countless posts on this one, but did I take my own advice?

Nope.

3. Was Stingy With My Praise

How many times have I written about the value of praise on this blog? There are dozens of posts on this subject.

Not only did I not praise when they did something right, I didn’t even “catch them doing something right”. I swooped in and became a “seagull homeschool teacher“.

4. Made It No Fun

Don’t you remember your best teachers when you went to school? I do.

I had an American history teacher in college who was so entertaining in his stories about the Civil War that to this day I remember him. His lectures were a mix of humor, suspense and disbelief at many the atrocities and ironies of that war, all delivered in vivid detail. I still remember many of the funny stories and gruesome tales he told the class.

To this day, I am still a Civil War buff and I owe it to him.

Did I make my homeschooling lessons interesting or at least maybe a little bit fun?

Nope.

5. Spent The Least Time With My “A” Player

The biggest mistake of all was that I spent most of my time, in fact I would say 80% of my time with my son that had the most difficulty learning new things.

I am not going to say he is a “C player” because he is far from it.

He is a (no bias here at all I assure you) brilliant, imaginative, creative, kind, wonderful, sensitive, energetic kid who will be an enormous success in his life…its just that school isn’t really his thing.

My other son, I would tell him to do assignment 1 and 2 and he would do both of those then do 3, 4 and 5 as well…because he had the desire and pure love of learning.

An “A Player”? Perhaps. You be the judge.

Where did I spend the most time with? Not with my “A” player.

Another mistake…a HUGE mistake so many sales management professionals make.

You Can Change Your Sales Management Training Mistakes NOW

After about a month, my wife (the boss) gave me some advice:

“Why don’t you coach and teach the kids the way you tell those people on your blog and the Academy thingy?”

Hmm. It was right then that I woke up.

Sometimes, it takes someone else to tell you that you are really screwing up to see that you are really screwing up.

In your case, don’t wait for your boss to do it. Do it to yourself.

Are you committing all the above mistakes in your sales management life?

If you are, then its OK. There is time, you can change.

There is plenty of sales management training around to help you fix your mistakes.

All you have to do is start now. I just wouldn’t suggest you get any crazy ideas about homeschooling your kids though…

Just stick to sales management instead.

And when it comes to motivation, no one has gotten more press on motivation than Abraham Maslow.

Don’t know who Maslow is?

Well as a sales management professional, you should.

At the very least you should use a few of his tips to motivate your sales force.

Sales Management Motivation Maslow Style

If you don’t know, Abraham Maslow is commonly known as “the father of modern motivational theory” and is one of the only theorists on motivation whose ideas have actually withstood the test of time…in spite of hundred of eggheads who have tried to dispute his theories.

In short, Maslow states that each person is motivated by a series of physiological and psychological needs that he put into his “Needs Hierarchy Theory”.

These needs are listed from basic to advanced, the lowest common denominator being these five:

1.Hunger, thirst

2. Sleep

3. Safety, security

4. Shelter

5. Health

As a sales management professional, you have to figure that most of your sales force has these five basic needs covered, right?

So what does this have to do with sales management motivation?

Everything.

Where Maslow gets interesting is where he discusses the next level of motivation.

This is the stuff you can use to motivate your sales team so you motivate each one exactly the way they are hard wired

…its called the Seven Forces of Motivation.

Sales Management and The Seven Forces of Motivation

Once you take care of the first basic five, Maslow then gets into the next seven.

The funny thing is the seven forces of motivation not only inspire salespeople but they inspire all people. So you can use these techniques to motivate your kids, your spouse and your sales team.

The point is that each person is motivated by the five above but each of us is really  inspired and motivated by a combination of the following seven forces of motivation.

1. The need for belonging
2. The need for independence
3. The need for importance
4. The need for knowledge
5. The need for assertiveness
6. The need for recognition
7. The need for affiliation

So if we are all a combination of all the first five motivators and a mix of all the seven to varying degrees, then doesn’t it make sense to speak and motivate your sales team all in different ways?

Or would you motivate someone who has a deep and profound need to have an affiliation with a higher cause or a larger organization the exact same way you would motivate the salesperson who has a profound need for independence?

No, you wouldn’t.

So what do you do?

The first step is realizing that you need to treat all your sales reps independently and completely different. If you motivate them and treat them all the same then you can never get the most out of them.

But if you tailor make your motivations sales management strategies just for them, then you will hit the bull’s eye every time…and motive them to unseen of heights of sales and sales management success.

So take the first step and manage each of your salespeople differently, that’s step number one.

In the Sales Management Mastery Academy, we teach you exactly what to do with each motivational profile and how to motivate each sales rep with sales management tactics that will tailor make your motivational plan for each sales rep.

So look at your sales team and compare them to the seven forces of motivation. Then formulate a motivational plan to get the best from them based up on their unique profile.

When you do that, you’ll be that much farther to true sales management success.

You asked all your sales management interview questions.

The salesperson has asked all their questions back to you. Hopefully for you, none of them were really stupid ones.

If they were stupid, then don’t read any more…because you’re not going to make an offer.

However, this interview was a good one and you really want to make an offer and get them on board.

So now its time to talk about the “elephant in the room”.

Its time to talk money.

Sales Management “Elephant” Strategies

In the first interview, when the subject of money, base salary, commission, bonus, shiny beads and trinkets…or any other form of compensation comes up, deaf ear it.

Yep, don’t hear it. Pretend they didn’t ask it.

In the first interview, its too early to talk about money. You have no idea is you want to hire them at all so talking about “how much money you’ll make here” is a total time waster.

If you absolutely have to answer and even feel it may be appropriate to “sell the company” a bit, then the best sales management strategy is: the more vague, the better.

Or if the candidate really presses you for a better answer then you may want to zing ‘em with:

“You won’t make any money here because I’m not gonna hire you”

That will certainly get you back to the subject at hand, namely…whether or not you actually want to hire the salesperson.

However, the end of the second interview is the right time to talk about the elephant that’s been hanging around in the room. After you’ve been through all the other six steps of the sales management interview process, and you’ve determined that the salesperson is the one you really want to hire, and you sense they too want to come work for your company, then its time to talk money.

Its time to get “the elephant” wide out in the open.

Sales Management Compensation Information Rules

When giving information on compensation, there are two rules you must follow:

1. Ask them what they know about your pay plan

In any good negotiation, the more information you have on what the other side both knows and expects is certainly good information to arm yourself with.

Sometime an internal or external recruiter may give incorrect information on base salary, commissions or anything else related to money. Or oftentimes in the job posting the sales candidate may simply misunderstand or read the information incorrectly.

So this is a good time to clarify what they know about your company’s pay structure and how it all works.

2. Fill in the details with ranges and non-specific amounts

When you do divulge pay ranges for both base salary and commissions, its best to shoot for the low side and couch it with this comment:

“I know other companies claim that their sales reps make X amount, but I want to give you a realistic idea of what our sales reps make. The bottom line is that here it’s all about how well you produce – and the more you sell the more you make, its just that simple.”

You don’t want to over promise and under deliver when it comes to money. Tell them simply that there is a range and its based largely on merit and effectiveness. That’s what sales is all about, right?

Making The Offer

When you do make the offer and your base salary range is $40,000-$55,000 for example, the candidate has taken note of exactly what the high end and the low end of the range is. They will not forget this.

But when you make the offer and let’s say the they currently make a $43,000 base salary and you really want the candidate to come on board with your sales team, then aways offer a premium on their current base salary.

If you have to negotitiate this with Human Resources or with your boss, then its worth it.

Because a salesperson who comes on board with you always wants to feel that you went to the wall for them in fighting to get them on your team. If the case of the above salary of $43,000, you should always offer just a little bit more than what they are making to not only make them feel good but make sure, that after you check references and background, they do in fact take your offer. In this case you may want to offer $46,000 or even $47,000.

If you offer $43,000 or even less than what they are currently making, then their likelihood of signing with you is far less. And it doesn’t even matter if your commission plan is ten times better than what they are currently receiving.

Why?

Even though sales is a commission-based, pay for performance meritocracy, salespeople have a profound desire to feel “important”; and feel like they are really wanted and recruited hard to go to a different company. Call it ego, call it human nature…whatever you call it, offering just that slight premium assures you that you will get your salesperson, you get your position filled and you get on with the business of making real money.

If HR gives you a hard time, then do everything you can to make an exception. After all, what’s a few hundred dollars per pay period really going to harm the company if you are hiring a salesperosn you know is gonna knock it out of the park selling a million dollar product?

Most in sales management back down here and allow the company to dictate the base salary. If you believe you have found your next sales stud, fight for the higher base salary.

If you offer below what they currently make and chances are they won’t sign with you…even if you have a commission plan that’s guaranteed to make them a millionaire in the next year for just sitting on their ass.

Always offer a premium over what the sales rep currently makes because the small payout in salary will be more than made up for in sales volume later on.

In our next sales management training on how to hire a sales superstar, we’ll touch on the final step in the whole process: how to check references to make sure they are who they say they are.

Uncomfortably hot at times…

Most sales leaders have no idea when a major argument breaks out.

They panic instead.

The Sales Management Argument

Your sales team is arguing over a hotly debated sales management issue at one of your sales meetings.

If its a really hot issue, then chances are it has something to do with money or bonus. The hottest sales management issues you face will involve one or the other:

“We’re getting screwed on this new compensation plan”…

“The sales tracking system is missing my sales”…

“Management just cut year end bonuses”…

“I’m not getting paid on all of my sales”…

Or any number of myriad sales management issues you have to deal with, that you have no say in…but have to diffuse somehow.

Things are getting out of control.

Your salespeople are angry, upset, unruly.

People are yelling, they’re angry.

You, the sales leader have lost control.

What do you do?

• Do you start yelling?
• Do you antagonize?
• Do you tell em all to “all of you…shut the hell up!!!!”?

You should do none of that.

You “diffuse the time bomb” instead.

Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) does it brilliantly here in Saving Private Ryan…

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) Knows About Great Sales Management

How does Miller diffuse the time bomb here? This is an extremely explosive and potentially deadly argument among a deeply divided group of soldiers who have guns.

In a brilliant stroke of leadership, he performs like Picasso painting just a few  brushstrokes on a masterpiece.

He diffuses the situation is a few key steps:

1. He is intensely calm

In a sea of absolute insanity, he is an island of calm, cool thinking.

This is an absolutely essential sales management quality that every sales manager needs to perfect… to restrain himself from giving into emotions, even when emotions run high.

2. He doesn’t pick sides

He doesn’t even address who is right because he knows that both sides are correct.

Oftentimes, when two sides are dvided, it doesn’t really matter who is right and who is wrong.

What matters most is that the situation gets resolution…and the misssion gets completed.

3. He diffuses the situation with a personal story

He divulges where he is from and what his occupation was prior to the war.

These two facts, for the first half of the movie, are deep albeit somewhat irrelevant mysteries to his squad. Miller is a bit of a mystery to his men.

In sales management this is not such a bad thing to procure. Don’t tell your salespeople everything. A few intrigues keep them on their toes.

They want to know this information so badly, that there is a pool created to be won by the first one who finds out.

He then divulges this secret information to make everyone stop dead in their tracks…they are so befuddled, the conflict is immediately diffused.

Can you do this in your sales management conflict situations as well?

4. He has vision of the true “mission”

The #1 mission is to win the war and even more importantly, go home.

Their #2 mission is to find Private Ryan.

The truth is they when they find Ryan they are that much closer to mission #1. He reminds his troops of this fact, making them realize that although mission #2 appears like true insanity…it will take them a step towards accomplishing mission #1.

This is “forest for the trees” sales management thinking.

Sales management professionals get muddled in so many details oftentimes they too forget mission #1.

Miller does not.

Do you?

5. He gives everyone the chance to disagree

In the army it’s a dictatorship. The Captain says go over the wall, you go over the wall.

The same could be said for sales management. You tell them, they go.

But that’s no way to gain followership and sales leadership.

John Miller knows this. He gives them an out at the end.

Do you do this in your sales management situations?

6. He displays his personal philosophy

War changes men and women.

Power changes men and women.

Sometimes it turns them into something they are not.

Oftentimes salespeople get promoted to sales management and no one recognizes them any more. I’ve seen it happen and so have you.

The sales management “power” goes to their heads.

In Miller’s case, the “power ” of the more men he kills the further from home he feels and if this means letting the prisoner go, so be it.

He does not succumb to the power, instead he does what he feels is right.

7. In the end, he gets on with business and leads by example

Miller is the first one to dig the grave of their fallen friend and solider. Thankfully his troops, even the reluctant Reiben does as well.

He leads, he sets the example, he does the dirty task and they…follow.

Do you lead by example this way?

Or do you sit in your sales management office on high sending emails and edicts down to your salespeople as you sit on your sales management throne?

Sales management is tricky stuff sometimes, especially when you are confronted with perilous, emotionally charged situations.

Let’s hope you won’t ever have a sales rep point a pistol at another’s head in a sales meeting, but chance are you’ve had some pretty heated debates.

The next time anything close to that happens, take a few leads from our sales management guru Captain Miller and make sure you always keep mission #1 always in mind….and diffuse the time bomb.

I love football, there’s just no better sport to watch.

And now that the season is in full swing, this can only mean certain things:

• The Indianapolis Colts are in first place in the AFC South
• The Detroit Lions are in last place in the NFC North

Uh….hold on for a second….

As of this writing, the Indianapolis Colts haven’t even won a game yet…and Detroit (with the exception of a last minute comeback form the 49ers and would have been undefeated and tied for first in the NFC South) is 5-1 and in second place in the NFC South!

How things change from a year ago….

Its kind of like your sales management business a few years ago before this “world recession” thing hit.

Sales Management Blindside Hits

One day, you’re humming along, customers are placing purchase orders, your reps are making money, sales are flowing then, WHAM! Out of nowhere a global recession blindsides you and your business.

Sales start to tumble, your formerly contented customers are haggling you on price at every turn, low-priced competitors start to steal your market share, your boss starts to lose his cool, your sales reps start leaving for “other opportunities”….

Your sales management ship has suddenly sprung more leaks than the post-iceberg, non-Leonard DiCaprio-carrying Titanic.

You’re in a real pickle to say the least…

So what do you do?

• Do you continue to do that same things and hope or the best?
• Or do you actually do something about it, hunker down and figure out how you’re going to solve this mess?
• Do you decide that you should get some updated sales management training that may actually help you to succeed?

The Importance of Sales Management Training

Well, hopefully you start doing the last two things. And getting solid sales management training one of the best things to do.

That’s where this blog comes in.

Sales management training is what we do, what we live for, what we love to do more than anything else. And 99% of the sales management training that you get on this blog is totally free.

There have been many new visitors to the Sales Management Mastery blog in the past month and I thought it would be a good idea to say hello.

So browse through the archives, the most recent posts, the free sales management training we have on the site here.

If you want even more, we even have a premium online sales management training system you can buy for only $24.95 or $4.95/month. Hundreds of sales managers from over one hundred different countries have signed up since we started the program nearly three years ago.

And now, we have reduced the price to a ridiculous level so anyone can afford it.

So check out the great free sales management training. In fact heres a list of our most popular posts to give you a feel for what its all about:

• SMM 14 | Why Money Doesn’t Motivate Salespeople
• Three Proven Methods To Turn Around Your Sales Underachievers
• SMM 6 | 4 Proven Methods to Motivate Salespeople…Gently
• SMM 21 | The “Importance” of Sales Management Motivation
• SMM 24 | What Every Sales Manager Ought To Know About Sales Leadership
• What Does A Sales Manager Do With Poor Sales Performer?

These sales manager training posts should get you started on your quest to become a sales management powerhouse.

And just know that as much as all this will help you be more successful today, things will change soon so you better be prepared.

So get some solid sales management training…and make sure you wear your football helmet.

And when you are interviewing salespeople, you’ll hear a lot of them.

In this occasional sales management training series on How to Interview a Salesperson, in this session, we delve into the question and answer part of the interview.

The Q & A Part of The Sales Management Interview

Most sales managers think that once their questions are asked, the interview is over. Most sales management training completely discounts this part of the interview.

That’s really too bad because its probably the most important…

The sales interview is only “over” until, as Blake (played by Alec Baldwin – way before 40 Rock and twenty-something appearances on Saturday Night Live) said in the greatest sales management movie of all time Glengarry Glen Ross… “get them to sign on the line that is dotted”…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Unlike Alex Baldwin, you don’t have to swear and insult the sales interview that asks the stupid question…all you need to do is listen for the questions that are the ones that knock them out of the running.

And these questions are the stupid ones.

Because you don’t want to hire those guys.

And “put the coffee down”!

The Dumb Interview Questions to Look Out For

At about the half-hour mark of the first interview, right about the time the candidate has gone through the full resume walk, you most likely are getting a pretty good idea whether you want to interview the candidate again.

Since sales candidates have a tendency to talk a lot, you should watch your clock at this mark because it’s at this time point that you will need to start thinking about your exit strategy for the interview.

If you’re not sure that you like the candidate enough to bring them back for the second interview, then you’ll probably want to interview them again anyway, just to be sure. In future sales management training posts, we’ll delve into the second interview in greater detail.

For now however, we will continue on with the first interview questions.

So with fifteen minutes left before the hour mark, stop your questions, close your dossier, put down your pen and ask the interviewee:

“So, what kind of questions do you have for me?”

This tells them the interview is basically over.

If they don’t get that message, then you really need to question the candidate’s ability to pick up on non-verbal cues….this is kind of an important skill to have a salesperson!

If you were on the fence about this candidate, now is the time to find out both how smart they are as well as how prepared they are for the interview.

The first interview Q & A section will surely tell you whether they did five minutes of research on your company or five hours of research on your company.

“Good” interview questions may include:

• Job-responsibility questions
• Questions about the company
• Specific questions on the products or services.
• Any question that is thought-provoking would be considered a positive for the candidate.

If your candidate asks questions like those above, then you are on the right track and chances are pretty good that you’ll invite them back for interview number two.

However, if they ask “dumb” questions, or in the absolute extreme, not asking any questions at all – then you want to call your recruiter to send your more resumes!

So which questions are “dumb”? Below is a partial list. The rest of which you can get here.

1. Salary and commission questions

If the candidate asks a question about how much they get paid on the first interview, and asks it less than tactfully, this is a huge red flag for you.

However, if the question is raised, you should ask the candidate what they have been told on this issue.

If you are using a recruiter, you want to make sure that you and the recruiter are on the same page and you want to clear up any misperceptions the candidate may have regarding the compensation package your company offers.

Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t answer first when this question comes up. If you answer too hastily, this could affect your salary negotiations later on.

What you want to do is find out what they know and then give them a general idea as to the accuracy.

2. “Training” Questions

One of the most lame interview questions of all includes the most over-asked question in sales interview history, namely: “What’s your training like?”

Why on earth would a competent candidate ask this kind of question before you even get the job? What does it matter?

This question always signals that the candidate has put somewhere between zero and nil thought or research into the position in question.

3. Vacation Questions

An even better (or actually worse) question is: “What holidays do you have off?” or “How much vacation time do I get?”

Its always a sales management training crowd-pleaser to ask your potential future boss how many days you won’t be working in the next year.

I usually answer this question with a kind of snide response saying something like:

“None – because I haven’t hired you yet…”

You may want to soften your response a bit however…

In our next sales management training, we’ll get into the final part of our final part in this series: Final Thoughts and The Offer.

So stay tuned.

Please “Share” this post with your friends on Facebook but clicking the “Share” button to the left of this post, because how to interview a salesperson is one of the most popular question we get in The Sales Management Mastery Academy.

But sometimes, you gotta be a dick.

And that “sometimes” occurs when your sales reps are no longer listening to you.

It usually happens when they think your sales management leadership is weak.

Don’t worry.

It’s happened to me and it has happened to every sales management professional who’s reading this post at least once (and there are a few of them) :-)

So what do you do when they start “tuning you out”?

Do you:

• Crack down hard and make em all “bow to your every command”?

• Just continue as if nothing is happening?

It’s a tough choice. A choice that will in fact determine your sales management leadership for months to come.

So as the Elder Knight states in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, you must not “choose poorly”….

No matter what kind of sales leader you are, you CAN re-establish your sales management leadership through an easy sales management training method that’ll re-establish your sales leadership and authority in a matter of days.

Sales Management Training to Train Your Reps

You most likely have deadlines that you need to meet, like a weekly sales report you send to your boss or maybe a daily activity report on your sales reps you need to send by email to your superiors.

Let’s say that one of your sales reps is constantly late on the submission of their sales reports to you, therefore making you late for YOUR report.

Sound familiar?

It should, because its one of the most common issues sales management students have in the Sales Management Mastery Academy.

Its because the tardiness of those tasks being completed by your sales reps is a huge issue if they don’t do it. When you have to hand in your sales report and are missing a few from your sales team, its a big issue. And an unfortunate but significant indicator of your lack of sales management leadership.

So what do you do to win it back?

Well, the very first step is to call them out on it.

In my own personal sales management training, I am continually amazed at how many sales managers DON’T do this. It floors me how much crap some sales managers put up with.

Someone totally disregards your authority and you IGNORE IT?

Not good.

Sales Management and The Weekly Report

Lets say one of your sales reps repeatedly doesn’t send in his weekly sales report.

The first thing you do is to call them on it. You IMMEDIATELY call them and ask them: “I noticed that you sent in your weekly a day late. Why is this?”

This may seem harsh and it may make you and them uncomfortable, but no matter.

Uncomfortable works.

Uncomfortable gets the job done.

Then you say: “My boss makes me send my report the day after I get it from you. When you send it to me a day late, it makes me late. Do you think that’s fair?”

Then wait for their answer. Don’t be mad. Don’t be upset. Just ask them.

I guarantee the next weekly report will be on time.

You can use this sales management technique for any infraction, minor or major, it really doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that you use it.

Use it regularly and your sales management leadership will skyrocket, I guarantee it.

And your sales force will disrespect you no more.

It only took me over twenty years to realize it, but at least I realized it I suppose.

In those twenty years, I was fortunate to have managed quite a few incredible salespeople.

Their performance enabled me to accumulate a solid track record of success; success and skills I later used to start this blog as well as my online sales management training business and other offline businesses.

When I think back on my sales management career, what I am most proud of is that many of my former salespeople went on to have tremendous careers after they were with me.

Many were promoted within their companies, some went on to different careers outside of sales and many just achieved a higher level of success in their current sales role.

Its amazing to me that I still get requests on LinkedIn to do recommendations for salespeople I had the good fortune to manage, sometimes as far back as fifteen years ago. Every time I get one of these requests, I am humbled but mostly, just plain proud.

When I talk to these old sales reps and we reminisce about the old times, where people we once knew from that company are now, what they are doing with their lives, how their family is, they very oftentimes thank me for the contribution I had a small part in making in their careers. More often than not, they mention how much fun we had as colleagues but mostly how “empowered” they felt as a salesperson when we worked together.

It happened so often that it got me thinking about what that really means. What is “empowerment” really?

Sales Management Empowerment

Despite the countless posts I’ve written on this blog on sales management training motivation, I thought: “what is the essence of great sales management motivation?”

Is the essence of great sales management motivation simply “empowerment”?

It seemed way too simple.

In the Sales Management Mastery Academy as well as in all the teaching and consulting I have done through the years, I always implore sales managers to create high performing, “low maintenance” salespeople that create success largely on their own, but under the careful guidance of the sales manager.

A big part of that equation is the empowerment part of it though.

And it is just so simple, which is why I like it so much.

The problem is that to “empower”, you can’t do what you have always done in the past. You can’t just “click – whirr” as Robert Cialdini once said in his seminal book on personal persuasion.

You have to think first, then act. You can’t just react because our first reaction is to “solve” not empower.

I realized that this ability to empower was one of the main reasons for my success as a sales management professional.

And to think it only took me twenty plus years to figure this one out…

Think about it though, when you have a high performance and low maintenance sales team, you can spend the majority of your time on strategies and tactics, formulating even better ways to beat the competition…while spending very little time baby-sitting your salespeople.

Because of your somewhat “hands off” sales management style, your salespeople are in turn, even more motivated because they realize that they can do it on their own, empowered and unencumbered by the long tentacle of your constant influence.

This is because when you teach your salespeople to be empowered, you teach them to work without you having to always be there. You teach them that yes, they can do it on their own.

Sales Managing and The Leaky Toilet

One Saturday morning, I had a leaky toilet in my downstairs bathroom.

You know that problem when you flush the thing it just won’t stop running? You, like me are probably not a plumbing professional by any stretch, so whenever I have a leaky toilet my first instinct is to call my plumber and pay the $180 for the visit and the fix.

Well this time I didn’t call him.

Maybe its because I just felt cheap that day or maybe its because when I called him it would take days for him to finally arrive, nonetheless I decided to just fix it myself.

And lo and behold after about 30 minutes of sweat and cursing…toilet fixed.

I felt absolutely great.

Even though I had only fixed a stupid running toilet, I felt great because I did it on my own.

The more I thought about it as to why I felt great, I felt great because I felt empowered.

Don’t you feel great and empowered when you figure out something on your own? In my case it was only a leaky toilet, but regardless, it felt like I had really accomplished something all on my own.

And as a sales management training guy, I had the whole twenty year epiphany right there in my downstairs half bathroom.

Sales Management Training on Empowerment

So make your salespeople feel the same exhilaration of accomplishment by empowering them to solve problems on their own. Yes, give them guidance. And yes of course always be helpful.

But whatever you do, don’t do it for them.

Assist them in doing it themselves. Help them figure it out on their own.

When you can do this, it gives you more time to perform the strategy that is so important in sales management, but most importantly it makes your sales team feel motivated and empowered.

And a sales team that’s empowered, motivated, low maintenance and performs at an extremely high level….isn’t that sales management nirvana?

Share this post with your friends on Facebook by clicking the “Share” icon to the left of this post and start empowering your sales reps today.

“A priest, a rabbi and a sales manager walk into a bar…”

Excited at the prospect of finally finding the key to great sales management speech-making, I ran out that night to my local Barnes and Noble and bought myself a joke book.

Being not a particularly good public speaker, I memorized a few jokes and then tried it out at my first sales meeting after that sales management training.

When I told the joke it was a disaster. I stumbled on the setup and flubbed the phrasing in the punch line.

I bombed big time.

Why?

First off, it wasn’t funny.

Secondly, it wasn’t relevant

And third, it wasn’t mine. I am a horrible joke teller, its just not my thing.

Not exactly a formula for sales management success….

The Sales Management Speech-Making Secret

In previous sales management trainings we have talked about the importance of story telling. As much as you may not like it, making speeches and speaking in front of your sales team are things you have to do on a regular basis, its just part of your job.

So you really need to get good at it.

The problem is that “public speaking” is that in almost every poll on the top fears, the number one fear of human beings.

Curiously, “fear of death” is number four.

Jerry Seinfeld once joked: “most people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than be at the podium making the eulogy…”

But as a sales manager, making speeches is a way for you to connect with your sales team and set the direction for success. It is a critical sales management skill to master.

So back to the sales management training I received on speech making…

I realized after the training, I had missed a few critical elements to good speech making. I realized that although my joke was horrible, as well as badly delivered, it had absolutely no relevance to my message. And since I got it from a joke book, it wasn’t mine.

So when you are making a sales management speech, you actually can start off with a joke, but you need to make sure you follow these guidelines:

1. Make sure its funny

2. Make sure it relevant

3. Make sure it yours

Making Sales Management Speeches “Yours”

The day after a massive incentive compensation shakeup at the company I was working at, I was schedule to make a speech in front of the sales force. The incentive compensation change had negatively impacted the entire sales team and the buzz was that they were all really ticked off.

It was a tough decision, but one that had to be made based on the revenue projections of the product we were selling.

So the next day, I was scheduled to speak in front of the sales force to talk them through it and explain the “whys” behind the decision.

To make matters worse, they all knew I was in on the decision, so I knew the crowd would be particularly angry with me.

The night before the speech, I went into my kids toy closet and found some old knight gear from a previous Christmas, tried it on and stored it in my briefcase for use the next day.

When I walked out on stage the next day in full “knight gear”, much to my relief, as soon as the crowd saw me in this ridiculous getup, they roared with laughter….instead of throwing coffee cups and half eaten donuts at me.

I went through my speech, explaining the situation in clear terms as to why the decision was made. I also explained why it was not only good for the company, but good for them in the long run.

Did I turn everyone in the room around to my way of thinking?

Most likely not.

Were most of them still ticked off?

Probably.

But I had successfully navigated the situation with humor. My kind of humor, not some humor I learned from a joke book.

Also the humor I employed was a bit self-deprecating, which always helps. I’ve always found that people are far less likely to rag on you if you rag on yourself first.

And lastly, the humor was highly relevant because of the built up tension in the room and the silly looking knight costume.

So when you do use humor in your speeches, make sure its funny, make sure its relevant and make sure it is yours.

All other use of humor in a speech may just make you fall flat…and the next speech you make after that you may in fact need a knight costume too.

What’s your funniest speech?

If you liked this post and want more, be sure to check out our sales management training that covers way more than just sales management speech making.

In fact, we love them way too much its killing our sales management  leadership.

As soon as you fire up the LCD projector, find the right setting so your presentation actually shows on the screen instead of only on your computer (hit “function f8″ by the way)…chances are pretty good, you’ve already lost them.

As Jerry McGuire might have said, you lost them before you even said hello…

Unless they’re in the mood for a nice afternoon nap, salespeople by and large, hate power point slide presentations. They just don’t want to hear you talk to the screen about sales figures from Q4 in yet another snazzy pie chart engineered by Bill Gates’ programmers.

By the way, power point slides are not your personal teleprompter…you actually gotta look at the crowd…but that’s another post for another day. :-)

Anyway, your sales people would just much rather hear themselves talk instead of hearing you talk.

Pulling a Sales Management Audible

I was watching ESPN the other day and there is a new show on there called “Audibles” in which the entire show’s format is entirely based on questions either tweeted or posted on the Audibles Facebook page.

Anyone from “loneyboy21″ to “diehardpackerfan” to “tragiccubbie” can post a question on Facebook or Twitter and the panel of former NFL stars will answer and discuss the question live on the show in real time.

I have no idea how the show is doing, but I thought it was a tremendous idea. And of course, as a sales management training guy, as soon as I saw the show I related it to what we all do as sales managers.

Probably like you, I used to have monthly sales meetings where the entire sales region gets together, sits down for a day and listens to power point presentations…

At the end of the six hour sales meeting, we were then divided into our “district breakouts” where the sales manager could have his group to himself to talk to.

Most times, I had a set of thirty or so power points carefully crafted to reiterate my very important sales management message, ready to cram it down their throats in the hour that we would have together.

This time, after the incredibly long sales meeting filled with too many power point presentations to even count, I decided to pull my own “sales management audible”.

Sensing my sales group could not possibly stand yet another power point, I canned my meticulously planned power point speech, pulled out a flip chart, sat on one of the desks a few feet away from my sales team and started asking my salespeople what their biggest issues were.

To prevent total anarchy, I had one ground rule: if you bring up an issue, you need to have at least ONE idea for a solution. Otherwise they were not allowed to bring it up.

It didn’t even need to be a good solution, but it had to be a solution nonetheless.

Once we decided on two or three of the biggest issues, we started discussing solutions.

With everyone talking, we wrote the solutions on another flip chart. And after some initial bitching and moaning, we came up with some pretty good solutions.

Of course, you as the sales manager need to monitor the conversation and steer it accordingly. Its up to you to make sure it goes in the right direction.

After an hour or so of this, one of my sales reps came up to me after (and this was one of the ones who was not a brown-noser) said it was the best sales breakout she had ever been in.

I think I  used power point slides maybe once or twice after that day until I left the company.

Sales Management Training on The Evils of Powerpoint

Do you have a power point slide addiction?

If you do, don’t sweat it. We all do. But there’s still time to change.

Why does the strategy outlined above work so well?

There are a few reasons:

1. It shocks them because its different

2. It gets your salespeople talking and it gets them talking on solutions….and most of your salespeople love to talk about their issues.

3. They came up with better solutions than I ever could have.

4. Because of the ground rules, it never turned into a “bitch session”. That’s why the ground rules are so important. When a bunch of salespeople sit around and talk about issues, watch out! The ground rules solved this however.

5. It was not a power point presentation

So the next time you have a sales meeting, turn the power point slide idea on its head…ask your salespeople what they want to talk about instead.

Kill the sales management power point slides and get out a whiteboard or a big white paper easel and start writing down their issues. Then openly discuss it with your sales group.

Talk about the issues of the day and then come up with solutions by discussing it among the group. Make it lively and make it fun. Get every one involved.

I guarantee you it will be one of the best sales meetings you’ve ever had.

What’s your best idea for a sales meeting?

Hit the Facebook “Share” button next to this post and Share this with other sales managers so they too can learn how to kill their power point addiction.

Despite the fact that he toils in a highly competitive and cut-throat market, he has achieved an unprecedented level of success his peers could only dream of.

Last month, he made an enormous mistake. It was actually a catastrophic mistake. He was doing a project for one of his clients and documenting its success on his blog and he took his eye off the ball and just plain screwed up.

Instead of hiding from it, burying it, never mentioning it, he did the exact opposite of what most people would do:

He discussed it openly on his blog for his thousands of readers to see.

Curious about this decision to publicly “come clean”, I asked him why.

His answer:

“I’m actually really happy to make mistakes Ralph (does that sound insane?), in which case I am more than happy to discuss them on my blog. At one time, I hated, hated, hated making mistakes – it was all time wasted, all efforts had gone in the trash can, months of hard work simply vanished. Now I think of any mistakes as just another string in my fiddle”

A “string in my fiddle”…

The odd thing is, he told me that as soon as he admitted this huge mistake on his blog…his readership actually increased. In fact, after his “mistake” post, his readership has doubled in readership and in engagement.

As did his influence and leadership…further reinforcing his spot as one of the pre-eminent gurus in his field.

Mistakes and Sales Management

Do you have a difficult time admitting you’ve made a mistake?

If you answered yes, then you are not alone. I hate to admit I’m wrong too. I mean, who really likes to admit publicly that they are a complete dunce?

Nobody I know…

Counter to what you may think, when you admit a mistake you don’t lose leadership, in face you actually build credibility and followership by admitting you’ve made a mistake.

(Now, of course if you make the same mistake over and over and over again, your salespeople are just going to think you are just plain incompetent).

We’re not talking about that though.

I know its not easy to admit it, but as a sales manager who has endless lists of administrative tasks, upper management initiatives to carry out then monitor, sales goals and sales reports, plus daily reports, monthly reports, presentations, expense reports and HR training sessions to attend…let’s admit – you’ve got a ton of s–t on your plate!

And you are going to make mistakes.

It’s OK though, there’s no reason to hide from them.

Screw Ups Make You a Better Sales Leader

So if you do screw up, do what my friend did…admit it. Talk about it. Let it be known it was your fault. People will forgive you. People will respect you more.

In fact, your salespeople will notice this and follow your sales leadership even more because of it. It makes you more REAL and it enhances your motivational power and your influence.

As a leader of salespeople, I have written many times on the importance of achieving perfection and how you should push and drive your sales people to constantly seek the unattainable, but perfectly seek-able “attainment of perfection”.

Perfection is certainly the ideal goal to shoot for…but in reality, it’s completely unattainable.Human beings have faults and failings and believe it or not…make mistakes. You included.

So don’t be afraid to admit your mistakes, because you WILL make them. If you try to cover them up or blame others, you WILL lose followership and you will lose trust. And your sales reps trusting you is an absolutely essential element if you are really serious about achieving any level of sales management success.

When you admit your mistakes openly, you’ll deepen the bond you have with your sales force because they’ll see a little of themselves in you.

And you then become “likeable”.

Hollywood and Sales Management Training

Think of the biggest movies of all time for a minute. Nearly every one of them involved a hero with some kind of flaw:

Superman and Kryptonite

Indiana Jones and snakes

Nemo with that little fin…

The “little flaw”, or lack of perfection makes them…llikeable. It makes them real. It makes them like you and me. It makes us want to follow them through the entire story.

When you admit your mistakes, your sales reps will start following you like Marlin chasing Nemo…

Admit your mistakes, without fanfare, without drama and at the same time you’ll strengthen the sales leadership bond you have with your sales team.

What;s your biggest sales management mistake?

When they were younger, I would just tell them, eager to show them how smart I was because I could spell the word “guarantee” without looking it up in the dictionary.

But now, I never tell them.

They used to then go to their mom and ask her, but although she used to do what I once did and just outright tell them, she now does what I do. She doesn’t answer either.

Sure, they didn’t like it at first.  In fact, they never liked it and now that I think of it they still don’t like it.

But now they don’t ask me how to spell words nearly as much as they once did. They just wanted the answer, they wanted the easy way out. They didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of THINKING.

No, we don’t ignore them when they ask, and no, our kids aren’t failing spelling in school either. In fact quite the opposite.

My oldest son holds the second grade school spelling test record for 13 consecutive perfect spelling tests of 100%, while my other son is now currently working on a streak of seven 100%s in a row.

All parental pride and the inevitable “my kids are so smart” gloating aside, they are not slouchy spellers by any stretch.

But they are far from “natural spellers” either.

So when they ask us how to spell a word, we do one of two things:

1. Have them go to the family dictionary and look it up.

Or

2. “Coach” them through how to spell it

Number one is easy, you just have to make sure the family Websters Dictionary isn’t hidden in a closet somewhere or you’ll be asked the “where’s the dictionary” question over and over and that gets old fast.

Number two is a bit more tricky because it requires a bit more effort on your part.

Answering them is easy. Coaching them is more difficult. But the payoff for you and them is far greater because the actually LEARN something.

Sales Management Coaching

When your sales reps ask you how to do something do you always give them the answer or do you tell them to find the answer or coach them through the answer?

If you give them the answer, they will continue to keep asking you over and over the same questions.

If you teach them to find the answer or you coach them through the answer, they learn HOW to do it almost on their own.

My salespeople used to ask me all the time how they could get a new and creative deal through upper management. At first, I did it for them and with them. I modeled it for them, then I had them do it themselves and guided them through it.

Two Steps in Good Sales Management Coaching

They are:

1. Model the behavior by doing it while they watch
2. Coach them through how to do it

So the next time one of your salespeople asks you a question like these, ask them instead: “what do you think you should do?”

This should be your very first question.

After they answer, then ask a follow up question like: “so of you did that would that solve the issue?”

If they say no and I agreed I would ask her: “then what else could you do?”

What will eventually happen is that the salesperson starts to THINK and learn their way through the solution.

You can keep asking your salesperson the above question as many times as needed until they reach the answer or until they run into a total roadblock.

If the salesperson reaches a roadblock in their answers and you cannot prompt much more out of them, then say:

“If I were in your shoes, I would consider doing…”

This will start them back up with a whole new line of thinking, prompting further solutions and questions. And eventually, together you and the sales rep will come to the conclusion together. A conclusion and solution that they crafted for themselves with a little assist for you.

And its a solution that they “own” now because they thought of it.

The Pursuit of Sales Management Nirvana

Eventually, your sales team won’t call you as much. And when they do, chances are good they will be really stuck, so coach them through it all again.

This will give your salespeople more confidence and empowerment as well as leave you with far fewer calls to answer so you can get on with other things.

Ah, sales management nirvana.

However, the next time your salesperson asks you how to spell “perspicuity”….tell them to look it up in the dictionary.

How do you spell sales management coaching?

That’s because most sales managers think of them as incredibly difficult to manage…or are they?

If you feel this way, you’re not alone. Many sales management experts would agree with you.

But in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Its unfortunate that most sales management training focuses on the problems associated with these kinds of sales reps. But with the egotistical sales rep, they are really the easiest for you to manage…you just have to know how.

Not sound like a Freudian sales management training psychoanalyst, but at its root, the egotistical sales rep is hiding behind that “ego” by using it as a shield, masking profound feelings of inferiority. This may seem kind of weird to you, but its true.

Bottom line: the egotistical sales person who constantly calls attention to themselves is just plain insecure.

Who knows why they are this way…we really don’t want to know, do we? Let’s just assume that they feel this way because they have the need to prove themselves to everyone else. And that’s why this kind of salesperson falls into the kind that’s motivated by prestige.

Lets not get too heavy into the psychoanalysis, but it all comes back to poor self esteem.

This makes this kind of sales person easy to motivate though. All a sales manager needs to do is give them what they crave most: self esteem.

Most sales managers and most sales management training experts would say to “put them in their place”, “challenge them” or “tell them to be less self absorbed”. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

That will do one thing: alienate them from you.

And you need them.

Oh, and one more thing…chances are they are probably one of your top sales reps.

So keep it simple and just give them what they want more than ANTHING in the world…make them feel good about themselves, period. Compliment them, notice how they do things well, boost their esteem by making them feel good.

You don’t have to go overboard, but just do it tactfully.

So make the egotistical sales rep feel good about themselves; compliment them, give them positive feedback, pay attention to them. When you do this, you’ll find the egotistical salesperson is the easiest sales rep you’ve ever managed.

What’s your easiest sales rep to manage?

Forget the “atta-boys”.

Forget the monthly sales plaques.

No sales management training leadership strategy works better to motivate your sales team than this.

I am talking about a guttural, visceral, “cut to the quick” sales management motivational strategy and there is nothing pretty about it.

This is the kind of motivational tactic that when someone does it for you, you will kill for them (figuratively, not literally of course). So much so that:

…the Army Rangers do it.

…the Navy SEALs do it.

…the Green Berets do it.

…the Special Forces do it.

And now, you need to do it.

And here it is: your sales reps will only really follow you if they know you have their back.

Sounds a little “Apocalypse Now”, doesn’t it?

It is. But here’s the fact: sales is a war sometimes.

…its a war between you and operations.

…its a war between you and marketing.

…its a war between you and logistics.

…and sometimes, its even a war between you and upper sales management.

I’ve been there. I know.

Sales management is not pretty sometimes.

Sure, I could write sales management training posts all day about how a sales manager needs to be tactful, be mindful of others, create consensus and to build alliances…but if you have been in the sales management trenches for any number of years, you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes, it is just all out war…

And you need to win that war or die (figuratively) trying.

Don’t do it for YOU, do it for your sales people.

Why? Because, when you fight for them, go to war for them, never give up for them, if the principles and the reasons are right, then you WILL win the undying loyalty and following of your salespeople…even if you fail to achieve the objective.

But don’t fail.

They in turn, will repay you handsomely by going to war for you every day…and their war is blowing away the competition with unparalleled effort and persistence to succeed.

So when the cause is just, go to war for your sales force; fight for them, stand up for them, fight the battles they are incapable or unable to fight for themselves…and take no prisoners.

And watch your sales leadership soar.

What’s your ultimate sales management leadership weapon?

Living on Cape Cod, you are surrounded by people who fish, lobster, clam and crab for both fun and for a living.

I do none of these things. I don’t own a boat, I don’t even own a fishing pole. This makes me kind of an oddity in the neighborhood.

I once consulted with a guy who owns a fishing charter business. But aside from that, I really know nothing about fishing.

When the boys are sitting around the outdoor fire on the weekends telling fishing tales, I have absolutely nothing to add except the occasional: “that must have been a big fish” or “wow, how’d you reel that one into the boat?”

As a sales management training and Internet guy, I am clueless about fishing. But for some reason I can’t explain, these guys seem to like me any way.

Sales Management and Fishing

We went out fishing with one of them this past week. Excited to finally be able to add some value to the neighborhood discussions, I was ready to reel in my first “striper” or “blue”.

To add to the excitement, the captain excitedly told us that “the blues are running”…I’m still not sure what that means.

After two and a half hours on the boat however, we caught exactly…nothing.

As a consolation, our friend decided he should at least get us something for our efforts, so he raided his own lobster traps, hoping to find a few “regulation” size lobsters.

We cruised from trap to trap, but all of them were either empty or had lobsters that were too small to keep. As he continued to try to find a lobster that was big enough for us to take home, I noticed was a few things:

1. He Kept His Cool

No matter how desperate the situation got in the whole fishing trip, he always kept his cool.

After two hours of no fish and seeking to at least find one good lobster in his pots, he never lost his cool.

No signs of anger, frustration or desperation. It was obvious, he wanted to do a good job for us…but the fish just weren’t biting.

2. He Was Ethical

Several times, there were lobsters in the lobster pot that were “borderline” keepers (based on a metal measuring stick he had). Although he claimed that “other lobster men might keep them”, he wouldn’t.

I know he wanted his paying customers to have something to show for the trip, he never once kept a lobster that could be construed as undersized.

No matter, he kept his ethics in tact…despite the obvious pressure to do otherwise.

3. He Was Always Teaching

Obviously a skilled fisherman and having worked in the Florida Wildlife Commission for nearly 20, he had a lot of knowledge of fishing and lobstering.

He told us about tides, fish tendencies, sea life, fish and lobster baiting strategies, fish finding techniques, boating safety and much more.

Never once did he preach or tell us how smart he was.

He taught us in an easy, conversational manner; all the while keeping an eye on the fish finder sonar device. We came away with a vastly increased knowledge of fishing, lobstering and boating thanks to him.

4. He Was Persistent

Even at the two hour mark with no fish caught, he kept changing course, scanning his fish finder, constantly re-positioning us to put us in the best possible position to get us a fish to catch.

And when the first four lobster pots came up empty, he simply went to the next one and re-baited each one, confident that the next one would be “the one”.

5. He Was Optimistic, but Realistic

After our first eight lobster traps came up empty, our captain prompted us to start guessing how many lobsters would be in the next pot. After nine clunkers, things were looking pretty grim.

However, on our last lobster pot, we came up with eight lobsters. Two of them were keepers.

After nearly four hours on the trip, we finally had a prize to go home with.

Sales Management Training Fishing Lessons

Look at that list above.

What if you were all those things as well?

As a sales management training guy, its obvious to me that the very same qualities that make you a great captain, fisherman and lobsterman have a lot to do with you becoming a sales manager.

If you, as a sales manager, can:

• Keep your cool when things are going bad

• Always be ethical in your dealings with your customers, sales reps and bosses

• Constantly be teaching your salespeople

• Always be persistent, optimistic and realistic

…wouldn’t you be a better sales manager than you are today?

It doesn’t take a fisherman to figure that out.

Sometimes it’s just that simple. And that’s no fish tale…

What’s your fish tale?

We actually bought an older house, with the idea of adding on to it, making a few remodels and then living in it.

We really loved the house, but realized about half way through our remodel plans that the house needed so many revisions, it would break our budget. We instead decided to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch. Believe it or not, this was the cheaper way to do it.

It was a gut wrenching decision, not only because it was a beautiful house, but also because I really hate paying for things twice.

Oh well.

We figured that this would be the last house we would ever buy, so we may as well do it right.

So we did it right.

The High Pressure Heating and Cooling System

One of the things we decided to include with the new house was a state-of-the-art high pressure heating and cooling system. We live on Cape Cod, Massachusetts so the winters aren’t too cold and the summers aren’t too oppressively hot.

But in the middle of August it’s brutally hot.

Since we had decided to “do it right”, we got the central air conditioning in addition to the regular heating component.

We also decided to get many of the other systems in the house state-of-the-art as well. The fire prevention system, the lighting system, the water heater/plumbing system, the sprinkler system are all basically computer systems that require some technical expertise to make sure they properly function.

All of them require annual maintenance to keep them in top working order.

However, out of all these complex systems we have in the house, only the company that installed the heating and cooling system send us regular reminder to make appointments to do “semi-annual maintenance checks”. The mailer comes every six months with an email.

Now, I’m no HVAC technical genius but all this really amounts to is two guys coming into the house, taking a look at the heating system and replacing the air filters.

Solely because of their letters and emails, I call them, they call me back and then they come by and check things out once or twice a year. Just to see if everything’s alright.

After their visit, they send us a bill for a cool $180 for a mere 30 minutes of work.

Not a bad hourly wage to say the least…

And for a heating and cooling system that would cost many times that amount to replace, I figure its a small price to pay.

Amazingly, they are still the only company that contacts us every year, twice a year to make sure everything is working well.

The Sales Management – Sales Rep Contract

I once took over a ten person sales team, which every member was in the bottom half of the national rankings in the 600 salesperson sales force.

In my first sales meeting with them (after a mere two days on the job), I decided I would take a slightly different approach to my leadership with them.

In an effort to be helpful, I had carefully put together 30 or so snazzy power point slides to dazzle them with all the things I expected from them to achieve sales success. At the last minute though, I tossed that idea and decided to simply use a chalkboard to write down what they expected from me in order to be successful.

After their last sales manager (who was clearly lacking certain key leadership skills), I figured this would be a great way for me to introduce myself as the new guy who actually cared about what they wanted most.

So I asked them the question and wrote their answers on the board.

The list was pretty long, but the top three were:

• Call us back when we call you

• Follow up on projects we are working on that need help

• Let us know where we stand

Simple enough.

I then asked them what I should expect from them. That list was not quite as long, but it was fairly extensive.

We made the agreement that we would both honor both sides of the agreement. I would do what they asked and they would do what I asked of them.

By year’s end, 50% of them were in the top half of the sales force and three won the top sales award for the company…

Don’t Be The Plumber

With all the talk about businesses having a tough go of it right now, I’ve always wondered why the heating and cooling guys are the only ones who faithfully contact us to do follow up.

I mean, that $180 is pretty easy money. Money like that is ripe for the taking with the other systems we have in the house.

For example, the hot water heater we have is notoriously finicky. It needs constant TLC.

Does my plumber email to remind me to service it? I mean, he has my email address after all.

Nope.

I spend the $180 with the heating and cooling guys because they:

• Call me back when I call them

• Follow up on periodic maintenance of my heating system

• Let me know where I stand

Simple.

And it’s good business.

Sales Management Training and Heating and Cooling

In sales management, one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from the rest of the average sales mangers out there and lay your own personal foundation for success is to simply do the same thing the heating and cooling guys do:

• Call your sales reps back when they call you

• Follow up on projects we are working on that need help

• Let them know where we stand

Most plumbers, subcontractors and sales managers miss this critical point to success.

At the very least, basic follow up is essential to sales management success.

Not only do your salespeople want it, but they need it. In fact, they demand it.

So ask yourself:

• Are you calling back your salespeople when they call you?

• Do you have a scheduled weekly meeting with each of your salespeople to review your combined actions to help close the sale?

• Do you actually provide valuable feedback to your sales reps during semi-annual and annual reviews of your salespeople?

If you are doing at least some of these things, then you are more heating and cooling guy than plumber.

If you’re not however….

My youngest son likes to make dinner too.

This is a big help because I can put him to work as my 9 year old sous chef; cutting vegetables, minding the boiling pots and keeping me company in the kitchen.

Oftentimes, he makes suggestions as to what we should cook, which is great because I often have hard time thinking of things to cook.

One night he suggested we have “Greek Night”.

Sounding like a damn good idea, we happily went to the supermarket to get our Greek supplies:

• Lamb

• Tomatoes

• Rice

• Feta cheese

Grocery list done, we went home, fired up the grill and were on our way.

I then realized I had never cooked Greek before…

Although we have tons of spices in the spice rack, I didnt have any “Greek spices” to spice the lamb. I’m not even sure what Greek spices are…

Pressed for time, I figured I’d keep things simple. Having been to Greece, I knew the Greeks liked to keep things simple when it comes to ingredients.

So I grabbed the salt and pepper, and started to grill the lamb.

Salt and pepper.

When it was all done, it was the best lamb Ive ever had.

The rest of the meal, with the tomatoes with feta cheese, white rice with butter that went along with it were pretty sweet too.

Total ingredients for the entire meal: 6

Simple.

The #1 Key To Great Sales Management

I get asked all the time what the key to great sales management is.

When I answer, I often think of “Greek Night”…especially the lamb.

Why? Because great sales management is all about keeping things simple.

In fact, the more complex you get at times with your “sales management strategies, tactics and tricks” the worse your results.

The key to sales management success is simplicity.

And be helpful.

The New Salesperson

A few years ago I had a new salesperson who was frazzled from her first month or two on the job. She would call me constantly, at all hours, asking about dozens of questions on policies and procedures, afraid that she may do something wrong.

I would always return her call and help her with whatever issue she had. I would also teach her how to solve the issue on her own so she would gain confidence, competence and not call me for every little thing…

One day, I decided I would call her out of the blue.

She picked up the phone (thankfully), and I asked her one of the best questions a sales manager can ask:

“I had a few extra minutes, so I wanted to call you to see if there anything you need help with?”

There was a stunned silence on the other end…

In fact, she may have dropped the phone.

She responded that although she had been in sales for over ten years, she had NEVER had a sales manager call her out of the blue and ask her if she needed help.

We chatted for a while, discussing some of the issues of the day she was having some issues with and hung up.

Be Helpful

A few years later, when I left that company she told me she would never forget that day when I called her. She said that because of that call, she had never worked harder for a boss ever in her life.

Although I think she was exaggerating in her praise, the simple fact remains:

To be a great sales manager, its simple: be helpful.

What’s the key to great sales leadership?

Be helpful.

What’s the key to great sales motivation?

Be helpful.

What’s the key to great sales coaching?

The more you help your salespeople, the more they’ll want to help you…and the more you help your salespeople, the better they become and the better you’ll feel about what you do everyday.

Keep it simple…like salt and pepper

And if ever come over to the house on Greek Night, I’ll have some grilled lamb waiting for you….

What’s your salt and pepper?

Special thanks to Chris Brogan for incredible inspiration for this blog post.

My bad. I almost didn’t include it because it was left out of my last post.

But if you don’t include it in your sales management training interviewing arsenal, you could really leave yourself open to making some fatal hiring decisions.

And I don’t want that to happen…so here goes.

Get to the “whys”

Get them talking, but ask them to focus on the “whys” behind the decisions they made in their life. The answers to those questions will give you insights into who they really are. Everyone is the sum of all the decisions they have made in their lives. Ask them about those decisions.

In asking them “why did they do what they did?” questions, you are cutting to the core of their nature. Taking a new job is a huge event in someone’s life, these decisions/thought processes are “windows into their true character”.

Simply ask them about the decisions they made and the “whys” behind each decision.

When you got married wasn’t it one of the biggest decisions you ever made in your personal life?

And the spouse you decided to marry tells a lot about who you are as a person.

Just like a “marriage” to another company tells tons about who that person is.

Ask the interviewee a question like: “Why did you leave Paychex to go work at AT&T? What were you hoping to accomplish?”

Or when they left Paulie’s Walnuts, Inc. to go to Phil’s Cashew Company, my personal favorite question is:

“What was missing from your current situation at Paulie’s Walnuts Inc.?”

When you find out the “whys” behind this question, you get a window into their soul. Then probe into each decision. Get specific. Have them give you examples.

The more specific the examples they give, the better it is for you.

And the better your chances of making a killer sales hire.

In our next sales management training step in the interviewing process, we get to the question and answer section. This isn’t the time to snooze…its time to wake up and make sure you use this all important segment of the hiring process to get the best salesperson possible.

Who wants to get drunk like a college frat boy on a beer funnel?

Not to get your hopes up but this sales management training lesson isn’t actually about a beer funnel…

It is all about an interview funnel and its THE essential step in asking the right interview questions when interviewing a salesperson.

In our continuing sales management training series on how to interview a salesperson, we get into interview questions for salespeople.

Today we discuss sales management training step four.

4. “The Funnel”

 
As you may know, a funnel is a large conical structure that is wide at the top and extremely narrow at the bottom. A large volume of liquid is poured into the top of the funnel, the liquid compresses and swirls around the tapered edges, while gravity pulls the substance inexorably towards the narrow hole at the bottom, finally releasing its contents in an unbroken band, streaming out the bottom opening in a tightly concentrated, viscous thread.
 

When you interview sales candidates, think of your interviewing style as a large funnel, but the liquid is the line of questioning you use to uncover the true nature of the candidate. In our funnel analogy, start them off with some large, wide, broad sweeping questions, lulling them into a comfortable rhythm, making them comfortable and at ease.

As the interview progresses, over time, you ask for more and more specifics, narrowing your focus and field of questioning to exact instances and examples until you get a steady strand of tightly worded and specific questions that will ultimately reveal a wormhole into the soul of your candidate.
 

I’m being a bit melodramatic, but the idea is really simple:
 

Start with big broad questions, then using a step-wise approach; ask more and more specific questions, drilling down to get the “answer behind the answer”.
 

It’s really just that simple to explain. It’s harder to actually do, but Ill show you how in the next sections.
 

Get drunk off of “The Funnel”
 

A favorite college pastime is doing “the funnel”, this along with “the kegstand” are two of the more intellectually challenging, yet extremely effective ways in which to consume massive amounts of alcohol in a notably short period of time. By pouring cans of beer inside a plastic funnel, the imbiber of said malted beverage can quickly consume two or three beers inside of ten to fifteen seconds, when under normal circumstances those same beers would be consumed over a longer duration of time.
 

So if you want to get really loaded, really fast…try either one and you’ll immediately know what I mean, (Ill explaining the full benefits of the kegstand in later lessons).
 

Like the college beer funnel, the interview funnel does in essence the same thing. You get a ton of incredibly important information in a very short period of time, loading you up with vital information that you can immediately use to assess the candidates viability for the job at hand. This technique is especially effective if you vigilantly keep them on track as we’ll instruct you to do, even interrupting their rambling if necessary.
 

Make sure you remember to phrase your questions from very broad to very specific. The funnel is a questioning technique you need to use at almost every stage of the interview with the exception of the first pass on The Resume Walk. The Resume Walk is where you get your late lines of questioning, by taking notes and jotting down broad statements that you can then question all the way through the funnel until you reveal a narrow stream of character traits that you can then match to the pre-requisites of the position.
 

So after the candidate has done the resume walk, you are probably now into the half hour mark in the interview. If you’ve done a good job at keeping the candidate on track, as well as shelving most of your questions by writing them in the margin now is the time to refer back to some of these notes.
 

Keep your “Fabulous Five” as well as your hiring criteria in mind; begin asking particulars on some of the initial comments. A good tip is to use their exact words stated back to them. Although they may not say it, the candidate will be impressed with your attention to detail on this. Likewise, this tells them immediately that you’re on the ball and it may be difficult to pull the wool over your eyes. This small detail heightens the intensity of the whole interchange.
 

For example, let’s say that the interviewee divulged that when describing one of their previous jobs he said he “really liked” selling that product. An example of a funnel question would be as follows:
 

“When you were at Moshi’s Oriental Rugs in 2007, you said that you ‘really liked selling oriental rugs’ that year, tell me more about that”
 

When he tells you more, you can then ask even more specific questions around his aptitude at selling rugs in that year. You may ask him:
 

“Tell me about a really huge rug sale that year that you were particularly proud of”
 

Then ask him even more specifics, using names if possible:
 

“What sales strategy did you take with Mr. Magdi to make the sale?”
 

You’ll then want to go even further:
 

“Tell me about that sale to Mr. Magdi and how exactly you did it.”
 

Maybe then layer another related question on top of that by asking:
 

“Out of all the parts of a sales call, which part is most important?”
 

Then ask:
 

“What makes you so good at selling?”
 

You could follow that up with a more introspective question such as:
 

“How does being successful selling rugs make you feel?”
 

This is an extreme example of “funnel” interviewing.
 

Do you see how one single point from the initial interview “Resume Walk” led to six or seven follow up questions?
 

This is purposeful, because the more detail you can get on a single event, tells you not only that it is not “made up” (I cannot imagine!), but it also tells you the specifics you need to assess if the candidate is a good fit for your sale.
 

This is classic “Resume Walk” funneling:
 

• Focus on one broad statement made in the “resume walk” phase of the interview

• Pick that vague comment apart until you have a very specific instance of the candidate selling in action

• Ask them to comment on their own skills in an introspective manner.

And that’s how you funnel.

In our next sales management training step, ee reach you how to “Get to the Why’s” behind your sales interviewees b.s answers.

You gotta cut through the bull and get to the meat.

We teach you how next time.

As outlined in our last sales management training posts, although there are many excellent methods on how to interview a salesperson, in my experience, there are 6 sales management training steps you must follow when interviewing a salesperson.

After conducting hundreds of sales interviews and hiring hundreds of salespeople, these sales management trainng methods have worked wonders for me. So I am more than happy to share them with you here so you can achieve your own high level of sales management successs.

Today we discuss sales management training step three.

3. “The Resume Walk” (First Interview Only)

The goal of the first interview is to do one and only one thing:

Determine if you want them to come back for the next interview!

That is your only goal in interview number one.

The way you do this is get them talking a lot and the best way to do this is get them to take a trip down memory lane…talking about themselves.

So using “The Funnel” interview style as your sales management training guide, it is best to get to the core of who they are by prompting them to first take you through the most basic of interview questioning, namely “The Resume Walk”.

People love talking about themselves – and salespeople are typically a pretty chatty bunch. So in the interest of both “making em comfy” and getting the vital data you need to make an excellent hiring decision, make them extremely comfortable by getting them talking up their (and everyone’s) favorite subject: themselves!

When you actually start the interview questioning, the first question you’ll need to ask the candidate should be use “The Funnel” exactly; start wide and broad and end narrow and specific.

However, you don’t want to have them blindly start telling you “about themselves” – set some ground rules for what you want them to tell you, while using “The Funnel” at the same time.

When you first ask them to talk you through their resume by taking “The Resume Walk”; your question should begin something like this:

“Take me through your resume from college to present, moving from job to job – however, what I am particularly interested in is

Why the “why you made the decisions you made in your career” part?

It’s simple. You’re getting two things here. You get to see them talking (all salespeople need to do this) – where you can measure articulation, persuasiveness and logical flow of information.  But even more importantly, you’ll witness them articulating their desires.

Since actions reveal a whole lot more about a person than just what they say, the “job change” part of the story will tell you within the context of their career, what they truly desire.

Let me explain.

You’ve heard the expression: “show me don’t tell me”? Well, truer words were never spoken when it comes to interviewing. There will be loads of bull flying around during your interview, but the no bull is when they show you and reveal to you what they actually did.

Getting them to tell you about why they made those decisions cuts to the core of their character.

Here’s why. Big decisions require lots and lots of thought and this kind of introspective thought can only come one place: deep inside.

If you really want to uncover what they are all about deep inside, and not just on a surface level, then ask them about the big, heavy decisions they made. Then further drill it down to an even more granular level by asking them why they made those decisions…this always bubbles up to the surface the reason behind their answer.

Take notes here. Their answers to these “big decision” questions will give you plenty of fodder for follow-up questions (as long as you write it in your resume margins) for the second interview…

Let’s take a step back.

If you think about the biggest decisions you’ve made in your life – what would they be? You could maybe list a few (this is not all inclusive):

1.    What college you went to

2.    Who you married

3.    What house you bought

4.    What jobs you took

These are all big, life-altering decisions, and isn’t each and every one of them just loaded with stories of exactly who you really are?

How you chose your spouse is so intertwined with what it is that you were looking for in a partner in life that it speaks volumes about who you are, what you are and maybe even where you’re deficient (don’t worry I won’t ask him or her). If somebody asked you why you married the person you are now married to, wouldn’t that answer be a “mini-narrative” on who you are as a person?

It’s the same thing when understanding salespeople’s career choices.

The biggest decisions they made in their career can also be asked with even more revealing, soul-baring questions attached like this:

1. What career path they chose:

“Why are you in sales?”

2. Why and how did they choose the company they chose to pursue that career path:

“Of all the fabulous metal detector companies to work for, what was it about Metallica Metal Detectors, Inc. that made you want to work for them?”

Layer even more questions on top; probe deep into those decisions they made for both 1 and 2 above. You’ll uncover the candidate’s true nature the more follow up questions you ask.

While the candidate is going through the resume walk, remember to take notes in the margin on anything in particular that stands out.

Remember that you’re looking for any broad generalizations, any “throw away” side comments that may be interesting; just take lots of notes. Like we said before, just jot them down on the resume – and circle them so that you can refer to them later.

Don’t forget to notate broad general statements they make like “I really knew that sales was the job for me” and “I did really well that year” or “I learned the products pretty well”. Make note of these broad statements, you’ll be using them later as you swirl them around the middle of “The Funnel”, when used to formulate follow up questions.

Then once you have completed this step, you are ready to really evaluate their answers more in depth. By getting drunk off the Funnel!

In our next sales management training article, we will discuss that further. Stay tuned.

What do you think? Is there a better way to interview a sales rep? Post your comment below and let me know what YOU thnk.

Sales Management Training Step # 2: The “Pre-Interview”

Most rookie sales interviewers immediately start the first interview with “interrogation-style” questions to the interviewee as soon as he takes a seat.

This is a big mistake.

Whatever you do…DO NOT launch right into questions as soon as they sit down. Instead, let them “ease into the interview” by letting them hear you talk for a minute or two (no longer) on exactly what the position is all about. This invariably lessens the “interview jitters” that occur with most candidates.

Remember that you are trying to get the candidate as comfortable as possible so that you can get maximum cooperation to gain the maximum insight. Creating an environment of professional respect is critical to this occurring.

Also, remember that a candidate who has been treated with respect from the get-go will be far more likely to accept a job offer later on.

Critical to this is first asking them what they know about the position itself, this can include what the recruiter has told them or maybe what they know about the position (who, what and where) in their research. This is real basic stuff on which the entire conversation is based.

After you ask them what they know about the position, you can then fill in the gaps by briefly detailing the aspects of the job that they are not familiar with.

• Most interview candidates are extremely nervous at this opening stage, thinking that they immediately have to launch right into why they are the best candidate for the job, so take the pressure off by gently asking them what they have been told or know about the job so far. Also mention that you’ll fill in any details they may have either omitted or their recruiter had failed to mention. This immediately disarms them and allows you a few minutes to do some light talking which takes “the pressure to perform” off of them. This never fails to relax candidates, while serving the purpose of clarifying the exact job duties, requirements and territory for the position. It gets you and them singing from the same sheet of music.

• Briefly describe for them the job territory, the description of the job, maybe throw in a little history of the position, how it has done historically.

• Tell the candidate why the sales territory is open. For years, I did not reveal to candidates why the territory was open, but I always do now. This is because every candidate wants to know why the position is open. Was the previous person fired? Were they promoted? Were they laid off? Is this an expansion? Did they leave and go elsewhere? If so why?

Candidates are dying to know this…so as long as this divulsion is in line with your Human Resources policies, I recommend you just tell them.

And why not? There’s no harm in divulging this whatsoever. If the opening is due to someone getting fired for performance, it is completely okay to tell them that the previous salesperson was “not the right match and could not meet our performance standards”. It’s also okay to tell them that the previous salesperson was “promoted to upper management as a result of their tremendous sales track record”. These are all perfectly okay to say. Furthermore, this kind of refreshing honesty sets the expectation of honesty and trust – which hopefully translates to them reciprocating this honesty in their answers to you.

• Next up, add in a few words about when you started at the company, what your responsibilities are, your boss, your district or area. Keep it brief.

• Make sure you don’t reveal too much, but don’t be too vague, just give them the facts.

Whatever you do in this “pre-interview” section, don’t say a word to them about “what attributes you are looking for in an ideal candidate”!

This is a HUGE mistake, so don’t make it! If you let it slip, then you should probably end the interview, because you’ll never get a real answer from them for the rest of the time you are with them.

Why? That’s because if you do get into that sort of detail of “what you’re looking for”, the smart interviewer will immediately pick up on those clues, then gear all of his or her answers towards the character attributes you revealed in your intro. They’ll be so busy trying to match your stated traits that you’ll never get to who they really are. The interview will be a complete waste of time.

Here’s what happens, the interviewer says: “we’re an aggressive organization that’s growing fast and we’re looking for a person who puts the customer first, drives new sales growth, has fun, works hard and is highly motivated”.  He then asks the interview candidate: “So how would you describe yourself?”

Of course, the candidate turns right around and says “I’m extremely aggressive, thrive in a fast-growing environment, extremely motivated and consider the customer most important. Also, I like to work hard and have fun too”.

See what I mean? They’ll give it right back to you every time – and oftentimes the hiring sales manager loves it and eats it up because they love hearing their own words repeated back to them  and they come away form the interview saying “boy that guy was great, its like we were exactly on the same page!”

Trust me, I’ve made this mistake on several occasions and it was painful.

The key is for you to tell them VERY LITTLE about what you’re looking for, but get them to tell you about WHOLE LOT ABOUT WHO THEY ARE. You will determine if it’s the right match, without them ever knowing what it is you are looking for. You hold all the cards here; they hold none at all – so don’t show yours too soon.

At this point however, DO NOT let them ask any questions… that time will come at the end of the interview.

Start the sales interview with a “just the facts” mentality. I can not tell you how many average sales manager interviews I witnessed with a sales manager who started the interview asking the candidate if they had any questions on the position. Why would you do this? Why in the world would you give them all the answers to the questions you will be asking them in just a few minutes?

Remember…if you end up hiring them, these first interactive statements could be the very first deposits you make in the “Trust Account”…so be mindful of that fact from the get-go.

Bottom line is this, no matter whether you hire the person or not, you want them to walk away with a good feeling about you as well as that of the company. This is just good karma. You never know, maybe that very same person you interview today could be interviewing you some time later in life.

So in this sales management training, we start the interview by doing the following:

1. Ask them what they know about the position
2. Help them out by “filling in the gaps”
3. Tell them briefly about you
4. Tell them why the territory is open
5. Don’t let them ask questions yet

That’s it. No more, no less. Brevity is the key here.

Your next step is getting right into the interview itself which we cover in our next sales management training post in “The Resume Walk”. So stay tuned.

There are 6 sales management training steps to follow and we will cover each step in detail, in 6 consecutive posts, so here goes.

Most essentially, to make absolutely sure that you are interviewing every candidate on a level playing field, as well as to make your interviews to be as productive as possible, it’s critically important for you to evaluate each candidate in the exact same way. This is why we have a 6 step sales management training system for hiring.

Interview different for each sales candidate and you will get different and inconsistent results.

Same-ness in structure, used in combination with controlled evaluation tools make this possible. You can deviate from the formula ever so slightly if you absolutely have to – but do your best not to.

The formalized structure helps you to process the information that you receive from your questions in a balanced manner, so that all candidates are given an equal chance. The downside of not following any set structure is that you will be less likely to make a sound hiring decision as determinants may be biased and disproportionate.

Remember that hiring salespeople is the most difficult of all hires due to the fact that you’re interviewing them in their native environment. Don’t forget that the interview is “the biggest sales call of their life” – so you need to be doubly sharp to pick up on all the candidate’s personal nuances so you get the most accurate picture of who they really are.

So within each interview there is a structure to follow so that you continue to evaluate each candidate on an equal plane. This way you can objectively evaluate each candidate on their won merits. You can achieve that objectivity when you conduct your interviews all within the same format as follows:

1. Make ‘Em Comfy
2. ThePre-Interview
3. “The Resume Walk” (First Interview only)
4. “The Funnel”
5. Q and A
6. Next Steps

1. Make ‘Em Comfy

When you first meet your interview candidate, your real first goal in the interview is to make them as comfortable as you possibly can. A lot of interviewers will tell you that you should immediately put an interview candidate on the defensive and make them defend themselves at every step of the interview process.

Don’t do this!

There is a very good reason why and that’s because:

A comfortable, relaxed interview candidate reveals so much more than one who’s up-tight and nervous!

Unless you’re a masochist, it’s a whole lot more fun to talk to someone who is at ease than one who’s nervous or intimidated. This way you really get to know them for who they are as opposed to who they think they should be as long as you make them comfortable.

Don’t do this because you’re a nice guy or gal…forget that. Do it because it’s the single most effective way to get to the heart of who they really are. You want them to be the star of the show, the one who is relaxed and alert – because only then do you get them to let their guard down so that you can discover what they’re really all about!

Here is a logical sequence of events to make ‘em comfy:

• As they are entering the interview room, make pleasant chit chat at first, where they were coming from, ask them about where they live, how was the parking, traffic, the weather, anything to get them at ease right off the bat. We will analyze this conversation in later lessons – and this interaction is a very important one in the end when deciding on which candidates to hire – but for right now, just focus on making them feel at ease.

• Another great way to start off is to make them even more comfortable by asking them if they want a drink of water, offer that they take off their jacket, anything that allows them to feel at ease. This will immediately set the tone of relaxation and make a far more welcoming interview environment.

• Make a good first impression; notify the front desk personnel at your company that the candidate is coming. Give the receptionist the candidates name and a way to reach you when they arrive. Remember that the tension a candidate feels at this time can be blown out of proportion by a poor reception at your company. If you can, make sure that every staff member who comes in contact with the candidate in the hallways, next door offices and the like are apprised of the candidate’s arrival and even provide them with names, if possible.

• The same goes for you as well. It’s possible you may want to impress the candidate with your status and level of importance by sending one of your minions to fetch the candidate and lead him back to your castle. It’s done all the time of course…but don’t do it. Meet the candidate in the lobby yourself and offer them a sincere welcome. Look them in the eye and give them a firm handshake. It will go a longer way in setting them at ease by simply being genuine and real.

• A lot has been written about the interview environment, including many experts touting that you should “set a relaxed environment – don’t interview across from a desk. Instead sit on easy chairs on a low coffee table…” Unless you’ve decided to carry out all your interviews in the café at the local Starbucks, chances are that you don’t have any of this. Forget all that. Privacy is really the main thing here. Secure an interview room with a door that can be closed. Also, tell your staff not to disturb you if at all possible. After all, very little can happen of huge significance in the hour it takes to do an interview. If there are calls for you, advise your staff to take a message. Frequent interruptions in an interview are just rude – but most importantly, these distractions unnerve candidates as well. This counteracts your goal of making them comfortable to extract the maximum, if not truthful information from them. The most important thing here is that you make both a good impression as well as a highly professional one.

• Since you have a time frame on each of the steps of the interview process, you want to keep an eye on the clock to stay on schedule so you can interview each candidate objectively. If you’re on the first interview – you want it to last no longer than an hour. To keep yourself on schedule, position your seat so that you are directly facing a clock. You should never look at your watch while they are answering a question – its just plain rude. However, you can look at your watch while you’re talking…but the problem is that you won’t be doing much of that – especially in the first interview. To stay on schedule just interview in a room with a clock and have your chair facing the clock. That way you keep them comfy while staying on schedule.

Remember that your biggest job at this stage is to make the candidate very comfortable so that they reveal the truth behind the resume, so to speak.

Next up, sales management training interviewing step #2, “The Pre-Interview”.

The reason is that sales managers have a lot on their plates. And sales coaching is one of those things that just gets tossed by the wayside for one reason and one reason only:

Sales managers simply don’t have time to coach their salespeople.

Even though “coaching moments” come to sales managers every day and the opportunity to improve sales productivity as well as that of your sales force is clearly there for the taking. But first, lets be first clear on why sales coaching is so important and most importantly, if you’re going to take the time to learn the sales management training concepts included in great sales coaching, you first need to know what your actual goals of coaching your sales reps.

In this sales management training, we will delineate what those primary goals are.

1. Develop increased competence

The first thing to keep in mind is that if you’re going to coach your sales reps you really want to help them develop and get better at particular skills that are necessary for the successful completion of the job or the sale. The goal here is to not necessarily have them need you all the time. You really want the sales rep to learn, then internalize, then do what was taught on their own, with no further intervention from you.

Think of your sales reps as all having their own individual levels of potential – remember the “glass ceiling” we discussed in earlier posts? You job as an excellent sales coach is to assist your sales rep to reach that potential. Now, remember that each sales rep has a different height for their ceiling. But the point is this, is that you want to help them reach that highest level through your coaching – while developing increased competence at the same time.

The best part is that if you do it effectively, they will no longer really need you much and you’ll help them develop into low-maintenance, high performing salespeople at the same time.

2. Diagnose and correct sales performance issues

If your sales reps are not meeting quota or goal or whatever your “minimum” expectation of performance is, then you need to find out why and good sales coaching does this. As a sales manager who is close to the field, do a fair amount of sales management by walking around, the good sales coach should have a good understanding of the issues that exist in the marketplace and even the individual sales territories.

However, there’s also another ingredient to diagnosis of sales performance issues – and this comes from the sales rep themselves. Oftentimes, this part of the equation is sorely overlooked…but shouldn’t be.

A great sales coach, when uncovering a sales performance issue, first needs to go to the sales rep themselves and ask them for their input on the situation. In so doing, you’re far more likely to make a correct diagnosis. Oftentimes, this feedback can bring to light a simple solution that otherwise may never have come to the surface if it were not discussed.

Another side benefit is that when you, the sales manager discuss the issues with the sales rep and ask them for their take on the situation, the sales rep feels listened to and empowered to solve the problem. And if they feel empowered to solve the problem, then there’s a greater likelihood that the sales performance issue can be corrected.

3. Create appropriate guidance and counseling

Let’s face it; you’re more than just a manager, leader and coach for your salespeople, you’re also a mentor and a counselor for them as well. This isn’t to say that you should be providing free psychotherapy or marriage counseling to them.

However as a sales coach and a teacher, you should become a mentor and a counselor of sorts to them. At the very least, one of your main goals as a manager and leader, you’ll want to assist each sales rep in reaching their potential. And that potential could be beyond the scope of your role with them within the organization. Salespeople want more than just the big bonus check form their jobs, they want to work at a place where they feel a part of something greater as well as know how they fit within that organizational structure.

One of your goals as a sales coach and teacher is to clue them in on the inner workings of the organization so that they can help not only succeed in their role as salesperson, but if the desire is there to help them advance their careers both within as well as without the organization.

If you can accomplish these goals in your coaching session with your sales reps, you’ll both be in a far better position to succeed in your sales management career.

1. Take Really Good Notes in the Margin

Make note of statements from the interviewee that you may have any kind of questions about. Instead of asking the question right then and there, jot the statement down, let them finish and then at some point afterward (this may even be in the next interview), ask your question regarding that statement.

This is extremely useful in jogging your memory revolving around crucial statements and detailed data that you can use to later challenge and test the mettle of the sale interviewee. The data you’ll jot down now may seem simplistic and not all that relevant to the hiring process but later it will make the difference between making brilliant hiring decisions and brutal hiring decisions.

2. Shut Up!

Its fun to talk about the position that you’re interviewing for. It’s also fun to talk about your “management style” and all of the characteristics that you as the hiring manage look for in “the ideal sales candidate”.

The problem with doing this is that it doesn’t help you hire the right sales candidate. It only hurts you.

An interview by “time of talking” should break down as follows:

Them talking: 90%

You talking: 10%

The point is this; the time you spend in an interview should be spent with you finding out about them, not you telling them about you. You are the interviewer and they are the interviewee. If you keep it that way you’ll uncover a whole lot more about your candidates than you will in an interview with you talking the whole time.

3. NEVER Show Your Hand!

Only at the end of the final interview do you want to start telling them the character attributes you are looking for in “the ideal sales candidate”. As discussed below, don’t ever discuss this up-front. If you touch on it, be brief and don’t show your hand – make sure you keep your cards on what you want to hear close to the vest.

What you want is for them to tell you what they are all about. And then you match their talents and skills to the required talents and skills required to be successful at the job.

4. Use Uncomfortable Silences to Your Advantage

In every interview, there are inevitable silences. Resist the temptation to fill them up, instead use them to your advantage.

When there is an uncomfortably long silence, the candidate will feel it more the longer it goes and want to fill it up with something, anything because it’s so uncomfortable for them. Stay silent, see what they say.

Its in times like these that sales candidates reveal their true self because they have run out of the canned “there really wasn’t much I could do, the economy back in those years was just killing the market for reusable masking tape” or “the market for fishhooks just dried up because everyone was starting to eat chicken”.  What they say next will be unscripted and will give you valuable insight into who they are.

5. Don’t Lead the Witness

When you ask a question and the candidate is obviously struggling, don’t give ‘em the answer! Just like in a good sales call, first ask, and then be as quiet as possible.

Don’t be like a television courtroom attorney and unwittingly “lead the witness”.

For example, if the candidate suddenly loses their train of thought or struggles with the answer to a question you have posed, give them time to answer. Whatever you do, don’t answer for them. The natural human tendency is to “fill in the gaps” and be agreeable and helpful. You can do this all you’d like in the outside world, in interviews however, don’t do it.

Then wait for their answer. The answer will eventually come. If it’s taken fifteen to twenty seconds to answer, you’ll want to write this down in the margin to review it later in the interview process, if they make it that far. If you sense that the problem they’re having is the way you asked the question then simply ask them if they’d like you to restate the question. Then re-state it in simpler terms, but with the same intent.

6. Watch for Hesitation

Do they hesitate when you ask the big question?

When you ask a big question and the candidate hesitates slightly or has to think a lot about an answer, then you may want to take a closer look.

For example, this is usually done when you ask an alternate answer question like: “If we offered you the job and your company gave you a promotion at the same time…which would you choose?”

If the candidate hesitates in the slightest then you know they may have some conflicts. Obviously the answer to the above question would be to pick the first one, but if they stutter or stammer, you may have an issue.

Let’s say you’re interviewing for a direct sales position, but the candidate has done a lot of servicing and selling in their current role, you could ask this question clear out of the blue to quickly gauge the candidate’s gut reaction: “Which part of that job do you really like – the servicing or the selling?” If they hesitate you know they’re not sure and may not be an ideal hire for you.

However, if they immediately answer “sales” with no hesitation whatsoever, you have just uncovered very powerful information to match your sales hire criteria.

This technique works best when it is asked with no real lead-in or indication of what you will ask. You could be on a completely unrelated topic and just pop this question right out of the blue. You want the candidate to be caught off guard a bit, that way you can be assured the answer is a real one.

Use these six proven techniques to interview your next salesperson and you’ll be amazed at the quality of candidates you are then able to hire.

To get even more sales management training check out these other posts about sales management.