Here is the thing. There’s nothing wrong with “overcoming your weaknesses“. But to turn me into a “completely different person,” that’s something else.

Back then I didn’t realize the repercussions of that statement. Now that I’ve got years of experience as a sales manager, I know better than to try and change my sales reps into something they’re not.

My sales reps are themselves. They are not their colleagues. They are not their friends. They are not me.

I’m sure you’ve seen some good relationships go bad when one person tries to change too many things—big or small—about his or her partner. In the beginning it’s all good. It feels charming even. But after a while, it starts to get old and annoying, until the person realizes his or her partner is trying to force him or her to become somebody else. Someone he or she is not. At this point the relationship is pretty much doomed to failure.

Learn from the mistakes of lovers. Learn from the mistakes of past employers. As a top-performing sales manager, make small deposits into your sales reps’ Trust Accounts, one day at a time, and try and get to know them on a personal level. This way, you learn what makes them tick and uncover their talents. Use these as launch pads to leverage them to better sales performance.

The concept goes,

“Draw out more of what your sales reps already have, and stop trying to fix what they don’t.”

To learn more about sales motivation, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Comments? Feedback? Want to share your own brand of sales management tips? Leave a comment after this post.

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Which sales manager is more effective? 

Imagine a clear glass ceiling over the heads of your salespeople. The height of the ceiling represents the amount of talent each salesperson possesses—some high, some low. The question is: can a person who lacks certain core talents for the job ever be successful in his or her line of work? The answer is NO.

Every person is unique, and therefore every salesperson is unique as well. And all this uniqueness add up to vastly different potentials. If you try to make them something they are not…its one of the worst things you could do as a sales manager.

The point I’m trying to get across is… harness their talents – and minimize their weaknesses.

I’ve seen dozens of sales managers commit these two mistakes over and over again.

1. They focus on “fixing” their salespeople’s weaknesses.
2. They try too hard to get their salespeople to be more like themselves

These are average sales managers.

DON’T be average. A top-performing sales manager pushes the limits of what his or her salespeople is good at. If a certain sales rep has a knack for selling a particular line of product, invest on that talent and avoid assigning him or her to products he or she isn’t doing very good at. It’s starting to sound a lot like common sense, isn’t it?

You shouldn’t worry about missing out on anything by training your sales reps to be better only at what they’re already good at. A sales team is called a team for a reason. By investing on your sales reps’ talents, the entire team covers a broader range of expertise and still excels at the job.

Force your sales reps to improve their weaknesses and you risk doing an “okay” job of everything. Like the Chinese proverb says, “A tiger does not change its stripes.”

So which type of sales manager do you want to be? Someone who invests on talents? Or someone who bets on the weaknesses of his sales reps?

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Tell me your tips and ideas by leaving a comment below.

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Like many children, my Dad used to tell me stories before he put me to bed. After running through the gamut of Big Bad Wolf, Goldilocks and the three Bears and Three Billy Goats Gruff, he used to tell me another tall tale. He’d say that when I grow up, I could be anything I wanted to be if I just worked hard enough. He said. “Anyone can become the President if they wanted it really bad and worked hard for it.”

I trusted him…that is until I became a sales manager…

No offense to Dad, but the problem with the story is that it’s just not true!

It’s romantic, hopeful, and optimistic, but it can’t be any more true than Santa Claus riding down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

Do you truthfully believe that everyone is born with the exact same potential?

People are born unique, and that’s the beauty of it. We have our own strengths and weaknesses. We have different levels of potential. Some people are cut out to be doctors. Some are raised to become the President of the United States. Some are born salesmen and saleswomen.

A remarkable salesperson is always learning new skills and knowledge on the job. But skills alone won’t send a salesperson to excellence. To be successful in this line of work, there’s got to be another factor involved. There has to be talent.

Talent is an innate pattern of thought and behavior, meaning it’s in the blood. On the other hand skills are learned abilities which can be taught from one person to another person.

Simply put,

Talent = “Nature”

Skill = “Nurture”

How does this apply to your work as a sales manager? Simple. Hire talented SALESpeople.

An applicant may submit a 15-page resume with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cover letter. This person is skilled enough to offer someone who’s been in the business almost twice longer than him a run for his money. But even so, no killer resume can fool a competent sales manager who has an eye for searching real talent. Remember, you can teach them new skills, but you can’t teach them new talent. Take this to heart when hiring new people into your sales team.

The skills can come from you, but the talent must come from them.

Hire talented applicants if you want your salespeople to mature and become successful in this business. If you think someone from your team doesn’t have that special something to become a great salesperson, then be a man and tell them, and maybe offer some advice, as the officer in charge of their performance, on probable career change options. In fact mediocre sales managers are the only ones who think they could change people – and their talents – at their core.

What ideas about hiring talented salespeople into your team do you have? I’d love to hear them out. Leave a comment after this post.

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You need to be cooler than Opie and Anthony, Rush Limbaugh (pick your radio personality here) as well as all the other ones out there together.

Why? Because being on your sales reps “pre-sets” on their own personal radio stations is absolutely essential to your crusade in getting to know your sales people so you could effectively communicate with them and expect better sales performance.

But here is the thing. Did you know there’s only one radio station your sales people tune in to all day long every day of the week…and that station is WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let’s not get too technical here).

It’s the “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio frequency. WIFM. This is the only station that most interests sales people all over the country, all over the world, and if your voice isn’t being heard on it 24-7, your sales reps are going to go out on you faster than you could say Barack Obama.

I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. People tend to put themselves first. People in general don’t care about anything that doesn’t concern them. That’s why it’s called “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio station.

Here’s an example. Your boss walks up to you and says to you he’s “$10 million in the hole”. The Sales VP sends you an email asking, “Why’s your team’s closed accounts in their pipeline last month so weak?” Your wife leaves you a note on the refrigerator saying she needs a new dishwasher before Kelly’s birthday party next week.

You’ve got your own set of problems. Problem is, your sales reps don’t care about any of that.

According to AT&T, the number one word used in telephone conversations all over the US is the word “I”, which beat number two on the list by a ten to one margin. Don’t ask me how they got that information. But ask me if I think people are selfish by design, and I’ll say, “Hell YES!”

People care about themselves FIRST!

Now the only way to solve your dilemma is to NOT be like everyone else.

Worry about your sales people first, and your own problems will solve themselves eventually. Do this by speaking in a language that they understand and hear on their radio frequency – WIFM. If you let them solve their problems first, if you could help them purchase the dishwasher they’ve been itching to buy, you can expect them to perform better and even exceed quota every time. In this way, you solve your boss’ and Sales VP’s problems, and you solve your own problems in the process, too.

Once again, it touches the lessons I’ve discussed in my previous posts about depositing in your sales reps’ Trust Accounts and about the Law of Reciprocity.

How well you communicate with your sales reps speak volumes about how good you are as a leader and sales manager. Are you up to the challenge to broadcast on WIFM? Have you got what it takes to be bigger than Cool Hand Luke and Howard Stern combined? Pick up that mic and start talking.

How often do you broadcast on WIFM? Do you believe it is necessary for a successful career in sales? Tell me by leaving a comment below.

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The philosopher Confucius simplified it when he said, “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you.” This second definition is very important.

Selling is a two-way relationship. The same applies to managing a sales team. If the team wants to be able to grow beyond what it started out with, it needs to surrender under the guidance of its sales manager. If the sales manager wants to earn the respect of the team, he needs to work hard and earn his sales people’s trust one brick at a time.

I know this much is true: that the Law of Reciprocity is essential to a career in sales.

But as a sales manager, don’t take it as “I did something for you, now you need to do something for me,” kind of relationship. This kind of thinking destroys the whole concept.

The trick is to be IMPLICIT. By doing something really nice, you let your sales people “feel” like they need to do something for you in return, without you mentioning it or even talking about it. Be subtle. But don’t dictate.

All this talk is reminding me of the Trust Account affair. This is true especially for newly-hired sales persons. By “going the extra mile for them” on their base salary, they’d be more inspired to “go the extra mile for you” in their performance. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. All of us were an employee at some point.

Think about it – when was the last time you felt compelled to do something nice because the other person did you a really big favor?

Whether it’s raking dead leaves off your lawn or putting trash barrels back in your garage because you had a late day at work, the feeling to return the favor is definitely present. Now apply this concept to your work as a sales manager. Evoke the Law of Reciprocity. I’m sure you’ll find only good things waiting for you and your career when you establish this kind of two-way relationship with your sales people.

And the best part is that you won’t have to put back my smelly trash barrels…

Do you believe in the Law of Reciprocity? How does it apply to your work in the office? Leave a comment below.

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And OK, if you do that, then there’s a whole lot in it for your as well….big bonus checks, top rankings, bragging rights to your sales manager peers and maybe even a shot at a promotion…

But here’s the dilemma…..there’s no way to achieve all this by just learning one or two individual things. You can learn a few tips and techniques from a bunch of different and varied sources and cobble together your own idea of how to achieve big things as a sales manager.

This is probably what you were doing before you stumbled on this blog.

This “fragmented” approach to improving your sales management effectiveness is doomed for failure because it’s so hard to form a cohesive style and approach, then try all the techniques and figure out which ones work and which ones don’t, this takes time. As you may have already guessed, if you wanted to find all the answers yourself, that taking the time to find all the answers to the sales management questions you are so interested in getting answered would take an enormous amount of time, not to mention a ton of money…

The things is that if you can’t learn all the top sales management training techniques you need to learn IN ISOLATION of each other knowing full well that it will only give you moderately successful outcome but you need each component to be organized IN RELATION TO how it fits in to an overall program.

This is the reason why after years of training individual sales managers, we decided to put together The Sales Management Mastery Academy – so that you can get all the elements of top sales management training in one singular, cohesive program – with each element INTERDEPEDENT with the other….

So now there’s one place that you can go to get exactly the kind of help you need at the click of your mouse, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week that gives you all the resources you need (as well as a lot of ones you never even thought of) to propel your team’s sales to unheard of heights. And it’s all at the Sales Management Mastery Academy.

If you want to get free taste of what the Academy’s all about, just click here to get our best selling course on “How to Motivate Your Sales Reps in 5 Days” using our proven motivational sales management training methods that only a select few sales managers have had the privilege of getting thier hands on.

You can get the entire motivational course on us for free.  And if you want to test drive the Academy, you can do that for 30 days on us. Get “How to Motivate Your Sales Reps in 5 Days” and click here.

We won’t be offering the “How to Motivate” eBook for free for long, so get yours now!

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The best, high-performing sales managers observe their salespeople.

They notice that there are certain core talents each individual has. They make mental notes of their salespeople’s strengths as well as their weaknesses. They know that they can leverage their talents as a launching point to coax even greater performance out of their salespeople.

For example, lets compare two top performing salespeople, both having achieved the highest sales awards in their companies with great track records of success.

• “Jane” has an incredible talent for building rapport, easily weaving pleasant conversation with the true sales pitch. Jane’s manner is easygoing and laid-back, but hides a profound inner drive. She is completely in control of the situation at all times and asks many layered questions of the prospect to uncover their needs. Instead of being “all business”, she talks about jewelry, kids and other non-business activities; easily mixing in rapport building with selling through out the process. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, taking time for some self-deprecating asides, but constantly driving towards the sale. She uses no real reference pieces, instead relies on her easy, trustworthy manner to build credibility. When it comes to the end, she doesn’t really “close” per se as much as she just assumes they will be moving on to the next step.

• In contrast, “Tom” is incredibly persistent, he is a little bit awkward in his approach, but people respect him due to his aggressiveness and “never taking no” mentality. When he is in a sales call, he’s all business, no rapport building whatsoever, but asks few precisely worded questions to uncover his client’s needs. Just like his initial approach, when he hears objections, he aggressively asks the reasons behind the objections, then pulls out reference materials to overcome the objections and validate his claims. At the end of the sale, he asks “alternate close questions”, awaits responses before proceeding and aggressively pushes for the next step, and is very successful in doing so.

Would you as the sales manager for both Jane and Tom look at the above scenarios and think to yourself: “If I could just get Jane to use more reference materials and ask more hard close questions, she would really be even better!”

Or would you think: “Tom’s just too rough, I need to get him to soften up his hard edge and build more rapport. He also needs to ask more questions to uncover needs.”

In both cases, you would be falling into the most common, yet well-meaning trap that average sales managers make.  You would be trying to perfect them, and I have news for you…your efforts will be futile.

The path to true sales motivation is not perfecting…rather its accepting. Accept Jane for who she is and accept Tom for who he is and dont try to change either one…rather harness and bring out more of each one and harness that talent.

In the process you’ll motivate them both…and you’ll succeed fabulously as well.

Post a comment below and tell me how YOU motivate your sale reps.

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To figure out how you and your product possibly could be, “the best in the world at” and become “more Walgreen than Eckerd”, lets go through a hypothetical analysis of your sales product or service line.

Lets say your sales reps sell a wide variety of software for businesses of all sizes (in complete and full disclosure, I have never sold software before so bear with me, however I have sold connectivity solutions). One particular kind of software package your salespeople sell is a Customer Relations Management software package. Even though your product is not the best in its class, its not the worst either.

This package (we’ll call it CRM 3.2) has certain query features that the competition does not have.  Aside from a few of these features, your product is pretty much the same as the competitions. But you, as the ever observant sales manager notice a few things about CRM 3.2 and they are:

• The marketing pieces from corporate tout CRM 3.2 as “best in class” based upon some obscure study done back when this type of software was first being developed. According to the “Eckerd-like” marketing piece, it proudly brags that “CRM 3.2 is the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes across all product service groups who need a customer relations management software solution”.

• Although, you’ve never witnessed a sales prospect talk glowing in these terms about 3.2, but you have noticed that your sales team hasbeen selling an increased amount of this version alongside all the other packages they are commissioned to sell.

• Upon further observation, and through some in-depth analysis of your sales tracking reports, you notice that one particular version of that package has been that showing steady, yet unremarkable sales growth to consumer product-oriented, medium sized businesses with 10 to 40 employees.

• One of your reps, who recently has really started to close some steady business has sold more of this version than any other CRM and operating softwares in your group. Moreover, of all the software packages your reps sell, this package is about in the mid range for pricing and operating margin.

• In the sales calls you’ve attend with your best sales rep, you’ve noticed a consistent trend with some of the decision makers he meets with. You observe that they particularly like two features of CRM 3.2 that you know the competition does not have. They are an automatic report generator that tracks incoming query calls, then correlates that information with sales rep outgoing call activity for consumer product sales.

• The decision makers also really like the fact that the software can be uploaded in under ten minutes with a call to your customer service department so it can be loaded onto mobile devices such as Blackberries and iPhones. As a sales manager, you know that saving time on IT calls are essential to sales productivity. Further you know that this mobility feature is especially important to salespeople so that they have instant access to contacts and sales trends when in the field.

• Through your observation (and largely due to the recent success of your one sales representative), you get the sense that there is an opportunity here to attack the competition. And because you spend more time with that sales person than any other rep, you’re in touch with what trends you can exploit and preach to the rest of the sales team.

• You quickly peruse all the company marketing brochures and handouts again, and to your surprise, there is no mention of these two features embedded in CRM 3.2. This is typical you think, corporate has no idea what is really going on in your market anyway. And like most companies, they want you as the sales manger to sell to ALL markets, not one single market.  This is classic big company thinking – dilute your sales team’s efforts by having your reps head in multiple directions at the same time (just like Eckerd). You as a top-performing sales manager and thinking more like Cork Walgreen than Eckerd, know that this strategy is a recipe for mediocrity.

• You know that you have twelve different products to sell across three very diverse markets. CRM 3.2 is just one of the twelve products. The markets include small businesses of 1-9 people, mid sized businesses of 10-50 employees and large businesses sized above 50 employees. You run reports on the mid-sized market to check for financial viability and market health. You then run a separate sales query on the mid-sized businesses that sell consumer products only. The queries reinforce your thinking: both markets are healthy and robust.

You come to the conclusion:

If you focused your sales reps energies on the mid-sized businesses that exclusively sell consumer-related products, there are plenty of sales prospects in your district to fill your pipeline. More importantly, you determine that if you only focused your sales representatives energies on that one market, then they would have more than enough sales prospects. Further, this would place them in excellent position to hit their year-end sales number. You’re starting to get excited.

You do a little more data-gathering:

• You next check with your customer service department and you ask them to run you a report on all the mid-sized customers who has purchased your CRM 3.2 product in the past six months. You first check their satisfaction scores. When you get the report, you see the “sat” scores are very impressive. Not only are customers in this category satisfied, but the number of customers in this bracket has increased dramatically over the course of the past few months, especially in your geographic sales market. This data further supports your hypothesis.

• You then talk to the controller in your branch and he confirms that in fact, if this mid-sized package were sold at X price, without a too steep of a discount, the overall unit corporate profit margin threshold would be upheld. Profit margin analysis is good.

• Lastly, ou then take a long, hard look at the sales representative compensation plan. After thorough investigation, you find out that as long as your sales reps sell X number of units at X profit margin, they will all be eligible for quota attainment.  You also check your sales manager compensation plan to make sure that all this jives there as well. Fortunatley, it does. You conclude that if you reorganized your sales reps main selling efforts and focused on this particular business niche, both you and them would make plenty of commission dollars when successful. You start to get the feeling that all the stars are aligning.

You feel ready to roll out your plan to the sales team.

So let’s review what we have here. You have the following:

1. A robust market, subdivided from an even larger market, which is ripe for product nicheing
2. Two “game changing” features of your CRM 3.2 product that customers rave about
3. Little if any competition for that particular feature in this sub-market space
4. Healthy company approved profit margins for the product
5. Quota-friendly compensation plan alignment for both sales rep and sales manager that allows for focus on niche targets markets and products
6. High customer satisfaction ratings and overall excellent customer retention within new sales of this product in this sub-market space
7. Good potential for referrals and recommendations from past satisfied customers
8. And from the success of your one sales rep, excellent opportunity to increase employee morale due to recent successes

Bottom line: you’ve found your “Walgreen’s concept” – one that you can be “the best in the world at”.

We’ll show you how to sell it in our next post…

Post a comment below and tell us how you get your salespeople to sell so well that THEY are the best in the world.

Get your copy of the Free Video and Audio on How to Motivate Your Sales Team and learn the first step to Sales Management Mastery by simply clicking here

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In one of our previous posts, we talked about how Walgreen’s Drugstores figured out how to sell more stuff and become one of the top-performing stocks in the last forty years in the process, beating Intel, GE and Cisco! Their formula for success was simple: have the best, most convenient drugstores, with a high profit per customer visit. A simple formula, no doubt and that‘s the formula for creating the single most successful company in terms of market return in the past forty years.

What  Walgreens did is what you as a sales manager must do as well. If you are to fully distinguish yourself from the competition just like Cork Walgreen, then you’ll need to think about what you can be the best in the world at – and then funnel all your energies into pursuing that one thing. Figure out what one thing you do better than anyone else and teach that one thing to your salespeople over and over and over again.

The “figuring out” is the part is the hardest and most challenging part.

So here’s how you do it. Ask yourself:

1. What list of things does my product or service do better than the competition?
2. Out of all those things, is there one feature in particular that just “beats the pant off” your competitor?
3. How much incrementally better is that particular feature of my product or service than the competition?
4. If so, what specific subset of customer would be most interested in that feature?
5. What benefit does it offer to that subset of customers?
6. Is the true benefit given from the feature so simple that it can be clearly articulated by even your worst sales rep?
7. If you focus all my energy on that one particular sub-market of prospects, will it be numerous and profitable enough for me and my team to achieve the sales objectives and goals we have set for ourselves?

Find out what you and your product or service can be “the best in the world at” and then align your salespeople behind that singular message. If you can get all seven differentiators working in your favor, then you have a winner.

We’ll discuss even more ways to get your salespeople to sell more effectively in our next post with the “CRM 3.2″ model. So stay tuned.

To even get more free tips and techniques on managing your sales team just order the tips on the sidebar of this blog. Or if really want the inside scoop with  ALL the tips, techniques and tricks on becoming a hugely successful sales manager try out the Sales Management Mastery Academy risk free and get more information by simply clicking here  .

Post a comment below and tell me how you get your sales reps to sell more effectively

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The obvious answer is when you feel good. No one feels like doing much of anything when they feel bad.

When people don’t feel so good, they end up doing very little….not a good situation for you.

So it begs the question: does the salesperson brimming with confidence sell more than the salesperson who lacks confidence? The answer may seem obvious, but why do so few average sales managers spend the majority of their time building their people’s confidence up instead of ripping it down?

It could be that many sales managers are former sales salespeople themselves and  “seagull sales management” (swoop in, dump on the rep, then fly away), is all they know.  In this case, unfortunately, ignorance begets more ignorance…

Or it could be that many salespeople come from a background of athletics and sales like sports, is highly competitive and similar to athletics in lots of ways, where managing by tearing down is extremely common. I’m not sure, but I do know that this form of “management” is way too common and far too ineffective for creating superior results. They can still be motivated and not make them feel bad?

Its really just this simple: if you make your sales reps feel good = they sell more

This may be the basics of sales 101, but the salesperson who feels good, sells more; it’s just that simple. People perform better under a feeling of appreciation and praise than they do under a feeling of criticism and negativity. And if you make them feel important and make them feel good about what they are doing day to day, then you’ll be on the path to superior results. Sometimes all it takes is just a few words to let them know that you appreciate what they do, but you have to do it correctly, with specific praise, otherwise it just doesn’t work.

You may believe that the only thing that all salespeople are interested in is money as their primary motivation. However, even the most materialistic of us knows that there are more important rewards than money alone. Most salespeople just want to feel worthwhile and feel good about what they are doing.

The two rewards that top the list are: self respect and the respect of others.

People love to look good, so your job as an excellent sales manager is to create an environment in which your people look good. Seek out opportunities to tell them that you appreciate what they are doing. In doing so, you will find that the work and results you receive in return comes back to you tenfold.

You need to know how to do it though. This is important. To learn exactly how to do it all , with over four hours of videos and audios on specifically how you can motivate your salespeople to unheard of heights of sales success, just click here

Get even more tips and techniques and get your copy of the Free Video and Audio on How to Motivate Your Sales team .

Then post a comment below and tell us how you motivate your sales reps!

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