Teflon® Man Improves Success in Sales

Teflon® Man Improves Success in Sales

Have you ever had a sales rep who was emotionally volatile?  Okay maybe you are saying, “Is there any other kind?”  We find it to be a problem that is not necessarily acknowledged or respected.  Instead we tend to accept volatile behavior from salespeople as part of the territory.  If you do, you are doing your reps a disservice and you are allowing them to miss out on sales that they otherwise might make.

I get it.  We expect our salespeople to be animated, charismatic, even emotional.  The reality is that if they are emotionally volatile, then they are likely missing […]

Hunting and Account Management: Mutually Exclusive?

Hunting and Account Management: Mutually Exclusive?

I have had several conversations in the last two weeks about the differing skill sets of Account Managers vs. Hunters.  It seems that there are many sales organizations that need both of these characteristics either within the same salesperson or across the team.  Additionally, over the course of the last five years, one of the most frequent problems we have diagnosed within the sales teams we analyze is the unfortunate realization that the company needs Hunters and all they have are Account Managers or marginal Hunters.
 

After reviewing these two lists, you may notice that there are no common traits.  That is […]

Sales Pipeline Review Meetings: Boring, Time Wasting and Useless

Sales Pipeline Review Meetings: Boring, Time Wasting and Useless

Are you still conducting boring sales team meetings where the whole sales team gets prepared to share what garbage they have in their pipeline?  Well if you are, stop it.

You might think that by publicly causing all the salespeople to share their deals in front of the whole team, it will make their competitive spirit come out and cause them to do more activity to create more opportunities.  WRONG.  This is why:

It causes perfectly good salespeople to spend time preparing slides or a report to get ready.  This time could be better spent selling something.
It causes salespeople to believe that the […]

Establishing Action Plans: Important for Both Solid & Under-Performers

Establishing Action Plans: Important for Both Solid & Under-Performers

I had a conversation with a very strong sales manager yesterday. We were discussing a couple of his salespeople and their nuances. He understands the importance of metrics and helping those new salespeople focus on the things they can control, having confidence that if the salespeople do the right things, then the sales numbers will follow. He has gone through the process of having other salespeople create an action plan of what they are going to do each week, so that he can help change their behavior.

As we were talking about one of his really strong salespeople, he revealed that […]