A group of blogs written on sales and business planning as well as preparation in sales and sales management.
Between setting goals and attaining them lives a mindset that will increase or decrease your chances of meeting and exceeding goals. If you learn how to manage this one thing your winning percentage on set goals will increase. It's time to…
Change is Inevitable, Simple, But Not Easy. For salespeople, to change is no different for us than anyone else. It’s hard. Really hard. And it is especially hard when you don’t want to change. You’ve heard the phrase “change agent”. …
I want to discuss two sales initiative implementation traps you can get into when you're implementing a new sales initiative. Maybe you're implementing our Part-time Sales Management system, or maybe you're bringing in a new product, some new pricing, or…
In this article, I want to help you leverage the skill of solving core issues to make your sales management efforts more efficient and a motivator for your team. I don't want you to be the person everyone goes to…
Let's talk about creating sales-team guidelines so that you can reduce uncertainty, frustration and sales-team conflict. When rules have been agreed on and documented , you will reduce sales-team conflict and reduce the amount of time you spend being a…
The Part-Time Sales Management Assessment is designed for those who carry many responsibilities including your sales management role. It's the perfect compliment for those implementing the Part-Time Sales Management (PTSM) System. The 15-question sales management assessment will help you quickly…
Sales Meetings can rock with the right rhythm and when you know the beat, melody, and lyrics to a song, it's fun and enjoyable to participate and sing along. The same goes for sales meetings. Salespeople will provide productive input,…
If we want to help and support our sales teams to be more accountable and self manage we need to up our coaching game. We don't need to improve our selling skills but we do need to improve our leadership…
FTI or Failure to Implement (initiatives or ideas) is a killer in business and can make it more difficult to convince your troops the next time you introduce change. Conversely, the more implementation success you have the easier it is…
We judge ourselves by our intentions and often judge others by their actions. You might believe (your intention) you are bringing CALM to your sales management, but could your actions be speaking differently to your sales team? Sales Managers bring…
In today's Sales Leadership Quick Tip video, we're going to be talking about sales dashboards. A sales dashboard is a mirror that you can put in front of your sales people to raise accountability and raise the results that your…
Our best intentions don't always lead to our best leadership practices but they can blind us from what's not working. Here are 5 sales leadership sins you want to avoid. 1. Doubting or not believing in your sales people. The first…
Working hard is a good thing..IF..it's combined with working smart. You can help your sales team get the most out of their sales activity by implementing the following four tips for effective sales activity. https://youtu.be/UVV1Brptorw I think most of us…
You could try a crystal ball to improve sales forecasting but I'd recommend using the following six elements. We all want to increase sales. The benefit of sales forecasting is that it helps management determine and make new decisions based…
Salespeople will input CRM data consistently if there's value for them as well as management. Here's how to get there. https://youtu.be/gmezCgZ1mrE Before I get started on that, I want to share with you that Sales Manager Now is a Zoho…
Hiring salespeople that are a good fit for your company's role will free you up from having to constantly motivate them. I had an owner of a company ask me, “How do you keep the team motivated? Our sales role is…
Onboarding Success Part 2 of 2 What should you include in your Sales Onboarding Orientation plan to get off to a fast start? There is a group of people at your company who know. Check out this video for a simple…
When you hire a new salesperson you only have one chance to get off to a fast start. Give it your best shot with a complete Onboarding/Orientation Plan. https://youtu.be/X8nB__8iYcg 1 - Understand Your Core Values To have onboarding success, you…
Should I pay salary or commission? I have that questions asked of me often. It will take a little bit of homework for me to answer it for you, but what I’d like to share in this video is a…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip video, I want to share the benefits of team goals and bonuses and why they will work for your sales team. In search of ways to motivate a sales team, leaders often turn to…
When you do a book study with your sales team you get a low cost, high return way to bring education and training to your team. Let me share some of the benefits of why I use book studies more…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video I share with you how to get the feedback you need from your sales team to help you make business decisions. https://youtu.be/5QKTVPdlSLM Salespeople always have something to say, they have ideas and ways…
plan-ning (noun) : the act or process of making plans. Sometimes we need to go back to ‘Webster’ and look up what a word means. My guess is most of us have never looked up the meaning of the word…
I recently heard a speaker say that a lot of people are crazy busy. As salespeople, with all the “busy” around sales responsibilities, it does get “crazy” and managing it can be a struggle. We either let fear get in…
How is your sales team doing at meeting your sales expectations? Are they hitting their goals, following the sales process, completing their admin tasks and meeting your activity expectations? …..Sorry, I’m having a hard time hearing that loud, YES! But…
I remember when Angie joined our team. She was just out of college and eager to do her job well. It was her first sales job and she plunged right in. For months she was selling her quota of forty units per month. Being new to sales she would often worry her way to those last few sales to hit her goal. One day I asked her if she would be interested in increasing sales and earning more money. She said, “Of course, I try to but I can’t seem to get past forty.” I suggested we make fifty her new imaginary quota and she went for it. We posted a yellow sticky with the number 50 on her computer monitor to add a little focus. It worked! She started selling fifty that month and it become her new norm. Could it be that easy to increase sales?
The HOW MUCH in this blog title could be describing overpayment or underpayment of your sales team. Where does your pay plan fall? Are you paying your sales people too much or could it be you are under paying them? Creating a sales pay plan isn’t terribly difficult but it’s trickier than finding a simple salary range for non-sales positions. I’ll answer the two most common questions asked of me regarding sales play plans. (1) How much should I pay my sales people? and (2) How should I structure the pay plan?
To plan or not to plan? Time to answer that question again. As the New Year approaches Sales Manager Now has been working on client sales and business plans for next year. In our experience more than half of the businesses we encounter don’t have a current documented business plan. If they do, it’s usually not reviewed on a regular basis. Writing a business or sales plan is one thing, but having a plan that’s useful and used is a different story. Not all business plans work. Jim Horan, author of The One Page Business Plan lists the following reasons why business plans don’t work:
