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Sales Manager Energizes Sales Meetings

“I hate sales meetings,” Steve complained. As we talked further, he voiced his disappointment with his staff, “It seems they find reasons to be late. Or, they can’t wait to get to the meeting to complain. This brings the whole sales team down. It’s de-energizing for me. It’s got to be depressing for the sales team also.”

I suggested that he start doing three things:

1. Start every meeting with a public praising, recognizing at least one person on the staff for something they contributed to the company.
2. Start sharing success stories on a regular basis. Ask salespeople to share the greatest success for the week.
3. Start going off-line with non-productive conversations that will be irresolvable during the meeting. Group meetings are for making decisions, not complaining.

As a result of implementing the new format, the meetings turned out to be energizers. While the good salespeople couldn’t wait for their share of the limelight, the struggling ones got great ideas from the successful reps. Fortunately, the complainers had to wait until after the meeting.

Utilize meetings as a chance to laud efforts of your people and build positive energy. People tend to dread sales meetings when they are poorly planned and run. Make sales meetings an opportunity to give salespeople the recognition they deserve. Salespeople go to great lengths to accomplish a goal when you give them credit, preferably in public.

Point: Use your sales meetings to pump-up, not deflate your staff

For additional insights into running good meetings, I also pull principles from Chapter 6: Mastering the Daily and Weekly Executive Meeting from Mastering the Rockefellar Habits by Verne Harnish.

What are you doing to keep your sales meetings energized?

Sales Management Confronts Fear Factor

Point: Reward salespeople for confronting fear and breaking through their comfort zone

According to Objective Management Group, over 94% of tsalespeople affected by some kind of fear that stands in their way of maximizing their potential. The Fear Factor is debilitating. Think of it. Sales people often fear failure, fear talking with “higher ups., fear the looking inept if the prospect asks a tough question, fear of making a decision, fear of not being liked by the prospect, fear of dealing with money. My goodness, the list could go on and on! What can we as sales managers do to help our sales people break through their comfort zone, turning that fear into confidence?

First, we need to help our staff identify their fears. The Objective Management Group’s assessment is a must have tool tool for sales managers committed to helping their sales people break through.

Second: Help them identify a measurable action that will challenge them shift their behavior and doing the uncomfortable.

Third: Reward them for their efforts to stretch.

Case in point: When Lisa was growing up, her father taught her to avoid talking about money, sex, religion and politics in public. In business, we can often get by without taking about sex, religion or politics. But, money is hard to avoid! Especially when it comes to talking about budgets, finding money if it isn’t in the budget, and the cost of not having her solutions. To get to the Next Level in her career, she needed to get unstuck. Even if her conscience told her it was rude to talk about business revenues, margins and cost, she had to overcome it.

Lisa took the second step, viewing this Money Fear as a challenge and deciding on a strategy to help her overcome her problem. The first call of every day, she forced herself to deal with the economic issues, asking,”What are some of the costs associated with this problem we’ve been discussing?” This forced Lisa to overcome her fear of talking about money and at the same time she learned a lot about her prospects’ business. She also started attending a financial management course and reading books on financial management, to increase her comfort level.

Finally, during Lisa’s weekly one-on-one with her sales manager, she reported on how many times she had asked her question, “What are some of the costs associated with this problem we’ve been discussing?” This gave an opportunity for the sales manager to praise her for confronting her fears and breaking through her comfort zone.

Within a few months, Lisa could handle the “money talk” confidently and her sales increased.

What fears do your sales people have? What steps are you taking to help them break though to the Next Level of performance?

Sales Management and the Pygmalion Effect

Have you seen the new movie release, The Express? It’s an inspirational story about a great coach, Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid), believing in and bringing out the best in Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), who eventually earned the Heisman Trophy. It’s a great movie about the incredible impact of coaches and mentors and the impact of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’m reminded of my first sales manager (and my best sales manager!) at Xerox Corporation, Bob Klein, the coach that always believed in me.

When I join Xerox at 21 years old, I know nothing about professional sales. I’m from Cowboy Country in northwestern North Dakota. And, I ‘m a pre-med student. So, I know how to cultivate a field, haul hay bales and set up a science experiment. But, I know nothing about cold-calling, qualifying or closing. I was confused, scared and intimidated.

Often, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, discouraged after too many cold calls and too many no’s from prospects, I’d call Bob for encouragement. After listening to my sob stories, he’d always say the same thing, “Danita, you can do it. I know you can. I only hire the best.”

Bob expected me to be a winner. I worked hard to live up to his expectations.

And, I would never let him down.

My experience with Bob taught me a great lesson: As a great manager, always remember to tell your people how much confidence you have in them. Be positive.

Put the self-fulfilling prophecy or Pygmalion Effect to work for you. The Pygmalion Effect, the practice of expressing your confidence in your staff, can subtly influence them to improve performance and produce better results. Here’s what Wikipedia has about the Pygmalion Effect, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Who have been your great managers and coaches? What made them great? What did they do to encourage you during times of adversity?

Keep Pressing Forward!

Danita

P.S. I think you’ll enjoy watching The Express.

Sales Management Sets Minimum Metrics

During these unsettling economic times, I often find myself in conversations with sales leaders about how to determine when someone should be let go from the sales team. In response, I frequently ask how the sales rep is performing against minimum expectation metrics. Surprisingly, I find that many times company leadership hasn’t clearly defined their breakeven point for sales people.

Jim, the sales manager of an audiology firm, was frustrated and disappointed with his audiologists’ performance. They weren’t fitting the minimum number of hearing instruments needed to even cover overhead costs.

So, Jim calculated the margin each salesperson needed to produce, since he hadn’t calculated that number before. Know the breakeven number gave him both clarity and confidence in his decision making.

Jim realized that he had never communicated this minimal standard to his staff.

So, in his weekly one-on-ones, he presented each sales person with these minimum expectation metrics, the minimum amount of production needed to cover their expenses and justify their stay with the company.

Then he asked his team to step up their level of effort with an expanded activity plan.

After these conversations, Jim implemented a scorecard system to give each sales person accurate feedback on their performance against plan. He started to make decisions using data and to insist on realism during one-on-one meetings.

By clarifying minimum expectations, his sales team knew what the guidelines were and what they needed to do to not only keep their job but to step up their performance and excel.

Point: Expectation Metrics help to create motivation and personal accountability among employees. Clear-cut expectation metrics help salespeople focus their efforts on high-payoff activities; eventually allowing them to surpass their targets.

What are the minimum metrics for your sales team? How regularly are you providing feedback to them on their performance against plan?

Sales Management Recognition Targets Creativity

Point: Recognition reinforces positive behavior and energizes your team.

When the market gets tougher, the competition gets stiffer or the stock market tanks like it has the last week, it’s critical that every team member to contribute their best to the team effort. As a sales management leader, how can you nurture creativity, innovation and energy?

As National Sales Manager for Micro-Tech Hearing Instruments, I conducted regular meetings with my staff where we’d brainstorm different ways to generate leads, close difficult sales and exceed our revenue number. I often used a Creativity Builder Question such as, “How MIGHT we ______________?” The word “might” gave us permission to brainstorm.

Once the Can Do, creative energy started flowing, it was surprising how many good ideas they came up with!

Because of the highly competitive marketplace we were in, I knew I had to help my entire sales team grow, learn new things, and stretch. We needed everyone’s commitment to STRETCH their personal and professional growth…or else our competitors would leapfrog us.

And, I recognized that I as a leader needed to stretch also. Therefore, I felt it important to accept
accountability for creativity in my sales management process. So, I took a couple of steps:

1st: As part of a Quarterly Sales Business Plan, I asked each person to answer this question: What three creative things have you done in the last quarter that has impacted your team and the company?

2nd: We developed a Quarterly Innovation Award. I started recognizing salespeople for their creativity and risk-taking, letting them know that we valued the entrepreneurial spirit.

Result: The team became energized whenever they encountered what seemed like insurmountable obstacles!

Encouraging and recognizing creativity not only creates novel solutions but also helps stimulate a positive attitude toward change and challenges.

How are you encouraging your salespeople to take risks and do something new and creative as part of their business development process?

Motivating Your Sales Team

Welcome to my first blog!

For many of us, these are difficult economic times that require us to tap into our own talents and resources, as well as those of our sales teams.

How do you as sales manager call forth the best from your people in times of crisis?

Remember, a salesperson doesn’t wake up every morning thinking of how to make money for the company; they think about their personal hopes, dreams and aspirations.

Let me share a story.

Matt seemed perfect for his position, but his performance had been mediocre. During his evaluation, I asked him what he’d do if there was an extra $30,000 on his W2 at the year end. He said he would build an addition to his house as they just had a baby and they wanted an extra room. However, he had no plans to make this extension a reality. I realize that this was an opportunity for us to build a connection between Matt’s personal and the company’s goals.

I asked Matt to draw up plans and cost estimates. He committed in writing when he would break ground, how much he would invest as a down payment, and how much he would finance. He was aligning his personal and professional goals. Matt knew what he wanted but because he had no specifics, no plan, he wasn’t going after it. His unconscious brain wasn’t helping him achieve his goals!

One of your roles as a sales manager is to align your salesperson’s personal and professional goals. Believe me, when you make this connection, you will see an increase in production.

By aligning both company and personal goals, you create a path to your business goals.

Some tools that can helpful in this process are the Dare to Dream eWorkbook and the Cookbook Planner.

So, do your salespeople have clear goals and dreams? If not, how can you help them achieve clarity? How can you align their goals to those of the company? What tools do you need to help you be more successful?

Keep Pressing Forward,

Danita

P.S.  Join the conversation about this blog post: Motivating Your Sales Team