• How We Serve

  • Leadership Development
  • Management Process
  • Coaching & Training
  • Lead Generation
  • Compensation Design
  • Recruiting Sales Talent

• Client Data

  • Case Studies
  • Interviews
  • Testimonials
  • Client List
  • Client Photos

• Offerings

  • Sales Development
  • Sales Turnaround
  • E-Coaching
  • Assessments
  • Management Skills
  • Keynotes & Seminars
  • Outsourced Services

No Excuse Sales Leadership

Feedback on the June Minnesota Business Journal Power Player article (No Excuses, p. 40) suggests that my rural roots are showing – and that sales leaders connect with the down-to-earth business insights they generate. If you haven’t guessed yet, the article focuses on my vision of what accountability means for business today.

So, I’ve been reflecting on the relationship between ranch life and the life of the business leaders I work with every day.

I’ve seen my fair share of tractors. When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, especially in springtime, our landscape was dotted with these red or green mechanical horses. But unlike horses, tractors had a habit of getting stuck in the mud. And staying stuck until resourceful human beings unstuck them.

Assessing the situation accurately, rolling up your sleeves, and unsticking your tractor was one option. A second was to let the fact of the mud overwhelm you, cause you to curse and throw things, and make you wonder why you kept doing this year after year. A third option was to sit and stare calmly at the tractor, willing it to unstick itself, and when that didn’t work, give up for the day and hope the tractor would be easier to unstick tomorrow, when the mud might be drier.

Options two and three had emotional benefits, sure, but the result was a tractor just as mired in mud as before.

Today’s businesspeople are farmers & ranchers as surely as those I grew up with. Their harvests are a bit different on the surface, but it’s all the same in the end.

Their mud is the sludgy, sticky economy.

Their tractors are their people, their processes, their visions.

Top Sales Experts & “The Power of Sales Process”

 Sales leaders, you’ll find this upcoming roundtable on “The Power of the Sales Process,” sponsored by Top Sales Experts, to be packed with practical, how-to ideas on structuring your sales process. A strong process will give you a competitive advantage, even during this recession.   I’m on the expert panel with well-respected sales process gurus Craig Klein, Steve Matinez, Jonathon London and Jonathon Farrington. You can get more details here.  

I’ll be sharing principles used to create the Hardball sales process for Flint Group, formerly xSYS Print Solutions. They were the largest international supplier of narrow-web tag and label-printing inks struggling to reverse a three-year trend of declining revenues. We help the VP of Sales develop a system of sales management processes that change a culture of excuse making into one of personal accountability to generates predictable, sustainable results.  Listen to Hank tell the story of how we accomplish the following: 

• Market share grows despite an industry recession
• Predictable revenue with more accurate business planning, more efficient operation and higher margins
• Faster, organized sales process generates revenue more quickly
• New hires reach higher performance levels 30% faster

I recently conducted a webinar with EcSELL Institute on the same subject.  Bill Eckstrom, Founder of EcSELL Institute says that it was one of the most practical webinars they had–strong take-aways that sales leaders can implement immediately.  

Hope to see you there!

Sales Management Negotiations

This is a short post. Thought you’d enjoy this video since it talks about the everyday insanity that sales people deal with: http://tinyurl.com/leemo3