Sitting around the home office on this Sunday afternoon, and I got to thinking about goal setting. I wonder why more folks don't set goals? That was my internal question for the day. And some thoughts surfaced, and I wanted to share some of these thoughts with you. Plus, I will take a few moments in writing to chat about a phenomenal goal setting technique that every leader ought to use.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
All the training in the world is irrelevant if it doesn't lead to new behaviors. So that is what the sales manager should focus on - behaviors.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
New is an interesting word. Something is new, until it is generally circulated and becomes ubiquitous. After a while, the new becomes commonplace.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Mom didn't know she was training me to be a great salesperson and coaching me to success. You see, I always knew that discipline was coming when Mom would say, "Just wait till your father comes home". After I heard those words, I would often become the model child and hope that my actions of extra chores or homework would yield a reprieve from the disciplinary action when Dad came home and he asked about our day.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Remember the fundamentals of learning? Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic. Well, lead management has a similar 3 R foundation for success: Receipt, Retrieval, and Record. These 3 Rs tie to the critical function of an effective lead management system--automating the sales pipeline. Most sales teams spend an inordinate amount of time entering, sorting, and tracking leads.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Transformational leadership articulate values and vision clearly so that the new leaders can move ahead in the right direction, Transformational leaders set an example and become a role model for its followers. Transformational leadership also does the job of mentoring its followers. That is it they give individual consideration to its followers. It s also provide some intellectual stimulation to its followers to enhance their creativity and innovation. It also recognizes the existing need of a potential follower and tries to fulfill it.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
She asked "How could I make more money if I couldn't bring more sales to a close? I asked her what was the hardest part of the process for her and she said "coming up with the words to get them to commit to the sale." During the seminar on sales management strategies for a favorite client of mine I got several clips from the DVD and when I needed emphasis on a point, I let it rip. "THIS IS SPARTA!
|
|
Read more...
|
|
I got a call from one of my favorite clients. She needed her staff to pump up the volume a bit. Apparently they were smarting from a major loss in the last campaign. The campaign had gone on a little long due to corporate over confidence and they felt a bit beaten up. When things get a bit sticky, and the sales chart is looking a bit worn, it's time to play by the numbers. We sales people always win when we beat the averages.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
In difficult business times such as we are in at the moment, the businesses that are most successful and come out of the other side of the economic slowdown are not necessarily those who went into the period as the strongest. In an economic period such as we are going through at the moment being the biggest player within your field is not always the best position to be in. Sometimes biggest is not always best and the smaller more agile businesses can suddenly have the upper hand. Ensuring that your business is flexible enough to change when the market dictates that change is needed is something that many larger corporations cannot prepare themselves for, what should you do to make sure that you are not one of the businesses that get caught out in this period of economic slowdown?
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Managers who have not been salesmen often have trouble managing them. They would appear to not understand the salesperson's situation. First, a salesperson is a unique individual. The professional ones are energized by the chase of the sale. They are driven by the challenge of finding a potential customer, creating a need for a product, closing the sale and earning the commission. Often salespeople are loners, they work on their own and sell on their own. They tend not to easily fit into the typical employee mold. Their hours are irregular, and their involvement in the office is haphazard.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
If you ask people about business so far in 2008 the majority of them would say that it has been a very difficult trading year for them no matter what business you are in the world as we know it is feeling the pinch. Whether this is because of the financial markets, the prices of oil, the price of raw materials or just because people believe the newspaper reports that they cannot fail to see on a daily basis people are just not spending as much money as they were last year. This can be hard for us all in our jobs as we all have to work as hard as ever or in many cases even harder still to make the same money to enable us to survive. In many countries across the civilised Western world inflation is growing at a faster rate than many governments would like to see which means that our money is not going as far.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Considering hiring a top sales speaker for your next sales meeting or conference? Bringing in an outside authority can complement a sales manager's own efforts in pursuit of improved performance and productivity. A sales speaker can help a sales force meet and exceed quotas and meet and exceed customer expectations. Sales speakers are not of the one-size-fits-all variety, though. To gain the maximum benefit from scheduling a sales speaker to address your sales force, sales managers must know a few things about sales speakers and about their sales force.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Did you realize that Money-back-guarantee" is "all over the place"? If you have lived long enough, you will know that this is an evolution in advertising and trading. This is never heard of in the past. It used to be, people often being cheated by sellers or traders into buying a faulty product and not able to get any money back. Once you "break" it, it is considered sold.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
With changing economies and market globalization, companies now face competitor behaviors that they may not have ever experienced before. Customers have instant access to purchase goods worldwide with little problems and the more comfortable they become with the experience, the further a field they are willing to travel.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Can you increase the performance of a sales force when they already seem to be working hard? The team are making quota but can they still deliver significantly more growth without burning themselves out? Through the numerous business reviews I have conducted, I have identified the following traits as common issues within the Selling Function where past practices are being followed....
|
|
Read more...
|
|
This article looks at the issue of extracting company knowledge from sales personnel and retaining it as an asset within the company. Adele looks at the purpose of knowledge within a company and the systems required to manage this knowledge effectively within sales forces.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
What is the best way of Sales Order Generation? Why do we manage the Inventory? How to avoid Stock-outs? How to avoid the overstocking?
|
|
Read more...
|
|
It's that word 'should' that's the problem. According to research from Gartner, as many as 60% of all CRM implementations fail. So given that CRM systems can help in many aspects of sales and marketing, why do they go wrong?
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Many sales managers and trainers feel that video role playing sales presentations and prospecting methods is just too stressful for their sales representatives to be an effective training tool. On the other hand, in most sports, video taping of an athletes performance is a standard training procedure. Today, video tapes play a major role in an athlete's conditioning by most coaches and managers.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
"I'm sorry," my prospect whispered hoarsely, "but I guess I'm in a cynical mood." He didn't need to tell me. As he strode down the surrealistically dark corridor to greet me, I could detect something was askew. His gait, the slightly off-center ambling of a once proud but now humbled individual, spoke volumes about how beaten up he had become over the years. Backing up a few days to when I had requested our meeting over the phone, he sounded as if he was teetering on the edge of an abyss.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
There's a good reason why over 97 percent of progressive companies and service industry firms that I've consulted, use a form of a "hungry base plus commission" compensation plan for their sales professionals, rather than employing a straight commission pay structure. The reason is simple, straight commission pay plans demotivate many more sales professionals than they motivate. Straight commissions reward a specific type of sales professional--the top three to five percent of the sales professionals in the top 20 percent bracket.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Many year's ago, while training at a branch of Dean Whitter (now Morgan Stanley), I learned an important management truth. The branch manager at this office was mandated by corporate to spend a minimum of 60 percent of his time working with and supporting the stock brokers who had been given offices (based on their top performance) surrounding the "bull pen," where the vast majority of the brokers had cubicles. Those staff members in the cubicles were allocated 40 percent of the manager's time.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
In some selling organizations, if formal sales training exists at all, it is often performed by seasoned sales representatives or top performers on the staff. Big mistake!
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Sales professionals, new to selling or business development, might view the opportunity to make a presentation on the spot as a positive event, especially when they learn how hard it is to set a steady stream of appointments to make their presentation. But this perceived opportunity is far from the best time to make a sales presentation, because they rarely can command a decision-maker's full attention.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
To be politically correct today, many organizations have set Friday's apart for their staff to dress down. For selling and service industry professionals, this is a major mistake on the part of management. Research conducted in the '90s by John Malloy, the author of the acclaimed Dress For Success series, we learn that people have a picture of how sales and service industry professionals should look.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
On the surface, this concept of competition or contests seems like a valuable tool to increase sales. Don't bet on it.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Although successful selling requires a level of efficiency to put each staff member in front of as many decision-makers as possible in the shortest period of time, being efficient in sales is not always effective! Research into effective selling by several major Universities suggests that it can take as many as nine to twelve impressions about a product or service depending on the industry, before a prospective customer or client will make a buying decision. Therefore, your staff needs to take time to soften a decision-maker with appointment confirmations (both written and verbal).
|
|
Read more...
|
|
In my first management course at the City College of New York over 30 years ago, I learned an important truth--you can't motivate anyone except yourself. As a manager, all you can do is "create a climate" in which your sales team members motivate themselves. It's true that you can motivate your staff with fear--the fear of management's anger, the fear of looking foolish or even the fear of losing their job.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
It's been said that money hides mistakes. Corporate earnings are down, the market drops and gains triple digits on multiple days, housing prices continue to fall and foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. It's no question that we are in an unstable economic environment. Are we in a recession right now, if not today will we slip into one next week, or perhaps next month? With economic uncertainty looming, many of our clients are asking: How should I position my firm in the months to come?
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Whenever qualities of Sales Persons are discussed qualities like good communications skills, good interpersonal relationship, knowledge about own products vis a vis competitors' and Market Scenario are mostly talked about. Hard work either do not appear in list or given the last priority in the list.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
