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Creating feedback that is truly useful requires more care and attention than is typically invested. Like any skill — chess, golf, learning Mandarin — offering strategic developmental feedback requires that we pay attention to and do many things effectively and simultaneously. Given the opportunity to help others develop and become more effective, it’s worth the effort.
When I started managing, I was focused on things such as ...
Gaining trust from my team
Understanding what motivated each one of my team members to work with me and at the company
Ensuring I knew sales forecasting fundamentals
Finding scaleable training initiatives
Managing my time effectively
Building a team-wide vision and enabling team unity
Defining (and refining) the right way to on-board new team members
While all of those endeavors were absolutely worthwhile, I realized that all of these things could and would constantly change.
People came and went. Processes came and went. Sales targets and forecasting methods came and went. The market and competitive landscape evolved. Even the products and services we were (and are) selling evolved. It was all about change.
The last thing any manager wants their team members to do is dread coming to work each day. Because people spend the majority of their time at work, it is important managers do all they can to make that time enjoyable, exciting and well-spent.
A dictatorial manager who lacks empathy or insight may produce but high turnover will cause them to ultimately fail. Excellent managers do their best to make 80 percent of the job rewarding, with a 20 percent balance of healthy stress. While this may not always be the possible, it is nonetheless their goal.
At the heart of every sale is a thorough fact-find. You’ll want to unearth the needs, the wants, and the desires of your prospect so you can present your products and solutions in a way that will be of benefit to them. And the only way that you can do this is to ask quality sales questions so you can really find out what their current situation is, what their requirements are, and what they are looking to achieve.
Remember, your prospects want a good listening to, not a good talking to! They don’t want to just sit there listening to your monologue of why your products and services are the best. A prospect wants to know that you understand their situation in detail.
Chances are, your competitors are asking questions, but they're only skin deep. Instead, you need to drill down to the root causes of the issues your prospects face at a much deeper level and demonstrate your expertise on the subject.
Here's a comprehensive list of 100 sales qualifying questions you can ask buyers to get intimately familiar with their situation and formulate potential solutions.
After a long day at the office, Netflix is usually more appealing than cracking open a sales book or streaming a sales training video on YouTube.
Fortunately, there’s a simpler way to learn new sales techniques without having to set aside extra time in your day -- through podcasts.
The next time you’re walking the dog, commuting, exercising, cleaning, or doing any other task that doesn’t require mental energy, pop in your earbuds, press “Play,” and learn from sales leaders and experts.
Here are 13 sales podcasts to get you started.
Have you ever wanted a peek inside the mind of a top salesperson? Although every rep has their own unique selling style, strategy, and process, their mindsets are surprisingly similar.
“Success in sales is 90% mental.”
If you want to improve your chances of hiring a star performer, check out your candidates baseline characteristics and see how they match up against these proven 10 characteristics that we consistently see in high performing sales professionals.
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Sales Directors and Sales Managers rarely get to their positions simply through loyalty or length of time served.
They’ve most likely been in the sales world themselves and been an excellent sales person.
But this doesn’t mean they will necessarily make it as a manager or director of business.
Indeed, there are many people who direct or manage sales, and they are simply in the wrong position.
The Peter Principle, originated by Laurence J. Peter, a Canadian educator, states that employees rise through the ranks via promotion until they reach a level of incompetence.
This doesn’t mean that every person who becomes a sales director will not be competent at the role, but it does mean they have to realise the role involves several different tasks and responsibilities that they hadn’t mastered before taking on the position.
I’ve noticed there are some habits displayed by Sales Directors that can have a negative effect on results and the morale of the team.
These aren’t carried out on purpose; in fact, most of the ones listed here are innocent in nature, mainly because they fail to see the enduring results of these habits.
Take a look and see if you recognise some of them:
The key to winning is being great EVERY time. Consistency plays great and pays great.
How consistently great are you?
"You can do it!"
When's the last time someone said that to you? In the daily grind of sales, you might not always receive words of motivation from your managers, because they get pushed to the wayside as calls and meetings pile up.
So think of this list as your personal cheerleader. It's ready to help start your day right and make it one you're proud of.
Today you'll succeed in connecting with that hard-to-reach prospect. Today you'll close that complex deal. Today you'll go from being a good manager to a great one.
Today is the day. So grab your coffee and check out these quotes!
Just as the best athletes constantly practice, improve, and refine their strategy, successful salespeople are always experimenting with existing techniques and trying out new ones. After all, the second an athlete or rep stops striving to get better, they backslide.
Check out these 75 one-sentence tips to keep you in peak selling shape. Whether you want to focus on your presentation skills, your approach to calling prospects, your methods for closing, or all of the above, you’ll find some great words of wisdom in this list.
No matter what industry you’re in, you’ve likely received some form of, “Why should I do business with you?”
When most salespeople hear this question, they go into tap-dance mode and immediately list all the reasons why they’re great: “Our company is the best, our service is outstanding, we’ve been around for 100 years, and we have the best quality.”
Of course, your prospect expects you to say this, because your competitors are using this same response.
Think about it -- everyone claims to have the best quality and service, even if it isn’t true. Read on to learn how you can switch up your approach, dominate the competition, and capture your prospects’ attention when they ask, “Why should I do business with you?”
When I first got into sales, I struggled with my cold outreach. Learn the one piece of sales prospecting advice that changed my career.
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I have always felt that managers needed to accomplish 3 distinct things in order to be an effective manager.
1) Making sure that your team has the tools they need to be successful.
2) Learning the numbers for your specific sales, and then holding your team accountable to those metric.
3) Being able to effectively coach and mentor your team.
Being comfortable and proficient in providing constructive criticism, and being able to coach for success, is a critical skill to have, and all managers should invest the time needed to become skilled at providing strategic developmental feedback.