Top Sales Manager Blog

The best, high-performing sales managers observe their salespeople.

They notice that there are certain core talents each individual has. They make mental notes of their salespeople’s strengths as well as their weaknesses. They know that they can leverage their talents as a launching point to coax even greater performance out of their salespeople.

For example, lets compare two top performing salespeople, both having achieved the highest sales awards in their companies with great track records of success.

• “Jane” has an incredible talent for building rapport, easily weaving pleasant conversation with the true sales pitch. Jane’s manner is easygoing and laid-back, but hides a profound inner drive. She is completely in control of the situation at all times and asks many layered questions of the prospect to uncover their needs. Instead of being “all business”, she talks about jewelry, kids and other non-business activities; easily mixing in rapport building with selling through out the process. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, taking time for some self-deprecating asides, but constantly driving towards the sale. She uses no real reference pieces, instead relies on her easy, trustworthy manner to build credibility. When it comes to the end, she doesn’t really “close” per se as much as she just assumes they will be moving on to the next step.

• In contrast, “Tom” is incredibly persistent, he is a little bit awkward in his approach, but people respect him due to his aggressiveness and “never taking no” mentality. When he is in a sales call, he’s all business, no rapport building whatsoever, but asks few precisely worded questions to uncover his client’s needs. Just like his initial approach, when he hears objections, he aggressively asks the reasons behind the objections, then pulls out reference materials to overcome the objections and validate his claims. At the end of the sale, he asks “alternate close questions”, awaits responses before proceeding and aggressively pushes for the next step, and is very successful in doing so.

Would you as the sales manager for both Jane and Tom look at the above scenarios and think to yourself: “If I could just get Jane to use more reference materials and ask more hard close questions, she would really be even better!”

Or would you think: “Tom’s just too rough, I need to get him to soften up his hard edge and build more rapport. He also needs to ask more questions to uncover needs.”

In both cases, you would be falling into the most common, yet well-meaning trap that average sales managers make. You would be trying to perfect them, and I have news for you…your efforts will be futile.

The path to true sales motivation is not perfecting…rather its accepting. Accept Jane for who she is and accept Tom for who he is and dont try to change either one…rather harness and bring out more of each one and harness that talent.

In the process you’ll motivate them both…and you’ll succeed fabulously as well.

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Post a comment below and tell me how YOU motivate your sale reps.

Filed under: Motivation by ralphburns