Top Sales Manager Blog

Can you think of a better person to define the term “eccentric scientist” than Albert Einstein? What about eccentric businessmen?

Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Airlines and many other multi-million businesses around the world. For me, he embodies the term “unconventional businessman”. Richard likes to do things his way. He makes decisions based on what he feels is right. And judging from the expensive suits he wears at parties, it’s easy to tell he’s more right than wrong.

When everyone else is headed downwards, he goes up. When everyone turns right, he turns left. One of his famous quotes goes,

“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unconventional challenges and trying to rise above them… from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it.”

This unconventional style—this Richard Branson style of doing things—it’s how you need to think and act if you want to bring out top sales results from your sales reps.

Look around you. What do you see? Hundreds of management gurus trying to preach the ONE most important strategy in effective sales management.

But let me tell you this. There is NO one way to do it. Improving sales performance is the result of making several—no, hundreds—of critical decisions everyday that point your sales reps toward the right direction, and to coalesce the sum of those actions into a focused and cohesive well-oiled management plan.

If done right, your sales reps would “go through walls” just for you and the team.

Are you familiar with the Golden Rule? Treat others as you would like to be treated. For sales management, it makes hell of a lot of sense…but only to a certain level.

Every person is unique. You should probably know this by now. Simply because you were motivated by money back then doesn’t mean John is motivated by money, too, and just because John is motivated by something else doesn’t mean Karen doesn’t follow in your footsteps.

Treating every sales rep equally as if they are all motivated by the same thing. This is a big mistake. It’s conventional thinking for average sales managers, and I’m not wasting my time here to teach anyone to be average. Remember this precious formula:

Conventional thinking = Conventional (quota-hitting) results

Unconventional thinking = Unconventional (quota SMASHING) results

From here on out, look at each person as a different color and treat them the way YOU feel they deserve to be treated to bring out their best performance. Celebrate their differences. Richard Branson trusted his instincts and look at where it got him. It’s time to put your own instincts to the test and dream big, like the eccentric businessman.

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Filed under: Motivation by ralphburns