Top Sales Manager Blog

Merriam and Webster defines excellence as something that is superior or very good of its kind.

Ask someone from your team what’s his definition of “excellence” and how it applies to his work as a sales person. Then ask yourself: what does excellence mean to me and my way of doing things?

Do you have the same standards of excellence?

Fact is that “excellence” means different things to different people. As a sales manager, you must acknowledge that everyone has varying range of potentials and talents (some better, some worse). In other words, your standards of excellence may be very different, almost unrecognizable, from the standards of your boss or co-worker.

The trick is to be flexible and inflexible at the same time. How is that possible? It’s simple, really. Be inflexible on what you want from your sales reps, but at the same time be inflexible on how you’ll guide each sales rep into achieving those goals.

Sometimes it can’t be helped that quota is the only true measuring stick to your sales reps’ performance. Look at it this way.

1. If the sales person has never achieved quota, then hitting quota is excellence, period.The standards change once the sales person learns to achieve quota on a consistent basis.
2. Excellence is any amount of work that exceeds quota, though it should always remain as realistic as possible.

It’s your duty as their sales manager to keep tabs on your sales people’s performance. Don’t strain their workload too much. How far each sales person should exceed quota to maintain excellence, they should be the one to tell you and not the other way around.

Let your sales people set their own goals. Let them write their own definition of excellence. Your job is to play editor-in-chief and guide them to not stray too far from the path they’ve decided for themselves.

To learn more about sales motivation, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Share your tips on how you nudge your sales people into working hard to achieve excellence in their careers. Leave a comment below.

Filed under: Setting Expectations by ralphburns