There are a lot of nice things you could say…

“He’s a real nice guy”
“She’s very kind”
“He’s really funny”

The list goes on and on.

But when you speak of the people who are closest to you, maybe your best friend you’ve known for 20 years, the most important one is:

“I trust him”

What if all your company’s sales reps were asked the same question about you…and they answered the same way?

How powerful do you think that would that be?

How much more powerful leaders and motivators would you be?

Because once a sales manager establishes or re-establishes trust with their salespeople, then and only then can they start to optimally lead and motivate them…but not one second earlier.

Without that foundation of trust, the job of “sales leader” is twenty times more difficult.

At every turn, every possible moment, a sales manager needs to look for ways to strengthen their sales reps trust in them.

Far too many average sales managers try to lead first, but never bother to establish trust with their reps at any level.

Although unfortunate for their sales reps, this is very good for you and your company. Because if ALL sales managers led their troops this way, it would be far more difficult for your teams to surpass them.

To optimally lead sales reps and unleash explosive sales results, you need to be on the same page as your sales reps. They need to speak their language, and the only way they will listen is if they implicitly trust what they have to say.

What you need to do is make regular deposits in “The Trust Account”. This is our foundational concept for sales managers who read this blog, as well as for those who are members of the Sales Management Mastery Academy.

To learn even more about sales training, get our free ebook.

Post a comment and tell me how do you get your sales reps to trust you?

There are alot of nice things you could say…

“He’s a real nice guy”
“She’s very kind”
“He’s really funny”

The list goes on and on.

But when you speak of the people who are closest to you, maybe your best friend you’ve known for 20 years, the most important one is:

“I trust him”

Now let me ask you this: what if all your sales reps were asked the same question of you and they answered the same?

How powerful would that be?

How much more powerful of a leader and motivator would you be?

Because once you establish or re-establish that trust, then and only then can you start to optimally lead and motivate them…but not a second earlier.

Without that foundation of trust, your job as a sales leader is twenty times as hard.

At every turn, every possible moment, you need to look for ways to strengthen your sales reps trust in you.

Far too many average sales managers try to lead first, but never bother to establish trust with their reps at any level.

Although unfortunate for their sales reps, this is very good for you. Because if ALL sales managers led their troops this way, it would be far more difficult for you to surpass them.

To optimally lead your sales reps and unleash those explosive sales results you crave, you need to be on the same page as your sales reps. You need to speak their language, and the only way they will listen is if they implicitly trust you.

What you need to do is make regular deposits in “The Trust Account”. This is our foundational concept for sales managers who read this blog, as well as for those who are members of the Sales Management Mastery Academy.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Post a comment and tell me how do you get your sales reps to trust you?

Robert was a different breed of leader. He knew how to rally his troops into working together to achieve a singular vision. He had talent.

But Robert also had one thing in common with many of today’s successful sales managers – he always had a plan. Robert Goizueta recognized the power of good planning and modern sales managers must do the same.

Good sales planning is done before the call—not during and not afterward. Too many average sales managers show their faces during sales calls without a cohesive plan of their own in mind. They may figure that since they are believers in sales rep empowerment that the sales reps has it all taken care of everything.

Top students of sales management know that this is a recipe for disaster.

On the other hand, the top sales manager helps his people and empowers them collaborating with them before the big call, drawing on their own experiences, maybe telling the rep about past stories of success in similar situations, all the while ironing out a solid strategy for attack. If you empower your sales reps and don’t concern yourself with their plan, you’re making a big mistake. Empower, yes…but leave it all to them – no way!

Likewise, when spending time with a salesperson, you need to have prepared a concrete sales plan before the start of any coaching session. Maybe just jot down a few notes. I always keep a file of all the goings on of my reps and on the front of the cover of the file, I jot down five or six items I needs to discuss with them – be it immediate action items or coaching opportunities.

As a sales manager you should also do your homework before riding or spending time with the rep, gather some extensive knowledge of the account before attempting to teach any form of account strategy to your sales reps. You may have learned this knowledge either through experience or by analyzing the account beforehand. Different accounts demand different ways of thinking and means of approaching them. It is your responsibility as a sales manager to put down a plan on how you’re going to coach your sales reps and how you will both tackle the accounts assigned to them, as well as plan how the sales reps should react and handle every potential situation that might arise.

Without a sales plan, everything is fragile – one wrong move leads to another, like a stack of dominoes falling on top of each other. We all know we want our sales reps to be the last person surprised during a meeting with a client. Sales managers can avoid this by doing their homework ahead of time.

Sales planning skill is a game breaking factor for any sales manager striving to make his or her way to the top. Like Robert Goizueta, who formed his vision and unique style of coaching through careful planning of what steps he needed to take in order to empower his people to the next level.

As a sales manager, what are your plans?

To learn even more about motivating your salespeople, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Share your insights on pre-sales planning by leaving a message after this post.

But if you are always talking and never listening, then youre going to have a real hard time leading your sales team…because you’ll never know what really matters to them.

Being a great sales manager is more than just knowing to say the right things at the right time. It’s also knowing when the close your mouth and let the other person do the talking.

Simply put, a top sales manager asks more than tells, listens more than talks.

A top sales manager is first a listener, and then a speaker.

Average sales managers never know when to shut up. They speak their mind bluntly, thinking the best solution to every problem is to rush into it head-on. On the other hand, a top sales manager withholds his, or her, ideas and opinions—he or she will say it when the time is ripe. The top sales manager also recognizes that the solution must come from the sales person himself. The top sales manager is simply there to guide, not direct.

How do you do this? Simple. You ask questions that encourage awareness and self-assessment. Listen carefully to your sales reps’ feedback in order to gain a thorough understanding of their likes and dislikes, their strengths and their weaknesses. This sort of information is your trump card to great sales management.

Lastly a top sales manager isn’t afraid to ask for feedback on his or her own performance. We are all learning and growing in our respective careers, including you, the sales manager. You are not exempted from having to face your own strengths and weaknesses as a team leader. If you could make the time to listen to the problems of your sales reps, why not go all the way and ask their suggestions for coaching practices and ideas, as well as what they think of your performance as sales manager?

Remember, a top sales manager is a good speaker, but he is first and foremost a great listener.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

Share your thoughts on best sales management practices by leaving a comment after this post.

There are so many sales management gurus who have written tomes and dissertations on exactly how to motivate salespeople, all in search of the “one thing” that does it all with minimal effort.

The real truth is that there is no ONE way to motivate your sales staff.

As a sales manager, motivating your sales force to trigger explosive sales growth is the sum of hundreds, if not thousands of decisions that you make on a daily basis.

Here’s the tricky thing: since motivating salespeople effectively does not amount to any ONE thing, you need to know how to coalesce all these actions into a cohesive, well-oiled sales management machine…and when all these parts are working precisely right, it will result in a motivated sales force who is willing to “go through walls” for both themselves and for you.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

Don’t  follow “the Golden Rule”!

“The Golden Rule” says that you should “treat others as you would like to be treated”.

It says that “being fair” and treating everyone the same is what being a great sales manager all is about. Makes total sense, right?

For example, when you were a salesperson, you were primarily motivated by money. So conventional thinking would dictate that this means that ALL your salespeople are all driven by money too, right?

This is precisely the kind of flawed thinking that the average sales manager falls into. But you are striving to be far from average…Instead, the extraordinary sales manager knows that each person is truly different, and if you treat them all the same, then peak performance is impossible to achieve.

Do you “motivate” your sales team around the very same objectives that YOU felt were important when you were a salesperson? THAT is conventional sales management…and “conventional thinking” is what you as an aspiring top sales manager are trying to avoid.

Remember:

Conventional thinking = Conventional (quota-hitting) results

Unconventional thinking = Unconventional (quota SMASHING) results

Here’s the thing…people are different (this hopefully is not a newsflash for you)…so why “motivate” your salespeople all the same?

Get To Know Your Salespeople’s Sales Motivation

What you really need to do is get to know them and realize how different each one is, then celebrate these differences! Just because you are motivated in a certain way, (and we have to assume that you did it pretty well, because you are the boss now after all), it doesn’t mean that your salespeople are motivated in the exact same ways that you are.

Each salesperson has their own individual triggers for success, things that make them uniquely different. And those motivations are far different for each sales rep.

So as a top sales manager, how do you harness each individual sales rep’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance?

There is not only one way…but I do know that it’s a different motivator or trigger for each one, and you have to find out how to get it from them. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to get.

Also, you really need to be mindful of WHO you are motivating, because that’s as, if not more, important than HOW you are motivating…you see, this “motivating” thing isn’t that easy. It’s actually the hardest thing to do as a sales manager…and it’s even harder to do REALLY well.

Here’s a big clue though…EVERYTHING you do as a sales manager, every email, every phone call, every text message, every memo must align your message with a undercurrent of motivation. In every sales management thing you do, you must be motivating and communicating for a specific reason…and that reason is to unleash superior sales results from your salespeople.

That is your ONLY (and most important) goal.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

How to Motivate Your Sales Team by “Peeling back the Onion”

“Conventional” sales management gospel says that “being fair” is what being a great sales manager all is about….

But does this really make any sense? When you were a salesperson, let’s say you were primarily motivated by money. So according to “conventional” sales management philosophy, then your salespeople are all driven by money, right?

This is precisely what the average sales manager does…and that is the reason why he is AVERAGE! But you didn’t come here today because you wanted to be average…

OK, we can admit that this “conventional” sales management thinking is deeply flawed – whereas the extraordinary sales manager knows that each salesperson is truly different – because if your treat them all the same, then peak sales performance is impossible to achieve.

This has gotta make sense to you.

If you think about it, just because you like something and hold it dear, does that mean others do the same? For your spouse’s birthday, did you present her with a 42” plasma TV because that’s what you wanted? Or did you present him with a set of 2 karat diamond earrings because that is what you wanted?

Of course not.

Just like in our ridiculous analogy above, each salesperson has their own individual desires, wants, motivations and triggers for sales success…triggers and motivations that make them uniquely different…like the differences between you and your spouse’s vision of an ideal gift…

Motivating Your Sales Force is Easy…

So how do you harness each individual’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance? Well, the first thing you need to do is find out what actually motivates them.

How do you do it? Do you hypnotize them? Do you ask roundabout questions on what they were like when they were children? Do you ask them questions about their personal lives (are they getting married soon, are they looking to buy a house, do they want to just stay single)? Do you perform psychoanalysis on them and ask them about their deepest darkest secrets, their father and their mother, uncovering Oedipus complexes and “mommy never loved me” scenarios? Do you call their past bosses and interview them?

No, no no…you don’t need to do any of that.

What you need to do is incredibly simple…you just simply ask your salespeople what motivates them.

I am truly amazed at how many of my sales management co-workers have no idea what motivates their salespeople. In fact, just the other day a colleague of mine was telling me about a problem sales rep of hers and how he “doesn’t do this, he doesn’t do that…”

So I asked her, “What motivates him?”

She stammered and stuttered and clearly made up something on the spot like “money, uh, I think”.

I thought, how can she possibly expect to get this rep to do anything if she has absolutely NO IDEA what makes him tick?

How many of us do this though?

We all do it. We all get so “caught up’ in all the emails and conference calls and signing off on expense reports and monitoring the administrative tasks – all the things that get in the way of actually doing the single most important thing that we need to know about our sales representatives.

The point is this: as a sales manager you need to know “what gets them out of bed in the morning”, what makes them tick, what drives them if you want to have ANY SHOT at the top sales management rankings.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

You Just Need to Know What Questions to Ask!

If you really want to get the best from your salespeople and push them to achieve sales excellence, then you need to know what drives them – so you can then “push those buttons” at will to get them there.

It doesn’t matter how you get your information – you just have to get it. Then as soon as you get their true sales motivations, keep it in their file and refer to it at every chance you can get. Remind yourself constantly of what makes that salesperson tick.

Use that information as a daily guide to steer your conversations and interactions with them. The goal is to give them what they want, not what you think that they should want.

Let your sales people tell you what their motivational triggers are. Then simply gear your interactions to perfectly match those triggers.

The good news is that there are only ten simple questions you need to ask. And we reveal them to you in this video.

So don’t wait…get our free video and audio which reveals to you the exact questions you need to ask your sales force to uncover their sales motivations . Simply click here to get your audio, video and special report on how to uncover the true sales motivations of your salespeople  so that motivating your sales team will be an absolute piece of cake.

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You need to be cooler than Opie and Anthony, Rush Limbaugh (pick your radio personality here) as well as all the other ones out there together.

Why? Because being on your sales reps “pre-sets” on their own personal radio stations is absolutely essential to your crusade in getting to know your sales people so you could effectively communicate with them and expect better sales performance.

But here is the thing. Did you know there’s only one radio station your sales people tune in to all day long every day of the week…and that station is WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let’s not get too technical here).

It’s the “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio frequency. WIFM. This is the only station that most interests sales people all over the country, all over the world, and if your voice isn’t being heard on it 24-7, your sales reps are going to go out on you faster than you could say Barack Obama.

I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. People tend to put themselves first. People in general don’t care about anything that doesn’t concern them. That’s why it’s called “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio station.

Here’s an example. Your boss walks up to you and says to you he’s “$10 million in the hole”. The Sales VP sends you an email asking, “Why’s your team’s closed accounts in their pipeline last month so weak?” Your wife leaves you a note on the refrigerator saying she needs a new dishwasher before Kelly’s birthday party next week.

You’ve got your own set of problems. Problem is, your sales reps don’t care about any of that.

According to AT&T, the number one word used in telephone conversations all over the US is the word “I”, which beat number two on the list by a ten to one margin. Don’t ask me how they got that information. But ask me if I think people are selfish by design, and I’ll say, “Hell YES!”

People care about themselves FIRST!

Now the only way to solve your dilemma is to NOT be like everyone else.

Worry about your sales people first, and your own problems will solve themselves eventually. Do this by speaking in a language that they understand and hear on their radio frequency – WIFM. If you let them solve their problems first, if you could help them purchase the dishwasher they’ve been itching to buy, you can expect them to perform better and even exceed quota every time. In this way, you solve your boss’ and Sales VP’s problems, and you solve your own problems in the process, too.

Once again, it touches the lessons I’ve discussed in my previous posts about depositing in your sales reps’ Trust Accounts and about the Law of Reciprocity.

How well you communicate with your sales reps speak volumes about how good you are as a leader and sales manager. Are you up to the challenge to broadcast on WIFM? Have you got what it takes to be bigger than Cool Hand Luke and Howard Stern combined? Pick up that mic and start talking.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

How often do you broadcast on WIFM? Do you believe it is necessary for a successful career in sales? Tell me by leaving a comment below.

Robert is the late former CEO of The Coca-Cola Company. Everyone knows Coca-Cola, but sadly only a few people knew Robert Goizueta. He often used to say to his troops,

“Each of the world’s six billion people drinks on average SIXTY-FOUR ounces of fluids a day… of which TWO ounces is Coca-Cola.”

The statement makes for a great visual interpretation, doesn’t it? This “sixty-two ounce upside” concept established the core belief that the drinks they worked hard at day in and day out had limitless growth potential. Robert had talent for communicating something, anything, in a clear and visual way.

Reading his speeches is enough to inspire me in a good mood.

Robert was a true “visual sales leader.”

Question is, are you the same with your sales team?

Visual sales leaders take in complex ideas and transform them and then communicate them in a way that’s easy to visualize and understand. The simpler, the better. But visual sales leaders still have to make it memorable if they want to achieve anything using this method.

Visual sales leaders are like foreign currency exchangers. They accept a one form of currency and exchange it in a currency their customers could put to good use.

Here’s an example.

You are in the business of selling a specific kind of women’s clothing.

In 2008, the total market did $24 million for your sales district.

Your total sales were $4 million.

So the market opportunity… $20 million.

You have ten sales reps in your team and each is responsible for a quota of $100,000.

As a visual sales leader, you could say something like…

“When you place our dress in the hands of ONLY one out of every 200 women dress shoppers in your area—congratulations, give yourself a pat on the back, you just hit quota!”

“But if you put one of our dresses in the hands of one out of every 100 women dress shoppers in your area, then go out and buy yourself a drink because you just became a star in my team.”

Simple? Yes.

Effective? Absolutely.

This example not only allows you to lead the team visually, it also opens up room for you to set the bar higher (something I’ve discussed in one of my previous posts). A visual sales leader is a carver of skin from the bones, and he does it bring out the best from the people working under him.

When you create pictures with words, your sales reps are able to keep their eyes focused on the prize.

The prize is the “sixty-two ounce upside…”

Do you see yourself as a visual sales leader? What steps are you taking to get one step closer to “leading visually” like Robert Goizueta?

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

Leave a comment below.

George Washington knew his strengths and his own weaknesses. But as president of the new United States, he knew he had to do something. So what he did, he brought together a few individuals he knew would more than make up for his own shortcomings. The rest was history.

If anything, George was confident. He didn’t feel threatened by hiring individuals who, some would agree, was better and more qualified than himself.

The point is: George’s success and image flourished by hiring superior people into his team.

Americans eventually saw him as one of the greatest leaders to come out of the United States. I believe George Washington became far more successful than if he had appointed mediocre cabinet members.

As a top-performing sales manager, you need to – and you must – do the same.

George possessed one of the key characteristics of a superior sales leader:

He had an absence of ego.

Get off your high horse. Step down from that pedestal. Absence of ego means you have no trouble relinquishing control. And when you release control, you make room for your sales reps to grow.

They become the stars! Not you. 

Put yourself in the shoes of a basketball coach. Michael Jordan is a legend, but even his biggest fans acknowledge that his basketball career wouldn’t have turned out the way it did without the guidance of Phil Jackson. Even Michael himself was a Washingtonian-type of leader. He was a monster courtside, but he never hoarded the ball to himself. He made sure everyone in his team was given an opportunity to fly. Again, the rest… is history.

Same goes for sales management. When your sales reps become stars and the team starts hitting above quota more often, the real credit goes to you. 

So don’t hesitate to hire talented sales reps, people who are superior and maybe even better than you. Because if you do that, youre one step closer to being the “George Washington” of sales management.

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

Tell me how you go about hiring top sales people. What strategies work well for you? Post a comment below.

He was called a “leadership genius” and acclaimed as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”. He earned it. Management By Walking Around (MBWA) was groundbreaking during its time.

But it wasn’t that big a deal – if you ask me.

 MBWA was simply common sense. So okay. Maybe that’s why it became popular in the first place. MBWA was a simple yet effective solution to sales management. I guess that kind of stuff doesn’t come around more than once in a century.

A sales manager could be a management genius too by following what Tom Peters advocated more than thirty years ago—that is, by incorporating “roving sales leadership” into your style of management. I know, we all have our way of doing things. But MBWA is so simplistic in its approach that you might as well be doing it already without you knowing it.

Management By Walking Around talks about establishing trust with your fellow sales reps by understanding first and foremost their trials and achievements through their level of perspective.

You can’t expect to understand your sales reps—and them to understand you—if you’re giving out errands from your comfortable office chair in front of the computer. You need to get out there and know what’s really going on. Like I said in my previous post, human contact is key to any relationship. Period.

If you’re expecting people to email you in the office any time of the day, set up an auto-responder to say that you’re unavailable from 1 PM to 4 PM on weekdays. Set your messenger status to “Busy” or “Not here right now”. Those people can wait. Your sales team, on the other hand, is only waiting for you to make a deposit in their Trust Account.

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

Tell me what you think about establishing a personal relationship with your salespeople by posting a response to this post.