Articles for Sales Management Professionals

Utilizing the Four Core Values of Buying! Business-to-business buyers are influenced by your overall philosophy or approach much more than they are by the “parts and pieces” details of your actual products or services. Strategic selling involves continually communicating your overall philosophy, positioning or selling approach throughout your selling process and ongoing support efforts. One […]

The significant differences between your sales manager’s “Independent Gunfighter” leadership and selling style and your core values of collaboration and respect for the individual is the current struggle being faced by many companies (and industries) today. We are experiencing a generational shift in selling and sales leadership philosophies. The “old school” style of selling that […]

The job of a sales manager is to help each and every one of your people achieve more than they would have achieved if just left alone. How are you helping your people achieve even more by coaching and helping them increase their Operational or fundamental selling skills? How often are you riding along and […]

All sales managers eventually wind up needing to invest time and effort interviewing, hiring and training new members of their sales team. How effective are your interviewing skills and efforts? The majority of sales managers don’t interview and hire new salespeople on a regular basis so their interviewing skills tend to be weak or “underdeveloped.” […]

Natural evolution of a dealership As dealerships get larger each person working there will tend to become more specialized. In the beginning when there are only one to three locations most managers are general managers getting involved in all major decisions. As they grow, usually by adding locations, they will need their top managers to […]

Are there valid reasons for recording a salesperson’s travels by GPS? Short term I am sure a team’s sales would increase due to the bottom performers running scared and working harder. But long term I believe a team will lose its top performers (or future top performers) due to their feelings of “Big Brother” and […]

The best sales coaching opportunity is going to be whenever you are riding with a rep for a few days or are talking with them on the phone. On the phone it’s just taking a few extra minutes to ask them about any specific account plans or what they are working on with their most […]

As a sales manager, are you spending more times working to solve symptoms or problems from your sales team members? Sadly, most of the sales managers I see spend the majority of their time only working on symptoms and not problems. The majority of all the sales problems brought to me by sales people asking […]

Are your salespeople maximizing all of the selling opportunities available in your markets? How are you, as their sales manager, contributing to their selling success and profitability? What “management style”do you utilize to lead your sales team? There are two basic managerial styles or philosophies of leading a sales team. You can manage and lead […]