Articles for Sales Management Professionals

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 […]

Do you have professional salespeople on your team? Of course almost all sales managers would answer yes, even when it’s not really the correct answer. What’s your definition of a professional? The best definition I’ve heard of a professional is based on their consistency of performance. Describing someone as a professional is also saying there’s […]

A significant component of your sales training design is going to be based on what type of sales training structure or process you select to best communicate your new learning ideas. To best understand the positives and trade-offs of any specific training format we need to first look at the steps of adult learning. You […]

In my sales programs I describe most sales people as being like the “Hellarewe” bird. That’s a three foot bird living in four foot grass…who keeps saying “Where the hell are we?” How many of your salespeople act like “Hellarewe” birds? But selling is a lot like the game of Chess. If you think more […]

How much account planning do you lead your team through at this time of year? For the majority of sales teams the last month of a business year and the first month of a new year traditionally involve some type of territory planning and quota assignments for the year. Account and territory planning are always […]

How would you and your team answer an important customer asking “What’ve you done for me lately?” What would you talk about? How many new ideas or suggestions have you offered your better clients over the last year? Too many experienced sales professionals have this reactive, repetitive, and singular “buy my product” approach to selling, […]

  In this video Jim Pancero shows how sales managers can take the next step to becoming selling process coaches and become more effective leaders. Jim explains how changing the question is the answer to improving sales. Our thanks to our friends at ISSA for the production of this video and their permission to use […]