Articles for Sales Management Professionals

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 […]

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 […]