Good sales managers must know how to get the most out of their sales teams. Thus, in this Expert Insight Interview, Jason Treu discusses how to create and manage a high-performing sales team. Jason Treu is a Chief People Officer at Unstoppable Workplaces, helping organizations, executives, and leaders to build high-performing teams and cultures.
The interview discusses:
- Self-awareness
- Teamwork
- Soft skills
Self-Awareness
Many sales leaders are former best performing salespeople who got promoted to managers. However, being the best-performing salesperson does not automatically mean being an excellent sales manager. To level up their managerial and team performance, sales managers should focus more on self-awareness, team management, and soft skills.
While around 90 to 95 percent of the people think they are self-aware, only 10 to 15 percent of people are self-aware indeed. Self-awareness means knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It requires asking yourself hard questions and accepting that the problem usually comes from the inside instead of the outside. Sales managers should work on their self-awareness first to encourage their teams to do the same thing.
Teamwork
Teamwork is the most overlooked yet essential thing within organizations. For instance, an all-star team might have the best-skilled individuals, but it will never perform on the same level as a team that works together and gets along. Sales managers must understand how their teams and everyone inside that team operates. Most managers lack to give feedback to their employees and to work on their professional development. Thus, having weekly one on one conversations with each team member will show your team that you care.
Moreover, integrating your team with other departments in the organization as the operations or marketing department is beneficial for business. With more interdepartmental collaboration, there will be less finger-pointing and more working together as one big team.
Soft Skills
Soft skills such as empathy, communication, and listening are essential for building relationships with your team. Being an active listener requires practice. We usually focus so hard on giving smart responses that we miss out on understanding what the person actually tried to tell us. That leads to missing out on the opportunity to create a deeper relationship with the client or a coworker.
Every team member should get encouraged to speak up. Salespeople have the habit of talking at people rather than with people, not allowing them to provide creative ideas. However, making a team decision usually ends up in making far better decisions than making it individually.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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