Top Tips for Surviving as a Sales Manager

Being a frontline sales manager is one of the most important jobs in a sales organization, and yet it’s also the most difficult. Few people are prepared for it. The tenure of a sales leader can be as little as a year and a half, or even less. So how can a sales manager learn to really excel at their job, and be the revenue multiplier that their company needs? Dave Brock and John Golden discuss the Sales Manager Survival Guide in this sales expert webinar.

Understanding the Job:

Very few people truly understand what it means to be a sales manager – even someone who is in sales and has worked under a sales manager. Typically, the assumption about a sales manager’s role is that they are responsible for making the numbers. But when you think deeper about their position, the question becomes: how do they make the numbers? Through their people. The job of a sales manager is to get things done through the people and the team that they are responsible for. The way you make your numbers and the way you achieve your goals is to maximize the performance of each individual on the team. There are all sorts of things that are important for sales leaders, like, reporting, analysis, hiring, firing, coaching, development, so and so forth. But, at a fundamental level, it’s really about getting things done through your people and maximizing their performance.

The First 30 Days:

If a sales manager doesn’t know what they’re doing or doesn’t understand how to be most effective at a company, they can end up causing more damage than good. During the first 30 days at an organization, it’s important to take time to work with the salespeople, get to know the customer base and what they do, and engage with the organization as a whole. Build your knowledge of the company’s people, the culture, formal and informal procedures, and how things get done. Without this familiarity, a sales manager won’t be able to work effectively within the organization.

The Next 30 Days:

After you’ve spent a month at an organization getting to know the culture, the people, and the customers, you can move on to building and integrating certain skills within your team. The goal of a sales manager isn’t to develop strategy and ideas. The goal of a sales manager is to get the sales team to adopt those strategies and ideas and implement them in order to execute selling successfully. Getting feedback is another important part. You want to ensure that your team is on board, and feels as if your management style and techniques are helping them be successful.

Coaching for Sales Leaders:

Being a coach is a big part of a sales manager’s responsibility, but coaching is often misunderstood and not properly executed. There are two main styles of coaching: directive, and non-directive. Directive coaching involves more telling people what to do. Non-directive coaching is about helping people learn and discover a better strategy for themselves, and then teaching them to apply this strategy to a variety of different situations. It’s a much more collaborative approach to problem-solving that allows salespeople to internalize the skills. A good sales leader will understand how to use both techniques. Non-directive works best as a primary method of coaching, but it’s also good to know when to use directive coaching. If a salesperson is metaphorically driving their car towards a tree at 60 miles per hour, the sales leader will probably want to take on a more directive approach in order to prevent the salesperson from crashing.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Too many sales teams try to develop new business with the same techniques that were used in the 90’s! Today’s technology and social media platforms have created tremendous opportunities for sellers to prospect, warm-call, solidify more meetings – AND BUILD LONG-LASTING RELATIONSHIPS – with record success. Are you using the latest technology and tools to your advantage?

Effective Modern Prospecting and the use of Social Selling require an adjustment in attitude and perspective. Utilizing the modern platforms as tools to communicate with prospects gives modern sellers a strong competitive advantage – IN REAL TIME! As opposed to the old-fashioned “wine, dine, and win the business” tactics that were long part of relationship building, it is now incumbent upon sellers to provide prospects and clients with substantive information. Information that is useful in demonstrating new opportunities to potentially help grow their business. Perhaps even in ways that they had never anticipated.

Offering this level of service to your clients and prospects not only positions you as a consultative, solutions-based seller, but it firmly establishes YOUR VALUE!

Trade: A Time for War…or Peace?
#SalesChats: Episode 24

Most people don’t understand what impact trade has. In a global economy, everything is connected. You cannot hyper focus only on local situations, you have to see the bigger picture, which involves trade. Many people feel that the trade agreements, some of which were created decades ago, are not applicable to them – but in reality, they affect everyone. Salespeople need to understand the impact that trade has on them. Nikolaus Kimla discusses trade in this #SalesChat, hosted by John Golden and Martha Neumeister.

Kimla explains:

• The impact that trade has on the global economy, including both large scale and small scale events
• Why it’s important for a salesperson to understand the fundamentals of trade
• Specific examples of why understanding trade is important. For instance, a company that wants to export their product to the United States needs to understand the current trends of American consumers to buy products made in America
• The importance of thinking digitally, especially now that we are in the technological era
• Powerful economic powerhouses that are often overlooked, like airports, which form their own miniature city with developed systems for selling products in a safe environment
• Understanding how to target your experience towards customers, and how they want to buy
• The negative perception of salespeople, and how this impacts the important role that salespeople play in trade and the global economy
• The history of trade, and how understanding it can create a better environment for salespeople
• How to show buyers empathy, and that you as a salesperson understand the problems that the buyer is going through

Our Guest

Nikolaus Kimla

A 30-year veteran of the computer industry, Nikolaus has founded and run several software companies. He and his company uptime iTechnology are the developers of World-Check, a risk intelligence platform eventually sold to Thomson Reuters for $520 million. He is currently the founder and CEO of Pipelinersales, Inc., developer and publisher of Pipeliner CRM, the first CRM application aimed squarely at actually empowering salespeople.

Also a prolific writer, Nikolaus has authored over 100 ebooks, articles and white papers addressing the subjects of sales management, leadership and sales itself.

Links › Pipeliner CRM | twitter.com | linkedin.com

Our Hosts

John Golden

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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Martha Neumeister

Martha is social media strategist, responsible for all social media platforms of Pipeliner CRM. She is a communication expert with social media affinity, which she has been focusing on throughout her professional career. She has a bachelor´s degree in Entrepreneurship & Management and a master´s degree in Online Marketing which supports her in her career as Social Media Strategist.

About SalesChats

SalesChats is a fast-paced (no more than 30 minutes) multi-media series that provides leading strategies, tactics and thinking for sales professionals worldwide. It can be found on Twitter (#SalesChats), as a live Google+ Hangout, and as a podcast available on iTunes, SoundCloud and right here on SalesPOP! If you think you would make a great guest for #SalesChats, please contact co-host Martha Neumeister.

SalesChats is co-hosted by John Golden, CSO Pipeliner CRM, and Martha Neumeister, Social Media Strategist Pipeliner CRM.

How important is sales prospecting? Well, without it you’re not going to have any sales in the pipeline.

In today’s digital world, a lot of prospecting is conducted through social media and inbound methods. Many of the old rules are still in force, though, even if applied in new ways. Three sales experts provide practical advice and insights on how to focus your prospecting efforts in this panel discussion featuring Barbara Giamanco, Kurt Shaver & Donald Kelly – hosted by John Golden.

Jerry Seinfeld said, “I will invest an hour to take an eight-word sentence and edit it down to five.” In this insightful video, world-renowned sales trainer Patricia Fripp takes this lesson and turns it around to show how salespeople can make presentations that will be remembered…and turned into sales.

In addition to coauthoring the bestselling Go-Giver books with John David Mann, Bob Burg has authored a number of popular books, including the critically acclaimed, Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales and Adversaries into Allies. His total book sales are well over a million copies. He was named by the American Management Association as one of the Top 30 Most Influential Thought Leaders in Business for 2014.

Watch him as he educates our audience at the Palm Beach Power Breakfast on how to go about getting referrals.

At the Palm Beach Power Breakfast, D.B. Wienke shared some insights into how to optimize your use of LinkedIn to drive real sales results.

Psychological Motivation in Sales

One of the most practical things for those in the sales world is to understand the ways that you are motivated, as well as the way your staff is motivated. Leigh Ashton discusses how to motivate salespeople in this sales pro webinar, hosted by John Golden.

How Are Salespeople Motivated?

Knowing how the individuals in your sales team are motivated is crucial to a high performing team. Not everyone on the sales team is motivated in the same way. One of the biggest mistakes that sales leaders make is that they try to motivate everyone in their team the same way. For example, a manager might send out group emails as a way of encouraging the staff. This might be really helpful for half of the team but could actually upset or demotivate the other half. Part of successfully motivating the sales staff means understanding the ways in which people are motivated.

Discovering Tendencies:

In order to evaluate the ways that your sales staff is motivated, it’s helpful to ask a series of questions. The first question is: “What do you love about your job?” Then, whatever their answer is, ask: “why is that important to you?” Continue the same form of questioning. Whatever their answer to the second question was, ask them, “why is that important to you?” Take that answer, and ask again, “why is that important to you?” This tells you how you are motivated in your job, and gives you a deep, underlying meaning behind the initial response. It can also tell you if you are motivated by moving towards, or moving away.

Moving Towards or Moving Away:

Motivation stems from a desire to move towards something that you love and want, or a desire to move away from something that you don’t want or would cause you distress. Most people have a firm preference for how they are motivated, but some individuals fall exactly in the middle. The way that you are psychologically programmed in terms of motivation is also context dependent. You could want to move towards something in your job, but then want to move away from things in your personal life. Context matters.

Impact on Selling:

The way that salespeople are motivated impacts the way that they sell to customers. If someone is motivated by moving towards a goal or solution, they will also sell that way. When pitching to their customers, they will tend to be more solution-focused, and less problem-focused. If salespeople are motivated by moving away, they will likely tend towards highlighting the negative impact that the problem has on the buyer. This has a huge impact on selling. If a “towards” salesperson is communicating with an “away from” buyer, or vice versa, they may not communicate well or spark agreement because of the ways in which they are motivated. Not only do you need to know what your salespeople’s motivational tendencies are, but also what the prospects and client’s motivational preferences are. Are they going to by solutions? Or are they going to buy problem-free options?

A “Towards” Salesperson:

Motivating a “towards” salesperson is about making them totally aware of what they are going to get as a result of the action they are going to take. Consider the carrot and stick in front of the donkey as an analogy for a “towards” salesperson. The donkey moves towards the carrot, towards the incentive, and is very focused on the carrot, and only the carrot. This lazer focus is good in some instances, but there is a tendency for these kinds of salespeople to miss things that are going on around them. They are likely to do whatever it takes in order to get the incentive, and aren’t reflective or intentional about learning from their mistakes. These salespeople don’t need much management, they just need to see the incentive, and they will be on their way.

A “Towards” Buyer:

A “towards” client or prospect, however, must be convinced of what they are going to get as a result of the relationship with the salesperson. You can talk about what your product is going to do, but if you talk more about what they personally are going to get out of the relationship, that is going to be much more inspiring for them, and make them much more motivated to listen, talk, and discuss options. When communicating with a “towards” prospect, use their language. They’re always forward thinking, so language should be forward oriented.

An “Away” Salesperson:

If you take the donkey analogy again, they are frightened by being hit by the stick. That will prompt them into action, because they don’t want their sales manager giving the a hard time for not getting their figures, or they don’t want to have too little money, or they don’t want to not be successful. In the way a “towards” person is moving forward, an “away” person is still moving forward, but their focus is behind them. They want to move away from the pain. If you’re interacting with someone who is an “away” person, instead of talking about the incentives, reminding them of what they don’t want to do is going to motivate them. To a “towards” sales leader, that might sound like a very negative act, but for an “away” salesperson, it’s not negative at all; rather it springs them into action. It highlights the pain they are going to feel if they don’t take action, and enhancing the unpleasant realities of what happens if they don’t do something.

Integrating Both:

One of the best ways to ensure you are motivating the entire sales team is to integrate tactics that relate with both “away from” and “towards” salespeople. You can ramp up anyone’s motivation, as long as you know what their psychological motivation is. What’s not important is if you can motivate them or not, but rather how you go about motivating them based on each individual’s preferences. 

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.