Four Cornerstones of Sales Management

BusinessCOACH Radio Show Guest:
Ron Silver, Solution Focused Selling

Sales is the key component to every successful business. Most business owners have expertise in their product or service; however, they are not proficient in sales or sales management.

Ron Silver - Sales Trainer, Sales Coach, Author and Business Owner of a Solution Focused Selling a professional structured selling system - shares the four cornerstones of effective sales management.

• Recruiting
• Developing Accountability
• Coaching
• Motivating

1. Recruiting: Get the right people on the team and have a pool of new talent available at all times.

Recruiting is the number one job for any sales manager. Recruiting is to the sales manager as prospecting is to the sales person. If you are not always recruiting, then you will not have the talent you need when you need it.

College football games are not won on the field. NASCAR races are not won on the track. They are both won on the day they sign the players and the drivers. Can you imagine putting Tony Steward in as the quarterback for the Patriots? You think you’d have a winning team? Without the right talent in the right place, you cannot win.

2. Developing Accountability: Keep your people on a strict diet of accountability.

We live in a culture where it’s nobody’s fault. “Not my fault, it’s his fault. It’s the economy, it’s the pricing, but it’s sure NOT MY FAULT!” Sales people who are left without accountability are left to do whatever they want to do.

The Sales Manager’s function is to set the direction, clarify the expectations and develop the accountability for the sales people.

Here is an important rule of management - you cannot mange what you cannot control. You cannot manage revenue. What you can control is the behavior and activity of your people. You hold them accountable for activity, you coach them on results and you pay them on results.
Revenue is the result of enough activity with the right behavior.

3. Coaching: Stay involved with your people – do pre-call planning post call follow-up. Remember if you don’t train ‘em don’t blame ‘em!

There are many different ways in which the sales manager is involved with coaching:

It can be pre-call strategizing.
It can be post call debriefings.
It can be team coaching where the sales manager demonstrates the proper selling behaviors.
It can be joint calls where the sales person does all the selling, makes all of the mistakes and maybe even looses the deal. Then the sales manager goes back and shows the sales person where he went wrong and what the right behavior would be. Now don’t do this on a half million dollar sale, us a little common sense about when and where to do this.

Good sales managers do not go out and constantly close the deals. Instead, they constantly coach their sales people on the right behavior to make the sales - 30 minutes per sales rep. Just remember this: If you don't train 'em - don't blame 'em! The only thing worse than training someone and having them leave, is to not training them and have them STAY.

4. Motivating: Sales meetings are an opportunity to motivate sales force.

Sales meetings are not a place to talk about administrative details or to roll out a new company policy or to rant and rave about low sales. Sales meetings are for training purposes only.

Another way to motivate a sales force is to offer professional training. Training becomes very motivational especially when the training is something that will help them achieve their personal goals.

Contact Ron Silver to receive a complimentary sales force assessment and a customized coaching report for your sales team to help you get back on track. Call (336) 689-2287 for that information.

Also...Get a ticket for his workshop on Prospecting To Fill The Pipeline on Friday September 12th at the Landfall Executive Center at 9:00 AM. Remember, you may qualify for tuition assistance, so don’t put this off. Call him now.

Contact Ron Silver
Solution Focused Selling
www.SolutionFocusedSelling.com
(336) 689-2287
rsilver@ask4silver.com