Are You Selling By the Numbers or Selling With a Blindfold On? Statistical Benchmarks for Success and Self Accountability That Most Organizations Are Still Missing

Yes, these questions I list below the video are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for. Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity.

Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team). “With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

In this video, discover why it’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

A few months ago, I was interviewed by Geoffrey James who writes the Sales Machine column for BNET. (Geoffrey is also the author of seven books and the columnist for Business 2.0, CIO, The New York Times as well as many other publications.)

Today, he wrote about something we discussed during our conversation, which is one of the most important characteristics that successful people possess, especially top sales champions. And that is, the importance of being process driven rather than being so result driven.

No, I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t focus on the results, or set goals. After all, we need to have something to measure our success, especially in sales, and we need those goals to help determine an endpoint to strive for, something that we’re focused on attaining and the gauge that lets us know when we’ve ‘arrived’ at our destination.

What I am suggesting is to also adopt a mindset that may seem, on the surface, to be in conflict with the belief that you should stay focused on your goals. So, if you suffer from absolute or ‘either or’ thinking, this concept may be a real challenge to wrap your head around. Since we’re on the subject of healthy thinking, absolute thinking is something worth abandoning as well. It’s not one way or the other way; instead, it’s both. (“Either-or” vs. “And.”)

Those people today who challenge status quo and traditional ways of doing things are realizing the benefits of embracing not just one but two truths; two conflicting truths that can, in fact, live together in harmony. Yes, I know this sounds counterintuitive but that’s the paradox and the source of power for those who adopt this mindset.

That is: be mindful of the future, while engaged in and living in the present. To get a bit more cerebral, your process lives in the present where your results or your goals are all living in the future. And if you’re always focused on the result or outcome you seek, it’s going to affect what you need to be doing in the present moment. That includes the quality of your activities, the way you communicate, how well you listen, your level of creativity and ultimately how connected, present and engaged you are with people, especially your customers.

The point is, once your goal is set, continually thinking about or obsessing over your goal or the results you need to achieve doesn’t make that goal manifest itself any faster or easier. Instead, it actually winds up becoming a diversion, keeping your stuck in the future. The real cost is, you’re not being fully present and focused on today and more important, the actual process that’s going to take you to your desired destination.

Think if it this way. If I wanted to move a concrete wall, does the act of pushing on that wall all day make the wall move? Not even a little. It’s the same as spending all of your time thinking about the goal or the result. Doing so doesn’t move you any closer to your goal.

Once your goals are set, they’re not going anywhere! Now it’s time to shift your focus on developing and fine tuning your process which is what will ultimately be the vehicle that will take you to your goal.

Below is an excerpt from Geoffrey’s post based on our interview. You can read the full post here.

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Sales pros always have goals, and most enjoy the process of achieving them. But did you know that goals can be a major impediment to your success?

Take cold-calling, for instance. Most sales pros see cold calling as a goal-oriented activity — fill the pipeline with “X” number of prospects, in the hopes of creating as many customers as possible.

That makes sense, but it also encourages sales pros to see each conversion that results in a prospect as a “win” and each cold call that ends in some other way as a “loss.”

And that’s setting yourself up for failure, because the nature of cold calling is that only a small percentage of the people you contact will be potential customers. The majority will be people who simply aren’t interested or are not a fit for a variety of reasons.

However, if you’re caught up in the “win/loss” way of thinking, you may feel like a “loser” even if the person you called had absolutely no use whatsoever for your product!

Not surprisingly, sales pros begin dreading it, avoiding it, and become increasingly less effective when they actually get around to doing it.

The root cause of this deeply flawed “win/loss” thinking is focusing on the goal rather than the process. If you’re focused on the result, you are visualizing the future (i.e. “will I make my goal???”) rather than experiencing the present moment.

As a result, there’s no way that you can really listen to the prospect, because your attention is on a possible event in a future-yet-to-be. Because your focus is elsewhere (on your goal, that is) you’ll find it difficult to be creative and flexible in responding to what the potential prospect actually says.

Here’s how you fix this. Define cold-calling as a process rather than goal-oriented activity. Stop focusing on the result and start focusing on the potential prospect and the process of communicating with that prospect to determine if in fact, there’s truly a fit.

Changing your way of thinking is that you’ll immediately become more effective because it removes the “sting” of contacting a lead that turns out, for whatever reason, not to be a real prospect.

Rather than a “loss,” the event simply becomes something that you happened to discover during the process of cold-calling.

More importantly, treating cold-calling as a process keeps you focused on finding ways to help potential prospects and customers – and on not wasting the time of those who don’t need the help.

Your true goal shouldn’t be to make your sales goal, but to emulate an Olympic athlete. Top athletes visualize “winning” (the goal) before competing, but when they’re actually performing they focus on what’s happening right then and there.

Here’s the cool part… the real reason for this entire post. Focusing on process rather than your goals increases the chances that you’ll fulfill your goals.

In other words, know your goals, then forget them, and put your mind into the process. If you do this right, your goals will take care of themselves, because your process will make them happen without you wasting time obsessing on them.

You can read the full post here.

Listen to the podcast here

In this podcast I did with eyesonsales.com, I share some more observations around my experiences in coaching salespeople and managers. The topics I cover in this podcast include:

Listen to the podcast here

Listen to the podcast here.

In this podcast interview I did with eyesonsales.com, I share some very tactical insights regarding some of the inherent challenges that managers need to overcome when coaching their salespeople and what they can do to better coach their team to sell more today.

I also address how to best handle underperforming salespeople and the power of effective observation techniques when observing your people in the field or on the phone, whether they are delivering presentations or making cold calls. You’ll also learn what the masterful coaches do when it comes to coaching the gap through the use of powerful, well crafted questions, which is where the magic of coaching happens.

Discover what you can do to make the shift from just being a regular sales manager with an average performing team to becoming an effective sales coach and leader who becomes the driving force behind developing a high performance sales team.

Listen to the podcast here.

Do you know what your people are doing in the field? Really? Are you sure? In my experience, unless managers are in the field observing and listening to what their people are doing, they have no clue. Sure, you can guess and hypothesize as to why, for example, some of the salespeople on your team aren’t making quota or selling more. But when managers finally take the time to observe their people in the trenches, the real truth is (sometimes painfully) apparent.

Granted, managers are often left in a state of shock when they see what their salespeople are and are not doing and saying when meeting with and presenting to their prospects and customers.

However, the upside is, managers now have a clear and valuable epiphany as to the real reason why their people aren’t closing more sales, what their salespeople have to do to change for the best and what the manager has to provide (additional coaching, training, resources, and so on) in order to help facilitate these necessary changes.

So what are some of the inherent challenges managers need to overcome when looking to make the shift and truly coach their sales team, especially when it comes to observing them in the field or on the job?

When dealing with employee challenges, while counterintuitive, managers must learn to respond with better questions to help people develop their own problem solving skills rather than viscerally firing off a solution.

When it comes to observation, especially today, we must get more tactical and prescriptive in our coaching as opposed to offering more generic and hollow advice. Managers need to observe exactly what their people are doing in the field, during a presentation, during a cold call and when managing an account.

Interestingly, observation is clearly one of the most critical responsibilities managers seem to be avoiding most and ironically the one that yields the greatest return regarding the payoff they’ll experience in relation to their time invested. So, why is there such resistance around engaging in this activity? While managers may complain that they ‘don’t have the time’ for this, the real cause of their reluctance has to do with the fact that they feel observation is really hard, even confrontational and uncomfortable at times, and it’s only difficult because most managers have never been shown how to do this correctly. The result; most simply don’t do it and if they do it’s more toxic than helpful.

Because in truth, managers are really not paying attention. When a manager is observing their people, most of the time they’re already viewing what they see in their mind’s eye, what they perceive is the right way and in turn, that’s what they’re listening for. In other words, they’re seeing how that person is not modeling the way they do it or the very directive and rigid way they want it done.

As a result, what the manager winds up doing is coaching to their own image rather than uncovering and co-creating new possibilities and identifying what is best for that person; all due to the rigidity in their thinking.

For example, when observing one of their salespeople make a cold call; after the person hangs up the phone, this is what I hear the manager say to that salesperson:

• Here’s what you did wrong.
• Why didn’t you do it this way?

Now, this certainly does not do anything to stimulate and atmosphere of open and healthy collaboration. First, the salesperson gets beaten up by the prospect they called on, then they get their second beating by their manager.

Managers are too focused on what their people are not doing or what is not working, instead of what is working and because of this, they don’t reinforce the positive behavior want their team to continue engaging in. We all know that most managers are real good at telling their team why they’re not good!

Instead of telling an employee what he or she did wrong, ask them the following questions the next time they deliver a presentation, make a call in to a client or make a cold call in an attempt to find new qualified prospects:

1.Okay tell me how you think you handled that call. What did you observe?
2. How did it feel delivering this presentation? What did you sense from your prospects/clients/audience you were delivering to?
3. What did you do well?
4. Where do you feel you got stuck?
5. What could you have done differently?
6. What do you need to improve or change in order to ensure your success the next time? Was there anything you feel was stepped over or needed to be addressed that was not?)
7. (When presenting with a team.) What else did you notice amongst your team? Any other observations that would help the team improve when presenting? (What they did well, what they need to improve and be mindful of the next time.)
8. What is your action plan/are the changes you plan to make for the next call so that you can achieve the results you want?
9. What’s the lesson here? What did you learn from this?

What you will find is that people will be more open to collaborating on a better solution and critiquing themselves because they are responding to solution-driven questions rather than being asked problem-focused questions that put them on the defensive. Further, you’ll be able to better uncover the gap either in their thinking or in their strategy and approach in order to provide them with the prescriptive guidance and a more specific solution they need to fill the chasm.

Listen to this podcast here.

If you want your team to sell more, the driving question every manager needs to ask themselves is, “What am I doing each day to make my salespeople even more valuable and effective so that we can better retain and acquire new customers?”

So, what are you doing to develop the skills and competencies that would enable you to get your salespeople to become sales champions? What are you doing to better your best?

Now, the obvious solution would be to spend more time with your people but the question then is, what are you doing with that time?

Most managers resort to reactionary micro management simply because that’s all they know. As such, all they’re attempting to do is try to control more of the situations that surround them. Not the most effective strategy. This actually creates a more toxic environment, making matters even worse.

There are many things that a manager can do to boost your team’s performance. In this podcast, I’ve highlighted the ones that will result in an immediate positive change, which you can start engaging in today.

You can tune in and listen to this podcast here.

NOTE: Given this page is updated often, this podcast may not be listed as the most current one on the top of the list of podcasts.

About 25 years ago, I read my first book on selling. It was, The Secrets of Closing the Sale. Like many sales and business professionals, this was the first book that I was ever exposed to which focused on the subject and the art of selling. 25 years later, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down and meeting with the master of selling and personal development, the often imitated but never duplicated, Zig Ziglar.

Now, if you’re in sales or a self help junkie, you know who Zig Ziglar is. (If not, you’re either someone who hasn’t truly invested in your career and embraced lifelong learning by continually investing in your development, you’re fairly new to the selling profession or are just starting out, or you’ve been living under a rock for far too long.) Zig (he prefers to be called Zig over Mr. Ziglar) is truly an American Legend, an icon in the world of personal and professional growth and one of my personal heroes. (The conversation I had with him further cemented why this is still true today). Zig has shared the platform with many distinguished Americans such as Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush and has authored over two dozen books on personal growth and success, family, sales and leadership that have touched the lives of millions of people across the world.

Zig has an appeal that transcends barriers of age, culture, industry and occupation. Since 1970, he has traveled over five million miles across the world delivering powerful life improvement messages, cultivating the energy of change.

Zig Ziglar’s corporation is built upon the same philosophy he expounds to his audiences – hard work, common sense, fairness, commitment and integrity.

In his autobiography, Zig offers a candid and inspiring account of his transformation from a “too small, poor boy from Yazoo City, Mississippi,” to one of the world’s most highly regarded motivational experts. At the heart of his story are his many heroes who modeled solid values such as faith in God, commitment to hard work, compassion for others, common sense, integrity, and a sense of humor.

“Wow! What an amazing experience. What did he teach you that was new?” This is the first reaction I would typically hear from people when first telling them I had spent an afternoon with Zig and time at his headquarters. So, what impact did Zig leave on me that I have taken to heart? What profound, new and valuable message was I able to walk away with from my meeting with this highly acclaimed guru and though leader?

Before I answer that, (no, I won’t make you wait until my next blog post) here are just a few of the things that Zig and I casually chatted about. (Our conversation was videoed and I will be posting the video to share with you in the very near future.)

• How the selling profession and the profile of a salesperson changed and evolved since the time he authored, The Secrets of Closing the Sale, 25 years ago.
• What salespeople need to do today to ensure their success in this new marketplace.
• What leaders need to be more mindful of if they want to ensure the success of their organization.
• The people who have impacted his life the most.
• Zig’s definition of integrity.
• A message for the younger generation out there, who are working hard at trying to build a successful career and a family.
• His legacy.
• What parents need to do to be more accountable around raising children with stronger, more meaningful values.
• How people actually go about developing or upgrading their attitude.

I was fortunate to gain the perspective of such a worldly man grounded in the values that matter. You would even think that it would be a bit of a challenge to retain all of the gems Zig shared with me. Conversely it wasn’t. It was surprisingly, yet reassuringly very simple. You see, the ultimate epiphany I had, the priceless message that Zig delivered, was grounded in the core principles that are and have always been right in front of us.

Zig reinforced what really mattered most; the basics. Yes, that’s right. The basics that we so often gloss over, neglect, take for granted and assume we already have in place. The very basics that are paradoxically, still the undeniable and timeless secret to success and designing a life worth living.

The basics of truth, being your word, living a life of integrity, honoring your core values and your commitments, honesty, family, faith in yourself and helping your fellow man and woman selflessly and graciously. Yes, the basics that our society seems to have an unyielding tendency to put aside and dismiss in search of the latest and greatest, the next “Big Thing” or the flavor of the month. We have fooled ourselves into thinking there is some other secret out there that would help us get what we want most and propel us to where we want to be, both in our home life and at our work life.

We are hiding behind the guise of “What’s next” without honoring the core, fundamental beliefs and values that make us all worthwhile human beings. As we immerse ourselves in our own thinking, as we get distracted and challenged by the upsets and problems at work, as we continue to allow the media to erode our thinking and our heart-centered priorities as well as sensationalize our deepest fears and insecurities, we move farther and farther away from the person we truly want to be, and then with a shock, we turn around and notice that the person we have become, is not the person we want to model, especially for our children.

Our integrity has now been compromised, and we wonder why we continually feel, “off,” out of sorts, or out of balance with ourselves, regardless of how much more money we make or what other possessions or successes we amass. We can’t understand why personal satisfaction, our self worth, sense of fulfillment and our peace of mind continually escapes us and our grasp, and becomes more and more elusive.

To reinforce Zig’s message, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with his son. When talking with Tom Ziglar, the CEO of Ziglar, Inc., he shared with me so many wonderful stories about his dad. During one of our conversations, he shared with me one of his dad’s quotes which was, “How much better would world be if people cared as much about their responsibilities as they do their rights.” With the level of greed and American Entitlement that has plagued our society, which has only come into our direct line of vision due to our challenging marketplace and the media continually reporting on the failure of so many large institutions and organizations, this message is so timely today, more than ever before.

Zig’s message touches the heart, soul and spirit of everyone he interacts with, especially those who work with him. It was during my video shoot later that day, as I was filming some new training and coaching insights, when someone else in Zig’s office shared another story that is yet another testament to Zig’s character and being a man who lives by his word and walks his talk. I was told that, throughout all of the years Zig has traveled the word, before every seminar or presentation he ever delivered, even as they’re introducing him and calling him on to the stage, he would always make it a point to pick up the phone and call his wife, just to tell her he loves her.

What a better place our world would be if every man and woman would call their spouse or significant other on their way to work, just to say, “I love you.” To this day, Zig cherishes his wife and the relationship he has with her (the Redhead, as he lovingly refers to her in his books). He keeps her on the pedestal that she so rightfully deserves to be on. Again, what would our world be like if we followed in Zig’s footprints, doing the things that really matter most.

When it was time to conclude our conversation, one of the final questions I asked Zig was, “I’m not sure if you’ve been following the numbers on your book sales and where they rank in terms of popularity. So I took the liberty of seeing how The Secrets of Closing the Sale has been doing on Amazon. Currently, your book holds the following rankings regarding how popular they are in specific categories. In the category of sales and selling, your book is rated number 15. Now, here’s what I found interesting. Under the category of spirituality, your book is holding strong at number 3. Now, I know you’re a very spiritual man. And regardless of your faith, how do you explain this? What’s the connection between success at selling and spirituality?”

To that question, Zig smiled and responded with a resonating message that reinforced why the holistic approach to professional development will always be the most effective and long lasting. That was, while skill, talent and what you do is important, it is the essence of a person, your character and who you are that matters most.

At 82 years of age, he still has that spark, that twinkle in his eye, that presence he naturally exudes from a man who we can all use as a model of what it means to be not just remarkable, but to be human; that’s the Zig we know and love.

I don’t know if there are too many authentic heroes like Zig left in the world, and I know he’s still one of mine. And as I look on my desk at the gift that my children had given me just the other day (an early Fathers Day present), I’m reminded why I do what I do and what gets me out of bed each day. My five year olds (twins) came back from school and in their youthful exuberance, handed me a picture frame they had made with the cutest picture of each of them wearing a suit and tie that their teaches had dressed them in. On the top of the frame it said, “When I grow Up I want To Be Just Like My Daddy.” How important our role is as parents, our most significant role we will ever have. That message was a happy reminder of how important it is for me to follow in the footprints of success that my hero has left behind for all of us to travel on.

I am profoundly and deeply appreciative of my time with Zig and of the gifts that he has shared with the world.

And to Mr. Zig Ziglar I say, I am grateful for the contribution you have made to me, as well as the impact that you have had on all of us throughout the years. Keep shining.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Sure, we can’t control many of the things going on in the economy. However, what managers and business owners can control is how they go about realigning their thinking and efforts around how they are continually developing their people, which begins with how these managers develop themselves into the leaders they can be in this new age.

It’s evident that many organizations have lost sight of the primary objective of management and leadership, which is simply this: To make your people more valuable.

There are several issues at work that inhibit the manager’s ability to get their people to be more accountable around their goals.

This falls on deaf ears because for someone to truly internalize this message and make it real for them, they must hear the consequence in their own words, through their own voice and arrive at the consequence on their own. They need to recognize it, say it and declare ownership around it.

And the only way to do this is by asking them better consequential questions. In this podcast, I’ll share with you the steps you can take to coach people to become more accountable around their job and their goals, and the questions you can use to achieve this critical objective. (Oh, and did I mention that by following this process, you no longer have to be positioned as the bad guy!)

Listen to the full podcast here.

The result is the process. A timely paradox and critical mind shift that every salesperson and manager must make if they want to transcend the mediocre performance they may be experiencing today.

Even before you can engage in the type of sales benchmarking activities that I wrote about the other day, (you can find that blog post here) or even take the time to refine your selling skills, you will come head to head with resistance to selling by the numbers if this change in attitude around how we approach selling is not fully embraced beforehand.

I was reminded how important this was during a seminar I delivered last week in NYC. At the end of the seminar, one manager raised his hand and posed this question to me. He said, “Our sales cycle has changed dramatically. Our salespeople can no longer make a call and take an order. Our product offering has been modified and as a result, the average cost of our product has increased, which has all contributed to a longer sales cycle. However, my salespeople are still reluctant to change. They’re still stuck in that transactional way of selling. They’re getting more frustrated and discouraged because sales aren’t happening fast enough, all because they’re unsure how to manage this longer selling cycle. I’ve told them many times over, that our sales cycle is no longer the way it used to be, and we need to be more patient with the process and more consultative with our customers. I’ve explained to them over and over again, that we need to modify and re-engineer our selling process in response to these new challenges, the changes we’re up against and how our customers make a purchasing decision and buy from us. What else can I do?”

As this sales manager was explaining his challenge, I was thinking to myself how important it is today, more than ever, to become process driven. Without this change in our thinking, salespeople will be unable to honor the process needed to convert more conversations into sales, let alone build out a more robust process and selling strategy that will enable them to do so. As such, the eternal conflict between our tactical strategy and our thinking will continue to rage on.
I have a detailed article on this very subject that you can find here. The original title of this article was WARNING! Goals May Be Hazardous To Your Success. Are They Sabotaging Your Selling Efforts?

As my colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra explains in the following statistics, “It’s amazing how many times success can be assured by attending to the basics of the job.” For example, in a study of 257 Fortune 500 companies, the following was found:

17% do not determine an approximate duration for each sales call.
23% do not use a computer to assist in time and territory management.
28% do not set profit objectives for their accounts.
37% do not use prescribed routing patterns in covering territories.
46% do not look at their use of time in any organized way.
49% do not determine the economical number of calls for each account.
49% do not use prepared sales presentations.
70% do not use call schedules.
75% do not have a system for classifying customers according to sales potential.
76% do not set sales objectives for their accounts.
81% do not use a call report system.

So, the question is: How can you assure your future success by eliminating these oversights?”

The fact is, companies will fail to invest the time in order to eliminate these process oriented oversights and embed these necessary changes into their process if the sales culture is too focused on getting to the result by forging ahead in an attempt to close more sales. Managers can continually push their people to become more mindful of these numbers, however, it’s the process driven questions managers need to be more sensitive to rather than the result driven questions that managers obsess over that continue to perpetuate this toxic way of thinking. Those questions sound like, “Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?” While important, these questions only focus on half of the equation. What is missing is the “How,” that is, the questions that focus on the process the salesperson needs to engage in to achieve the desired end result.

Managers need to stop coaching to the result and start coaching to the process, instead.

Become more mindful of the process that will drive the results you seek. Without the change in your result driven attitude that’s keeping you stuck in the first place, all efforts to better manage your selling strategy by a numeric formula are certain to be short lived.

For salespeople and sales leaders, the fundamental shift in our attitude that needs to occur is this; move away from being so result driven and instead, become more process driven.

We must honor this paradox and break free of the limiting thinking that confines us to the current level of performance we’re experiencing. If we truly want to excel today, realize the result is truly the process.

Here’s more on this paradox.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

If you missed last week’s blockbuster webinar, The Sales Leadership Imperative, you can now access the recording immediately and listen to this 45 minute discussion I had with Jonathan Farrington. We focused on the most pressing questions that sales managers and sales leaders are faced with today.

Here are the questions we responded to:

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

So, if you’re a sales manager or even if you’re not a sales manager but need to get your team producing and selling more today, you can access this recording here.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

“I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.

And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.

Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.

Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.

Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.

Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”

While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.

The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.

When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.

Interviewing Questions:

Work History:
1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?

Next Position:
1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
2. Describe your ideal position?
3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?

Excellence and Development:
1. How to you better your best?
2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
5. How do you assure that happens?
6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?

Accountability:
1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?

Decision Making and Problem Solving:
1. How do you solve problems?
2. How do you go about making decisions?
3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?

Creativity and Solution Development:
1. How creative are you?
2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?

Integrity:
1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?

Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?

Self Management/State/Stress:
1. What stresses you out?
2. What do you when that happens?
3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?

Openness and Self Awareness:
1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?

Resourcefulness:
1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?

Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:

1.What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)
2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?
3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?
4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?
5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)
6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)
7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)
8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)
9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)
10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)
11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?
12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)
13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)
14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)
15. What was the average size of the company you called on?
16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)
17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)
18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)
19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)
20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?

Simulations and Role Plays:
1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
2. What would that cold call sound like?
3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?

Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

• Persuasion
• Communication
• Presentation
• Assertiveness
• Team player
• Conflict management
• Motivation and passion
• Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
• Education

Important webinar below for any business owner, executive and sales manager who’s top priority is to retain customers and bring in more business and more sales today.

The Sales Leadership Imperative! Webinar for Sales Managers Who Need To Get Their Sales Team Selling More Today

DATE: Thursday, April 23, 2009
TIME: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Your Phone or Computer – Live Webinar!

Presented by: Jonathan Farrington & Keith Rosen
Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

For more information or to register click here.

FACT: There has never been a more critical time for sales managers to impact sales and lead from the front.
FACT: The majority of sales managers are simply not equipped with the right skills and tools to do so.

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. And as some look ahead, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed – possibly forever.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

Join me and Jonathan Farrington, one of the foremost sales team development experts in the world – for this hard-hitting session. This event has been created specifically for sales leaders who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales team to a whole new level so they can start selling more today.

We will highlight how you can:
• Leverage your personal strengths as well as the hidden talents of your team
• Utilize a proven coaching model to impact performance immediately.
• Engage in daily revenue-generating activities and stop doing the things you shouldn’t be doing in the first place
• Master the language of leaders, to get people into action without resistance
• Develop the infallible confidence of a true champion to model what you want your people to achieve
• Recruit, retain and motivate your top producers and turnaround underperformers
• Turnaround or terminate an underperformer in less than 30 days.

For more information or to register click here.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

Did you know that the concept of brainstorming as we know it today was invented nearly 70 years ago? This was right around the time when Roosevelt was President and gas cost 10-cents a gallon. Interestingly, while technology has advanced dramatically, the brainstorming process hasn’t changed much since then.

Invite most 21st-century professionals to participate in a brainstorming session, and they’re likely to run for the door. And it’s no wonder. The typical brainstorm is long, tedious, poorly facilitated, often intimidating and even contentious. And the results are often disappointing, as well. Even when a few decent ideas are generated, they rarely end up seeing the light of day.

Two marketing communications professionals from New York City are changing all that, with a totally new approach to brainstorming they call SmartStorming: Advanced Training in Innovative Thinking. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with the creators of SmartStorming and talk to them about this cutting edge technology in how we think and create new ideas. They’ve reinvented the concept of brainstorming so that it can be done in a more of a systematic, organized process that yields are measurable R.O.I.

“We all know innovative thinking is critical for success, today more than ever. We call it the ‘Innovation Imperative,’” says Mitchell Rigie, co-creator of SmartStorming. “The difference between surviving and thriving, today and in the foreseeable future, is going to depend on how fresh and unique a company’s thinking will be.”

Traditional brainstorming is still one of the most widely-used tools for generating ideas. Every day tens of thousands of brainstorms are held around the world.

It seems that the technology behind brainstorming has now evolved into something more powerful. “Brainstorming is a fundamentally flawed process,” says Keith Harmeyer, Rigie’s partner and co-creator of SmartStorming. “For years we sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of unproductive brainstorms. And finally we asked ourselves, ‘How can we do this better?’“

Based on their own experience and extensive research, Rigie and Harmeyer developed a turnkey system that addresses each of the key weaknesses of traditional brainstorming. The result is a thorough six-step process that takes users from pre-planning, through the idea-generation phase to follow-through and next steps.

“Consider the cost to an organization of a typical brainstorm session. Six or eight or even more people, sitting in a room for an hour or more. Then multiply that by the number of sessions held over the course of a year. And with what return? It’s staggering. Plus the negative impact on employee morale is enormous. SmartStorming delivers tangible benefits to the organization, managers and participants,” said Harmeyer.

At the core of SmartStorming is 3-D Ideationsm, a proprietary technique that breaks idea-generation into three parts, resulting in a significantly great yield of fresh, innovative ideas.

“3-D Ideation makes it possible for groups to think beyond their limiting assumptions about a challenge; what most people refer to as ‘thinking outside the box.’ They then view the challenge from a number of different viewpoints, to gain a broader perspective. And finally, they free associate, using a variety of ideation techniques we provide,” said Rigie.

Several leading creative services and consumer products companies have already benefitted from SmartStorming and many more are jumping on the bandwagon. To learn more about SmartStorming training, visit SmartStorming.com.

Millions of jobs have been lost over the last year. A recent survey indicated that almost 50% of American’s are worried about losing their job. Our job market hasn’t experienced these staggering numbers since 1974. With more companies laying people off, how can you insulate yourself from the rest of the work force and maintain your employment without becoming another statistic?

Today, employers have less tolerance for mediocrity, and just doing enough to get by creates the opening for someone who’s hungrier (or more desperate) to take your position. Being valuable takes precedent over being important these days. Every job today has become more valuable and as such, every person more transparent about how much of a measurable impact they’re having to the bottom line.

Here are a few career retention strategies to adopt (as well as some things to avoid doing) to stay employed and what you can do to avoid being the next one cut. It all starts by becoming more proactive and shifting away from the reactive posture many people are taking.

These strategies can make the difference between you moving up the ladder of success or moving out the door.

In this first of an eight part series, we’re going to start with what you can do to make yourself indispensable.

1. Make Yourself Indispensable

Do More For Less: Work longer hours and take on more responsibility. Take on more work and as many assignments as you possibly can, even the workload of two people without asking for more compensation or recognition. Over-deliver on what’s expected while managing realistic expectations with your manager.

Be the best at what you do. Period. Find out what the top producers are doing and do it or better.

Round out your skills. As more companies shrink in size regarding number of employees, there’s still a significant amount of work that needs to get done. Those who are open to new ideas and are willing to stretch themselves regarding learning new skills and adapting to a new culture are the ones who will be retained. Conversely, those who have a very narrow skill set that may have been deemed valuable when initially hired yet can’t help beyond their current role will be the likely first candidates to go.

Build Your Skills: Be the best you can be. Get a coach. Take continuing education classes. If you’re not, your colleague is. How important is your career?

Being valuable takes precedent over being important. It doesn’t really matter where you sit in the organization in tough times, being a contributor who can be counted on to do the important work is the most significant position to take and certainly takes precedent over being “important.” Managers need to roll up their sleeves and get back in the trenches if it means making their numbers or not, even if that means having to pick up the phone to make a cold call or two.

Special offer below to celebrate this achievement. Get the book 37% off and my coaching playbooks for free here. )

The other day, results were announced that my latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions received the Axiom Business Book Award and was honored with the silver medal for being recognized as one of the World’s Best Business Books of 2009. I’m humbly appreciative of this award and look forward to continuing my quest to deliver rich content and value through my writing and coaching.

Below is the press release that was sent out by the Axiom Book Awards.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Axiom Business Book Award Winners Offer Knowledge and Hope in Troubled Times

(Traverse City, MI, Feb. 25, 2009) Difficult problems require knowledgeable solutions. The current global financial meltdown may be the most difficult economic challenge we’ll ever face, requiring the best educational tools available. As the stock market tumbles and job markets tighten, where can one turn to get an edge, to survive and thrive? Read books—cutting-edge, award-winning books.

Jenkins Group and IndependentPublisher.com are proud to announce the results of the second annual Axiom Business Book Awards, honoring the best business books published during the past year. The list of Axiom Award-winning titles will assure the reading public that help is near, in a wide array of business topics, from Leadership and Entrepreneurship to hard-to-find categories like Business Ethics, Philanthropy and Business Fable.

Whether to investigate a new career or to decipher their 401-Ks, these trying times make people realize the need to further educate themselves. Finding a qualified reading list that covers a breadth of subject matter and business topics saves us time and money.

The Axiom Business Book Awards are designed to create such a list, bringing this group of exemplary business books to the attention of those eager to learn, see, and work differently to improve their careers and businesses. The awards offer a platform for today’s leading business
voices to help restore confidence among readers that all is not lost.

“We’re very excited to bring awareness to this important genre of books,” says company founder Jerrold Jenkins. “This year’s winners represent the world’s best business minds and their wisdom and knowledge is needed now more than ever. Congratulations and thanks to all Axiom Award medalists for their efforts.”

Nearly 350 entries were received in this year’s contest. See a complete listing of results at their website.
end

The San Francisco Chronicle reported the other day that if they can’t reduce expenses significantly, they will have to close or sell the business. Interesting choice of words. Why didn’t the ticker on CNN read, “The San Francisco Chronicle reported the other day that if they can’t increase sales significantly they will have to close or sell the business.”

A subtle yet critical distinction and more evidence that supports how desperately our thinking in every area needs to evolve from scarcity to abundance. Companies need to realign their focus on what really matters to drive growth and sustainability.

“Reduce Expenses or Increase Sales?” I’d go for the latter. After all, what you focus on grows. If every employee is more consumed with the survival based, scarcity and fear driven thinking that sounds like, “What can I do to cut costs?” then they are not simultaneously focusing on the more important question. That is, “What can I do to increase sales and the value delivered to our customers in order to increase retention?” Every person in your company needs to be mindful of what is needed to search out, identify and uncover new selling opportunities. But first, they need to be informed of this new line item in their job description, enrolled in it’s level of importance and then given the tools to execute on this. This is the priority today. Otherwise, the fundamental misallocation of effort which is a byproduct of this misaligned thinking within many organizations today will continue to leave more failed businesses in its wake.

Management must turn your binoculars around. Instead of looking at what you can take away to lighten your load, make each person an integral part of customer retention and acquisition. You’ll soon notice a positive change. Otherwise, the next load that is lightened can be you.

Here’s a quick survey that you can take and then check the poll results immediately. How has your company measured up? Are their efforts aligned with all of their good intentions? Are they allocating budget where it can have the greatest impact? Or, are they more caught up in searching for another place they can cut costs rather than focusing on what they need to do to boost sales? Take this poll and see how you compare against other companies. If you don’t see the poll below, go to the poll page here.

I have something timely and special I want to share with you. It’s a new guide I’ve developed entitled, Leadership Mojo. And today, I’m giving it away for free because in this economic climate, every great leader and manager needs their mojo to get their sales team selling more than ever before.

Learn what you can do to coach your team to sell more during new and more challenging times. As a complement to my award winning book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, I’ve put together Leadership Mojo; a compilation of thoughts, ideas and strategies on the new discipline of leadership and what it takes to coach your sales team into high performing sales champions.

You may be wondering why I’m giving this away for free. Well, since every competitive edge counts today, I want to do to my part in supporting you during more challenging times.

Tap into over one hundred pages filled with dozens of timely and practical tips to:

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Value: $30.00
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DIRECTIONS: To receive your free copy, simply send an email to mojo@profitbuilders.com with the words “Leadership Mojo” in the subject line and within minutes, you’ll receive your special download!

IMPORTANT NOTE: To ensure you receive the instructions and link to download your free copy, please make sure you have the email address mojo@profitbuilders.com in your safe sender/recipient list to avoid our email being deleted or flagged as spam. If you don’t receive our email within 24 hours, then please send a second email to the same address with the words “Second Request” in the subject line so that we can assist you.

For more information on this new eguide, click here and get your mojo.

It’s evident that today more than ever, we can all benefit from a little introspection and realignment in our thinking, in our approach to sales management as well as in our selling strategy. And while more people today are open to changing their ways than ever before which as been fueled by the current market conditions, as a manager, what about those salespeople who might decline your offer of additional sales coaching and don’t want to participate in coaching?

How do you handle those who don’t want to be coached? While there are several ways to handle a situation like this, here are some points to keep in mind:

Here’s what I suggest. If They Don’t Want To Be Coached, Coach Them Anyway

Is it possible you can still coach them during normal conversation without labeling it coaching? The truth is, this person just may not want to enter into what they might perceive as an “official” coaching relationship. Said another way, if you’re a sales manager who gets the value and the importance of delivering effective coaching, ask better questions about each sales call without explicitly declaring it coaching. For example, stay away from, “Okay, we’re getting into a coaching session now.”

Rather than implementing a structured coaching program with them, what if you simply communicated with them like a sales coach would do from a coaching perspective? Rather than come across in an accusatory, curt or negative tone (i.e. “Why didn’t you close that sale?” “Are you going to reach your numbers?” “Here’s where you messed up and missed the mark.”) Simply start a conversation by asking better questions instead:

(You can find list of 400 of the most powerful coaching questions in Volume 1 of The Coaching Playbook.)

(Special offer below to celebrate this achievement. Get the book 37% off, my coaching playbooks for free and hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials here. )

I just found out that my latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions has won the prestigious Book of the Year gold medal for the best Sales Leadership book of 2008. Thirty-five judges reviewed these books over a sixty-day period, utilizing a common scoring process to make their decisions. I’m humbly appreciative of this award and look forward to continuing my quest to deliver rich content and value through my writing and coaching.

The rules of success in the new economy certainly apply to how you manage and develop your team of fearless prospectors and rainmakers. There’s a new technology of leadership needed to build a team of sales champions today. To drive positive, measurable change and keep your competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top performers.

I was recently asked by author Lee Salz, what managers need to do to most effectively impact their team. Here was my response:

“To have a profound impact on the success of your team, the leader must change first. After all, avalanches roll downhill. It’s a new economy and the rules of business have changed overnight, The areas most impacted – sales and leadership. Now more than ever our society is consumed with fear. We are living in a period of intense fear and leadership in many organizations is fear based. Managers need to shift away from fear based management and develop more of a collaborative coaching culture. You cannot inspire others when you are afraid and you can’t be inspired when you’re full of fear and worry. Conduct more frequent one-to-one meetings, build greater accountability by relinquishing your role as Chief Problem Solver and have less tolerance for mediocrity.”

“How do you lead your team differently today compared to the way you did just six months ago? Have you benchmarked the most effective sales and leadership practices? Are you coaching the right people or are you still being seduced by potential and attempting to coach the uncoachable? Ultimately, management needs to adapt, innovate and evolve or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits.”

Back in May of this year, this book made Amazon’s Best Seller list and was the #1 Best Selling management book. Still holding strong in the top 10 I’m grateful for all of my partners, bloggers and readers who helped contribute to this book’s success as well as those thought leaders who supported this project, such as Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The Seeds of Greatness and The Psychology of Winning and Anthony Parinello, author of Selling to VITO.

Brian Tracy had this to say about my book. “There is no other single activity to boost sales that works better than sales coaching and this book is the best ever written on how to do it well.”

Tom Hopkins wrote, “Few management books are specific to salespeople. Keith Rosen’s book is a great one to study and apply or pick up here and there when you have a special need. His coaching ideas are clearly explained and easily executed.”

And Dr. Tony Alessandra said, “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is a well written, easily readable, practical book for anyone who manages salespeople. Excellent content is combined with real case studies, coaching templates and action steps that make this book a must read and a desktop reference for every sales manager, executive or business owner.”

You can read more about the incredible consortium of thought leaders who have endorsed my book on this page. In addition, they have generously contributed hundreds of dollars of their own content which you can access for free when you purchase just one copy of this book.

Which brings me to something you’ll be interested in. In addition to all of these resources you’ll get, I’m also giving away my suite of Coaching Playbooks absolutely free when you place an order for Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions. (John Wiley & Sons, Hardcover) Learn More Here.

The book by itself is a great value, even if you can get it for 34% off. Additionally you can get hundreds of dollars worth of valuable materials from some of the greatest business minds around such as Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Jonathan Farrington, Michael Nick, Lee J. Colan, Ph.D., Lee Salz, CanDoGo.com, SalesDog.com, Landslide, Salesopedia.com, Salesconx, SalesGravy.com and more.

Look at the resources you get here.

Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions provides you with a proven, systematic process that creates world class teams and gets your people selling more than ever before. Don’t wait any longer for a miraculous turnaround. Doing more of what you did yesterday is going to keep you stuck where you’ve already been. Develop the missing discipline you need to coach your salespeople into sales champions. Learn More at the official site for Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.

You can also order the book here.

Start the New Year off strong. Wishing you a prosperous, spectacular and healthy 2009!

I have great news to share with you. It could very well be the most valuable holiday gift you get all season. As you may know, I am one of the exclusive authors/coaches for a company called CanDoGo that delivers concise advice for sales, personal development, leadership and motivation online via print, audio and video. CanDoGo has just launched a brand-new site with thousands of free pieces of advice that you can access immediately.

With the New Economy and new rules for running and growing a business that have evolved in its wake, now is a critical time to hone your skills and CanDoGo’s advice can help you adapt and thrive.

I am proud to be part of CanDoGo’s world-renowned experts and I encourage you to check out candogo.com. If you’re interested in accessing some of my videos, simply type in my name in the search box and enjoy dozens of my videos that will contribute to your success in 2009.

Motivating through fear and intimidation or pushing someone to avoid a loss, a cost or a consequence results in the other person pushing to avoid something they don’t want rather than gravitating towards something they really do want. One example of the push structure would be to motivate someone by pushing them into action through threats, such as the loss of their job or a punishment associated with a measurable cost to them if they are not performing up to your expectations.

If people are governed by a fear of being punished or losing their job if they don’t perform, how do you think this affects them, their attitude and their performance? How about the morale of your team? And ultimately, how does this affect your clients? I think it’s safe to say that there’s clearly a measurable cost associated when using these motivational tactics.

Now more than ever our society is consumed with fear and the threats from others. We are living in a period of intense fear and leadership in many organizations is fear based. Here’s a key point. You cannot inspire others when you are afraid and you can’t be inspired when your mind and your soul are full of fear and worry.

Now, imagine what it would be like if you and your staff came to work every day feeling happy, fulfilled, committed and supported? How much would your bottom line increase? I promise substantially.

The good news is that you have the power to create this environment by taking full responsibility for the moral and for the culture that you have bred within your team. After all, if we are all responsible for our communication, which also includes the message being received, then we can conclude that we are then responsible for the barriers, breakdowns and problems that are a result of faulty communication. And if we are responsible for these problems that stem from poor communication, then we must also be responsible for the culture or moral within our company because ultimately, a corporate culture is manifested through communication.

The threat of a consequence is a very effective push structure, given that we humans have been taught to fight or flee when threatened. So, consequence works, unfortunately at a great expense to our bodies, minds and hearts.

Other than using or being used by potential negative consequences to get the job done, the more effective and less costly fuel to drive performance is called pleasure.

Imagine what would your day be like if it was motivated by pleasures instead of avoiding or attempting to stay one step ahead of a consequence? We’re pulled by pleasures; we’re pushed by consequences. Pushing requires effort to continue the momentum. Being pulled towards something happens as a byproduct of natural attraction and magnetism. As I had alluded to earlier, an example of a pull structure would be to motivate employees by offering to support them in creating work they were proud of which centered around their personal vision, natural talents and goals.

In order to shift from consequence to pleasure it not only requires a change in your beliefs around how to motivate people but also in your communication strategy and the language you are using.

This is what I’m going to cover in my next blog. So tune in over the next few days!

Here’s a question that an executive emailed me the other day. I thought the dialogue was blog worthy and valuable enough to share with you.

“In your article “Asking the right questions when coaching employees” you suggested asking employees how they would like to be managed. My question to you is – if I have several direct reports and they each ask to be managed differently, it sounds like opening up a can of worms. Wouldn’t it set the manager up for failure – to let the employees dictate how the department is run?”

My Response:
It all depends how you position it with your team. Be careful of collapsing them running the ship and setting the direction with the best way to communicate to them so they are empowered and motivated to achieve their goals and core responsibilities without pushback. The point here is, every manager can’t manage each person the same way. After all, everyone comes to the table with a different, attitude, skill set, mindset, way of doing things, communication style, and certainly a different way they like to be motivated and held accountable. Lots of moving parts here. That’s why you must tap into their individuality. Think of it this way, if you’re able to set up how they like to be managed up front, and you manage them that way, then you can never be the bad guy! Here are some examples of questions that are meant to uncover how you need to hold them accountable and the management style that they respond best to:

• How can I best support you to achieve your goals? (Uncover how each employee wants to be managed and supported.) How can I best manage you and hold you accountable for the results you are looking to achieve?

• How can I hold you accountable in a way that will sound supportive and won’t come across as negative or micro-managing?

• How do you want me to approach you if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make?

• How do you want me to handle it? What would be a good way to bring this up with you so that you will be open to hearing it?

As you can see, you’re not changing goals, expectations, or standards. You’re just learning how to approach them and hold them accountable for doing their job in the way they are going to be most receptive to, without negativity or resistance from the other side.

Question:
This may be old thinking, or did I misunderstand the article? I’m thinking how this would translate on a day to day basis – especially if staff needs conflict with each other.

My Response:
Staff needs will always conflict with each other – after all we are human. However, I’m referring to those personal staff needs vs. what they need to function at their best and do what they were hired to do in the first place. Each person will have different needs, driftnet levels of acumen, different training and coaching requirements, different personal goals and different styles of communication. Some need more hands on, where others function well with full autonomy. That’s why you adapting your communication style to theirs helps them accelerate their productivity faster.

Question:
I’ve been coached that I need to manage in my own style, but I’m not sure how this fits into just doing what my staff expects of me.

My Response:
Yes, you do need to manage in your own style, as long as that style isn’t the old limiting, toxic, fear based and debilitating management style that I coach managers to stay away from and evolve more into the transparent, collaborative leader and coach. Be carful not to collapse how to coach and communicate with them with holding them to different standards. Think of it more as how you need to adjust the way in which you’re engaging and communicating with them. You are still holding each person on your team accountable for the same standard and expectations of performance. And you still want to coach people leveraging your personality, style, strengths, values and natural talents. Moreover, you also need to practice the best coaching approach and methodology, as there are certain core competencies that every coach and manager need to develop in order to have the proper benchmarks they can hold themselves against and use to duplicate themselves or develop other managers. However, I’m suggesting to learn how to adapt to how they like to communicate how they like to be communicated to and their communication style. If you can do so successfully, you win in the end.

Question:
Am I crazy, did I miss something or is there something more to consider?

My Response:
I think my comments above cover your questions. If not please let me know. And no, I don’t think you’re crazy!

Now, when sharing the notion of full accountability with my clients, I expect some pushback from managers and executives around taking on this position. I hear things like, “C’mon Keith, 100%. Don’t managers get a little bit of a break here? How can we be fully accountable when I’m already stretched thin and still expected to achieve higher sales goals with fewer resources. Doesn’t the salesperson have some role and responsibility in this? After all it’s their career and it’s what they were hired to do. I mean, what if…”

No, I didn’t cut this person off. I actually heard them through completely. That’s why we’re going to list all of the ‘what if’s’ (a.k.a excuses) that I’ve heard managers react with when I challenged them with adopting this principle. Here are all the reasons I’ve heard as to why managers feel they should not be fully responsible for their salespeople.

Interestingly, in each of these excuses, there is one common denominator that travels down the road called, YOU DRIVE! Here’s what I’ve responded with when hearing these or what the client had to come to terms doing.

“Ultimately, you have a choice, yes?”

What managers lack in accountability is made up for in their excuses or justifications for performance. The secret is, the real power comes in taking full ownership. The alternative is to play the helpless, powerless victim. And this role is filled coming from a place of weakness, devoid of power and from which no new possibilities can ever grow. For you’ve given up your greatest power; the power of choice.

These excuses are a declaration for these managers, as if they are etched in the stone writings of their predecessors that must never be challenged nor questioned. And each one of these justifications has the power of hands on experience and the evidence behind it to support its truth. But, still, where does that leave any of these managers? They’re still dealing with the same problem or stuck with a team of underperformers. At the end of the day, these managers have surrendered. They’ve given up. They’ve lost. The instant you begin to buy into a justification, you’ve started to surrender your personal power.

Then comes the next reaction I hear. “Okay, Keith, so now I’m a believer. Here’s another situation. Lets say we have constructed the most comprehensive recruiting and retention program you’ve ever seen. We have checklists, assessments and personality profiles. We’re doing background checks, speaking with prior employers and even their co-workers.

Once the preliminary work is done, we have each new candidate drive-along with one of our salespeople for one full day so they get to experience the job first hand and in the trenches. Each candidate is interviewed by a minimum of twelve people from their new colleagues to the senior leaders over the course of fifteen separate meetings.

Prior to the official hire, we have them spend three days working in the office, performing their job functions. Then, upon their official hire, we implement at your suggestion, a Thirty Day New Hire Orientation Program which details the daily regimented training and coaching they will be receiving, as well as the measurable results they would be responsible for at the end of the first thirty days on the job. Finally, we team them up with a sales coach to support them on a weekly basis. Now, even with an infallible system like this, in spite of everything, they don’t cut it. Are you telling me it’s still my fault?”

My response to this, “Has this happened yet to you?”

That’s about the time the conversation ends. Because any company that has these safeguards and measurables like these entrenched in their recruiting and retention process has reduced their risk of failure one hundred fold if not more, mathematically speaking. That is, the companies I’ve worked with who have implemented a program like the one I’ve described have seen their numbers shrink from a whopping 78% attrition rate of salespeople within the first year to less than 3%.

If you’re not making a choice to live responsibly, then you’re making a story.

After posting my blog the other day entitled, You Got Scammed! The Greatest Scams Salespeople Engage In That Managers Buy Into, I was hit with a few questions from readers, (which I certainly love to receive, so please keep sending them!) This particular blog must have struck a chord with many people, especially managers and executives. The question was, “Why do we continually fall into the trap of believing our own stories, fables, and illusions when we know that, from a logical perspective, they make no sense and wind up hurting us in the end?”

Here’s why. Because these S.C.A.M.M.s are blind spots. We’re just so used to them, we become blind to them. And this applies to both our S.C.A.M.M.s and the ones our salespeople run. Although we can more easily see the challenges and S.C.A.M.M.s in others, where they are stuck, what their core issues may be, and what might be an obvious solution for them, we are always the last person to be able to see them in ourselves. This is true regardless of your age, profession, wisdom, or experience.

What further drives the investment we make in our stories and the fables we create about ourselves is that we fall in love with our stories and the things we think are true. We love our stories and S.C.A.M.M.s! The more we tell them, the more engrained they become in our thinking and our being and the more we believe them. And boy, do they do a wonderful job justifying our position, experiences and performance. The problem is that we give our stories way too much power over us. The more we believe our fables, the more factual they seem to us, further adding to the challenge of distinguishing between what is reality and what is not.

Like the rest of the human race, managers need an objective person to peer inside their lives and help them identify and rewrite the stories they tell themselves, the ones that hold them back from greatness, prevent them from living life the way they want, and subsequently inhibit them from becoming a fully self-expressed, masterful executive sales coach. After all, I know many a manager who actually think they’re doing a pretty decent job coaching their team, when the harsh reality of it is, they’re not. And the evidence is in their monthly numbers and level of attrition they’re experiencing both within their sales team and with their customers.

Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, a manager, or a salesperson, you still require a coach on the sidelines to observe you and uncover the confining behavior or thinking that you cannot. There is a tremendous value to having someone on the outside looking in and pointing out the things that you are unable to recognize on your own; especially when you’re in the thick of the game.

The “I’m Sensing That” Statement

When talking with someone, such as one of your employees (or customers), did you ever get the feeling that they were not being one hundred percent honest and upfront with you? I’m often told that managers really don’t have a foolproof approach to extracting the truth, the real truth out of someone without sounding either confrontational or pushy.

Instead of confronting the person about their innate concern, the manager takes what this person says and tries to do their best to work their solution around it, even though they know that their employee isn’t telling them something.

After all, what could you say to a salesperson who you feel is not being forthright? “I think you’re lying to me or not telling me everything.” This is certainly not an approach I would endorse. Aside from putting the salesperson on the defensive, there’s a good chance that this approach will destroy any chance of getting this person to open up to you any more than they already have.

How can you tell when there’s something else a salesperson may be holding back from you? Here are a several signs.

Or, maybe you’re in the process of screening a new candidate for the sales position that needs to be filled. It seems the person has a clear interest in the position and you have a keen interest in hiring them but there are some inconsistencies in their resume which makes you question their long term commitment.

If you have ever run into a situation like this, there is a strong chance that there’s something else the person isn’t telling you. Here’s a great way to find out what’s really going on.

Use Your Senses

If a person makes a statement (or fails to confirm or do something for you) that causes your spider senses to tingle, trust and listen to your instincts. Remember, sometimes, just like when you’re selling a prospect, the real objection is two to three questions deep. Here’s an example of how you can use the “I’m sensing that” approach when you feel there’s something else that needs to be brought out to the surface when talking with one of your employees.

You: “Rob, based on our conversation a couple of weeks ago, do you still agree that it would be to your advantage for us to meet one to one so that you can get the personalized training and attention needed to handle some of the challenges you’re running up against?”

Rob the Salesperson: “Yes. I definitely see the benefits.”

You: “Well, we’ve been attempting to get together since then but it seems that something always gets in the way of our meeting. I know you’re working hard to bring in a few more accounts before the quarter is over but I’m sensing there may be something else that’s getting in the way of scheduling this meeting so that we can begin the work we can do together. Is that true (or, Is there any truth to this/how I’m feeling)?”

Salesperson: “Well, actually.”

And now, let the truth be known! Whether he had a bad experience with another manager, is reluctant to admit he is a little intimidated by this process, has a faulty perception of what “coaching” really means (broken wing mentality/something’s wrong with you vs. delivering more value to employees/I want to invest into you because your worth it) fears his job security, is worried what other people may think, doesn’t want to hurt your feelings by saying “No,” or wasn’t motivated by a reason compelling enough that would make this a priority, these are a few of the obstacles that can fly under your radar unless you dig deeper.

Notice the question I ask doesn’t put the person on the defensive simply because I’m not accusing him of doing anything that would make him wrong. I’m not offending him by pointing my finger and playing the blame game. For example: “Every time we plan to meet, you keep rescheduling with me.” “You told me that you were going to call me but you never did.” “You said we would be able to get together for a few minutes.” “I told you I was going to call you on Friday at 9A.M. and when I did you weren’t there.”

Instead, here’s one of the very few times during a coaching relationship that you can actually make it about you; your feelings, that is. Beginning a statement with, “I’m sensing” acknowledges how you are feeling. Then, ask the person for help in determining whether your feeling is, in fact, valid.

This approach gives the other person you’re talking with the space and permission they need to share the real truth, concern, or more of what is going on without feeling pressured. Of course, there are those occasions when the person is actually telling you the truth or simply isn’t interested in speaking with you. That’s why it’s critical to tap into your intuition and trust your instincts to determine how deep you actually want to dig to uncover the truth about what is stalling your ability to create a breakthrough in one of your people.

Are you toxic? Take the toxic leadership assessment here.

Are you leading your team or slowly and unknowingly eroding it from the inside out? Do you still navigate your ship using old school motivational tactics? Do you have your people living in fear? Are complaints rampant, as well as turnover? Are you spending most of your days putting out fires? Are you oblivious to the role you’re playing in any of this?

Do you ever stop to think that some of the challenges you’re faced with now might have something to do with how you might be managing your people and your business? The rules of business have changed overnight and the areas most impacted – sales and leadership.

How good of a leader are you? Maybe it’s time for you to abandon your role as Chief Problem Solver. Here’s your chance to get real about the behaviors and strategies you need to abandon today in order to get yourself out of your own way of producing the results you need. Then, you’ll be able to experience what my clients do: A 30% gain in sales.

In this assessment, you will find a list of 27 toxic management strategies that need to be abandoned. And for those managers, executives and business owners who take this assessment and react with, “Wait, this isn’t me.” I applaud you. Either you’re really that good – or really that blind (clueless and disconnected also come into mind- well, then there are those egomaniacal megalomaniacs, but need I digress). And make sure you take the coaching assessment to ensure you’re most effectively leading and coaching your people.) However, just to make sure you don’t have your blinders on, feel free to share this assessment with your team and have them fill this assessment out this assessment on you, anonymously, of course. Can you handle the truth?

Finally, for those people who are reading this blog and feeling as if they’re being managed by this type of manager, I give you this warning. If you have any desire to share this assessment with your manager or boss, make sure you know how they’ll receive it – as a subtle gesture of good will and compassion or a threat and an insult? If the latter, consider doing it anonymously.

take the toxic leadership assessment here.

Take the Coaching Assessment Here.

The rules of business have changed overnight and the areas most impacted – sales and leadership. How do you lead your team differently today compared to the way you did just six months ago? Have you benchmarked the skills needed to lead your team through tough economic times?

After all, I hear many managers tell me how they’re coaching their people, yet in the same breath, report how they’re still experiencing the same problems they’ve always had, and worse today. Then, how effective can your coaching actually be?

If you’re still experiencing the same problems you did before you started coaching your team, then it’s time to recognize the sign; something’s not right. Is it you, the person you’re coaching or your coaching approach?

So, if you think you’re coaching your people, take this Self Awareness Assessment to gauge your coaching acumen.

How effectively are you coaching your team? Just look at the results. Here’s your chance to get real about the areas you need to firm up and develop in order to get the results my clients experience – a 30% gain in sales. This assessment will help you benchmark the areas you need to develop as well as the strategies you need to implement in order to lead your team during good and bad times and most important, get them to thrive today.

Click on this link to go to the assessment where you will find a list of 27 coaching skills, competencies and strategies that the world’s most successful sales coaches, sales leaders and sales organizations have in common.

Take The Coaching Assessment to measure your true coaching acumen. Click here.

Curious to know what your peers spend most of their day doing? Managers, executives and business owners, here’s a poll I encourage you to cast your vote on. Once you cast your vote, you’ll be able to view the current poll results.

With technology advancements nearing the speed of light, there are no sustainable competitive advantages anymore…except for your people. Engaging the hearts and minds of your team is the only sustainable advantage left in today’s hyper-competitive, high-velocity world.

As a result, employee engagement has been a white hot topic. Lee J. Colan’s rapid-read book translates the concept of employee engagement into concrete actions leaders apply in real-time. Whether you lead a family, a project, or community volunteers, this a highly interactive book delivers “how to” strategies for igniting passionate performance – our teams willingly giving their time and energy to achieve our goals.

As a thank you for your support and readership, I have arranged with Lee to give you a free bonus tool (worth $99) when you pre-order his new book.

Take a quick read of a sample chapter. It offers actionable tips to fulfill the emotional need for purpose on your team… and ignite passionate performance – fast!

Like many business owners and sales managers right now, there’s a strong initiative to recruit new talent that can drive sales during these more challenging times. Companies are scrambling to find more rainmakers rather than order-takers to build out their sales team – and the line of disparity continues to widen between the two, as many salespeople are struggling to keep up and make the necessary and rapid changes needed in their sales process and strategy, as well as in how they think in order to adapt to and thrive in this new marketplace.

Yet, as I’ve observed with several of my clients, diligent recruiting efforts and putting the hours in each day to find the right candidates is simply not enough, as I see many companies continue to make the wrong hiring decision. Sure, they’re asking many of the right questions, doing their best to disqualify each candidate in their effort to avoid being seduced by potential or ‘being sold’ on a candidate who in your heart you know isn’t the best fit. They even tell me that they hear my voice in their head when interviewing a candidate (gee, that could be a scary thing : -) saying, “Remember, hire from choice. Don’t hire out of need. Don’t compromise your standards. A mediocre hire breeds a mediocre sales team.”

While any business owner, HR professional, recruiter or sales manager can be hyper-sensitive to this, it’s still not enough to ensure the best hire. After all, if a candidate tells you during the interview process that they’re used to calling on a certain type of prospect or have no problem making cold calls and then when you hire them you come to find that they’re reluctant or unwilling to pick up the phone or are unable to cold call as effectively as they told you they could, where did you miss the mark? Where was the sign; the red flag?

One manager I spoke with readily admitted that even though they are doing their best to stay true to the standards and expectations they have regarding the caliber of people they hire, he realized that he was still asking questions that were leading the candidate to where he wanted them to be. That is, he was asking the questions that would give him what he wanted to hear, thus justifying his hiring decision. Here are two examples of the leading questions managers unknowingly ask that cause them to make the wrong hire – and into the depths of recruiting hell. “So, you don’t mind having to pick up the phone and make some cold calls each day?” “This position is for people who are team players, organized, motivated and are open to learning our way of selling that may be a bit different from the way you’ve done things in the past. Can you share with me some of the qualities you possess that you feel would make you successful here?”)

Finding your next star player requires more than having them simply sell you on why they are a solid fit for a position on your sales team. And it goes beyond anything you’ll be able to decipher or read into when evaluating their resume. While many managers and recruiters have taken the time to develop what they feel is a solid hiring strategy and screening process, they’re missing the mark when it comes to uncovering whether or not the person has the right selling acumen, make up, disposition, drive, persistence, experience and ability that would make them a successful salesperson within your company. Consider this; it’s one thing to determine if someone would fit nicely into your corporate culture. It’s an entirely different set of criteria that’s needed to uncover whether that person is truly the right fit for your sales culture.

Making the Right Hiring Decision Requires A Better Set Of Questions

There’s an entirely different set of questions that you’re not asking which is causing the breakdown in your recurring efforts. I’m referring to the type of questions that go many layers deeper, exposing exactly the candidate’s experience as it relates to the type of selling they did and who they sold to. Generic questions about their sales experience, how many years of they’ve been in sales, whether or not they’ve ever been trained or what they have sold in the past are the type of questions that managers and recruiters ask that seemingly qualify or disqualify a candidate. Unfortunately, the hiring decision is then made based on the wrong set of intelligence and data, thus forming an inaccurate perception of the potential new salesperson you’re thinking of hiring.

The next time you’re in recruiting mode, its critical to weave in this deeper set of qualifying questions to determine with greater pinpoint accuracy whether or not this salesperson is going to thrive on your team – or be another survivor who’s holding on to their job and their few selling opportunities by a thread. Rather than fill in the knowledge gaps about the candidate regarding their perceived abilities or experience with costly and inaccurate assumptions, here’s a list of 20 additional questions from the trenches that you can start asking during your next interview.

The next time you’re searching for a sales champion to bring aboard your sales team, you can avoid the hiring nightmares simply by asking more specific, sales-oriented questions that will provide you with the critical, detailed information that you’ve never uncovered before. Whether your recruiting and hiring efforts become a painful, never ending process will depend upon how you approach and perceive each candidate. That is, view each candidate you’re thinking about hiring as a prospect who you’d like to sell to, as long as there’s an opportunity to deliver value to them. Now, rather than attempting to sell the wrong candidates on the job, your recruiting process becomes a matter of effective qualification to determine the perfect fit.

Sales 2.0; the conversion of technology and sales and the symbiotic relationship between the two; how they can be integrated together and co-exist in harmony. Yet, with all the technology that is going to change how salespeople sell and manage themselves, we need to be keenly sensitive about removing the human side of interaction and communication from our daily lives and processes; the deeper level of connection we foster between each other, especially with our customers.

Sure, technology will automate and streamline many of the functions and tasks salespeople and management are currently responsible for. More specifically, how they manage their sales pipeline and the stages of their selling cycle, how they qualify and mine for new prospects, how they network with other business professionals, how they maintain their contact database as well as how they communicate with their prospects and customers. And the trend for companies to transition from what was once a face to face sale to a virtual, off site sale will continue to dominate more sales cultures.

Yet, with any change, certain imminent challenges are sure to follow in its wake. Sales 2.0 and Web 2.0 have certainly had an impact on how we communicate. I have already seen the negative impact that some of these great advancements are having on sales teams across the globe as it relates to how salespeople are interacting with their prospects, customers, even their managers. Sure, these technological breakthroughs allow us to communicate and connect on many different platforms, yet it’s diluting our ability to connect powerfully on a deeper level, the level that long term relationships are fostered. Many managers have reported spending far too much time reviewing a thread of email conversations between their salespeople and prospects when attempting to uncover where a communication breakdown occurred or when trying to identify how a great selling opportunity was lost. Misinterpreted and poorly worded emails between management and their staff are the cause of more costly problems and upsets which deteriorate relations than any additional time-savings they supposedly create. As such rather than connect – we’re getting more disconnected with every communication breakdown that ensues.

Moreover, there’s the ever-widening communication gap that some of these new technologies promote between the younger generations and that of their boss, especially as more and more sales teams are built on a virtual platform where there’s little, if any face to face weekly interaction with their manager. Rather than develop their core leadership and coaching competencies and skills, managers are relying far too heavily on these solutions to solve many of the managerial challenges they are up against when building and managing their sales team.

Salespeople are expecting their webinars, proposals, websites, online marketing campaigns and collateral materials to do the selling and prospecting for them. And what’s worse, there are those salespeople who attempt to close a prospect or overcome objections via email rather than simply picking up the phone to facilitate a direct, one to one conversation that would appease the person’s concerns. Here’s just one example of a perfectly good opportunity and a valid reason to reach out to a prospect over the phone that salespeople need to take full advantage of, yet fail to do so.

The introduction of these new technologies into our sales culture will continue to proliferate, for change is truly the only constant. After all, there will always be a need to make the selling process easier and more efficient for the salesperson, for your company and for your customers.

While more applications such as the ones I’ve mentioned are infused throughout each stage of the sale, the technology of maximizing human potential is far from tapped. And as more technology emerges to simplify the selling process, there will be an even greater demand for the elite salesperson who can manage and leverage technology as well as effectively communicate their message to their targeted audience.

The technology of interpersonal, result oriented communication; the language and true art of selling will still reign supreme in the selling profession. Sure, these new tools we have at our disposal will improve efficiency, cut down on travel as well as timely administrative tasks, and reduce prospecting time and the time it takes to convert prospects into customers, now that there is less of a need to meet face to face with prospects in order to sell your product or service to them. However, it will be the sales leader who is the rainmaker, the fearless and persistent prospector, the conduit to building and maintaining strong relationships and the master of communication, who will continue to dominate this era of technological change.

The Top Characteristics of an Effective Facilitator

A client asked met the other day what makes a great facilitator (defined as, “someone who makes things easier”). Here’s what we came up with. I thought a list of the top characteristics of an effective facilitator would be of interest for those managers, speakers and trainers.

EVENT: FREE WEBINAR – LIVE Q AND A!

DATE: Thursday, June 26, 2008
TIME:
12:00 PM Eastern
11:00 AM Central
9:00 AM Pacific

Duration of Webinar:
30 Minutes

REGISTER: Click here to register

Last week, I delivered a webinar for Hoover’s and their new site, bizmazing.com entitled, What Recession? How Top Managers Keep Their Salespeople Motivated and Productive During Good and Bad Times
Over 500 people registered and the positive feedback was overwhelming. Participants walked away with practical solutions and strategies to:

<li>Eliminate toxic, reactionary tactics business owners and sales managers are tempted to engage in when the numbers start slipping and how to avoid these pitfalls.</li>

<li>Handle the underperformers and determine when to let them go without collateral damage or being held hostage by your people.</li>

<li>Make the shift from a fear based, survival culture to a coaching culture.</li>

<li>Avoid the seduction of potential which can erode your team from the inside out. </li>

<li>A solution to micro-managing that will eliminate the heavy burden of dependency that traditional management styles create.</li>

Many small business owners rank weak sales as one of their top challenges. When sales start slipping, managers are often quick to react by micromanaging and pushing for results. While there’s always an opportunity to refine your selling strategy in response to certain market conditions, companies are missing the mark, not focusing on and recognizing what the core issue truly is that will ultimately determine success or failure. That is, how they manage, motivate and develop their people, especially during times of uncertainly.

In this second webinar of a two part series, I will be delivering an exclusive, timely and information packed Participant Driven Webinar™. This will be an interactive forum; your chance to address and discuss your specific goals and challenges as it relates to what you can do to motivate your salespeople and bring in more sales, even during tough economic times.

Whether you’re a sales manager, executive or business owner, get your specific questions answered and find out what it’s going to take for you to manage, motivate and coach your sales team to achieve their production goals during this challenging economic time. This isn’t about what you can do tomorrow but what you need to start doing today to impact positive change.

This is Participant Driven. So when you register for this free event, all you need to do is send us your most pressing question that you want answered during this event.

And if this isn’t enough, we’ve put together a special package so that you can get my Sales Mojo ebook, as well as the Art of Enrollment and other chapter excerpts from my book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions absolutely free.

So, I hope to hear you on the call this Thursday!

EVENT: FREE WEBINAR THURSDAY – LIVE Q AND A!

DATE: Thursday, June 26, 2008
TIME:
12:00 PM Eastern
11:00 AM Central
9:00 AM Pacific

Duration of Webinar:
30 Minutes

REGISTER: Click here to register

With all the efforts those who are managed, put forth in an often last valiant attempt to salvage a once positive work environment, at the core of every unhealthy working environment is the toxic boss, manager or supervisor that breeds it. All roads go back to the manager. And if the manager isn’t willing to change, then it’s a safe bet that in the end, nothing will.

That’s why to impact long lasting change, managers need to upgrade their style and approach to managing their people.

Throughout my years of coaching managers, business owners and executives, I’ve been able to identify seven types of managers. Using these seven types of managers as examples, identify the critical competencies necessary to become an effective coach. It all starts with the way we communicate. Which one best describes you or your boss?

1. The Problem-Solving Manager
This boss is task-driven and focused on achieving goals. These problem solvers are constantly putting out fires and leading by chaos. The paradox here is this: It is often the manager who creates the very problems and situations that they work so hard to avoid. Continually providing solutions often results in the lackluster performance that they are working so diligently to eliminate.

2. The Pitchfork Manager
People who manage by a pitchfork are doing so with a heavy and often controlling hand: demanding progress, forcing accountability, prodding and pushing for results through the use of consequence, threats, scarcity, and fear tactics. This style of tough, ruthless management is painful for people who are put in a position where they are pushed to avoid consequences rather than pulled toward a desired and collective goal.

3. The Pontificating Manager
These managers will readily admit they don’t follow any particular type of management strategy. Instead, they shoot from the hip, making it up as they go along often generating sporadic, inconsistent results. As a result, they often find themselves in situations that they are unprepared for. Interestingly, The Pontificating Manager thrives on situations like this. Often adrenaline junkies themselves, these managers are in desperate need of developing the second most essential proficiency of a coach: masterful listening. The Pontificating Manager is the type of manager who can talk to anyone and immediately make people feel comfortable. This character strength becomes a crutch to their leadership style, often blinding them to the need to further systemize their approach. As a matter of fact, the only thing consistent about these managers is their inconsistency.

4. The Presumptuous Manager
Presumptuous Managers focus more on themselves than anything else. To them, their personal production, recognition, sales quotas and bonuses take precedence over their people and the value they are responsible for building within each person on their team. Presumptuous Managers often put their personal needs and objectives above the needs of their team. As you can imagine, Presumptuous Managers experience more attrition, turnover, and problems relating to managing a team than any other type of manager. Presumptuous Managers are typically assertive and confident individuals. However, they are typically driven by their ego to look good and outperform the rest of the team. Presumptuous Managers breed unhealthy competition rather than an environment of collaboration.

5. The Perfect Manager
Perfect Managers possess some wonderful qualities. These managers are open to change, innovation, training, and personal growth with the underlying commitment to continually improve and evolve as sales managers, almost to a fault. This wonderful trait often becomes their weakness. In their search for the latest and greatest approach, like Pontificating Managers, Perfect Managers never get to experience the benefit of consistency. This manager is a talking spec sheet. Their emphasis on acquiring more facts, figures, features, and benefits has overshadowed the ability of Perfect Managers to recognize the critical need for soft skills training around the areas of presenting, listening, questioning, prospecting, and the importance of following an organized, strategic selling system. Perfect Managers rely on their vast amount of product knowledge and experience when managing and developing their salespeople. Because of this great imbalance, these manager often fall short on developing their interpersonal skills that would make them more human than machine.

6. The Passive Manager
Also referred to as Parenting Managers or Pleasing Managers, Passive Managers take the concept of developing close relationships with their team and coworkers to a new level. These managers have one ultimate goal: to make people happy. While this is certainly an admirable trait, it can quickly become a barrier to leadership efforts if not managed effectively. Although wholesome and charming, this type of boss is viewed as incompetent, inconsistent and clueless often lacking the respect they need from their employees in order to effectively build a championship team. You can spot a Passive Manager by looking at their team and the number of people who should have been fired long ago. Because all Passive Managers want to do is please, they are more timid and passive in their approach. These managers will do anything to avoid confrontation and collapse holding people accountable with confrontation and conflict.

7. The Proactive Manager
The Proactive Manager encompasses all of the good qualities that the other types of managers possess, yet without all of their pitfalls. Here are the characteristics that this ideal manager embodies, as well as the ones for you to be mindful of and further develop yourself.

The Proactive Manager possesses the:

The Proactive Manager is the ultimate manager and coach, relying on their newly developed skills, mindset that every manager needs to develop in order to build a world class team.

If you happen to have missed the book launch, my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions has several chapters dedicated to these manager types and how you can transition into the Proactive Manager. You can even download a few chapter excepts here.

Especially during challenging economic times and periods of uncertainty, many people spend more time focusing on that which they fear and as such, being driven by their fears to avoid a consequence, rather than the goals or dreams they want to create. Let’s face it; we’re all pretty good at articulating what we don’t want to happen in our lives yet fall short when trying to come up with a vivid picture of what we do want or our goals and dreams.

If you know what you don’t want and don’t know what you do want then where do you think you are going to continually wind up directing your thoughts and energy? Your goals and dreams don’t even stand a chance! Instead, empower your dreams and goals rather than your fears to be the driving force that moves you forward. Once you do so, you will then be able to achieve them.

The question is, if you are no longer going to be fueled by fear, consequence, or what you want to avoid to generate results, then what fuel are you going to use to drive you?

It’s better to find an energy source that will pull you towards something you want to create, something pleasurable, or something that you are passionate about, rather than fear, which pushes you away from what you want to avoid.

For example, if someone had to declare bankruptcy, they probably don’t want to experience another bankruptcy again. As such, instead of developing a clear vision or some measurable goals to achieve, they may operate from fear, driven to avoid this problem (running away from something) in the future rather than making choices that would be aligned with and complement what they want to create (moving towards something). This person may spend so much time focusing on the past, doing everything to avoid repeating their bad experience again, that they forgot where they are going. Worrying about the future rather than planning for the future is not the healthiest way to manage your thinking.

Since you need to add some type of fuel in your tank of life, here is your chance to tap into a new and positive energy source that will enable you to enjoy the journey of attaining your goals and objectives, especially as they relate to prospecting.

What are your values that need to be ignited? What do you value most that would be worth orienting your life or your career around? The bottom line is: Why do you do what you do? Why do you want to sell what you are selling? Without a healthy, motivating energy source as well as a true conviction in what you are selling, you are bound to travel down the road that leads to burn out. You are also placing a limit on your selling potential.

Here are some suggested fuel sources to assist you in uncovering your hidden passion that will become your driving force when prospecting and make you unstoppable.

1. Knowledge and Lifelong Learning. You have a thirst for knowledge and wisdom. You are a student of life and someone who embraces their own development and evolution. You are always looking for new ways to better yourself and your situation. You enjoy the experience of adding to your knowledge base and learning how to do new things that you never did before.

2. Giving Value and Helping Others. You are someone who experiences a great deal of joy when assisting other people. There’s no coincidence that you are in sales. You enjoy helping people solve their problems or better their condition. You derive a great deal of satisfaction knowing that you have assisted someone by sharing your time and expertise with them. You get energized when people rely on you. You seek to serve.

3. Product/Service: You possess a deep conviction about what you sell. There’s no doubt in your mind that what you offer can dramatically impact your customers and accelerate their success, enhance their life or career, or simply make their life easier. As such, you’re willing to talk to anyone about what you do. Your belief in your product is contagious. You feel as if you are doing your prospects a disservice if you can’t share with them what you can do that would improve their current situation.

4. Excellence. You simply want to be the best. Not to satisfy your ego or to be in the spotlight but because you enjoy the challenge of continuous improvement. You thrive off maximizing your potential and stretching your capabilities beyond what you initially thought you were capable of doing. That’s why you love to prospect! It provides you with a constant challenge. It’s the journey you enjoy, knowing that each day you have the opportunity to excel even further, fully embracing the challenges and opportunities that come your way in your quest to become a master of your life and career.

5. Family. At the end of the day, what’s more important than family? After all, why do you go to work every day? What is the ultimate goal? To raise and support a happy, healthy family. To be a great spouse, parent, and role model. You want nothing but the best for your family. They are your number one priority which you refuse to compromise. As long as it’s in your integrity to do so, you would do anything that honors the commitment you’ve made to them.

6. Relationships. You simply love people and connecting with new customers. You enjoy being part of your community. Your career allows you the ability to interact with a broad range of people and develop relationships with them. You deeply value the relationships you’ve made and give each one the attention and care they deserve. Connecting with people and communicating with them on a deeper level gives you a sense of purpose, comfort, and security.

7. Lifestyle. Your life-style is your style of living; the system or routine that you choose to use that governs your days, which makes up your life. You enjoy maintaining balance and harmony in your life. You appreciate the richness in your days that your career offers you. The income potential and flexibility played a huge role in your decision to become a salesperson. You are able to honor the priorities in your life such as your family, health and relationships. You feel that you own your day, which is evident in the amount of time you invest in taking care of yourself by engaging in the activities, hobbies, and sports that bring you the most joy. You are grateful for being able to create a great life and not just a living.

8. Creativity. You are always on the search for something unique, new and fun to try. You look forward to creating different strategies or tools that complement your selling and prospecting efforts. What puts a smile on your face is developing a new approach that will clearly separate you from your competition and grab your prospect’s interest. You love when your prospects say, “Wow, no one’s ever tried to get my attention like that before!”

9. Adventure. As a thrill seeker, what greater rush is there than closing a sale and earning a prospect’s business? You like the excitement and freshness that your career offers. Every day provides you with a new opportunity to create something that didn’t exist before; another new and happy customer.

10. Money. A high percentage of salespeople would admit that money is their primary motivator and why they got into sales in the first place. In many cases, salespeople are seduced by the thought of having a career with unlimited income potential. Before you chose money as your fuel, consider this. Is it actually the money that motivates you or is it what the money represents and what it can do for you? Does it give you security, freedom, a sense of accomplishment, peace of mind, a greater feeling of self worth? Will money allow you to create the lifestyle you want? Does it provide you with the opportunity to buy your dream house or new car, take that family vacation, enjoy more leisurely activities? Chances are, if you explore at a deeper level why you are choosing money as your motivator, you may realize that you’re better off using one of the other fuel sources that has already been mentioned.

Get the Strategies You Need to Succeed in a Slowing Economy

Philadelphia, PA
The Ritz-Carlton
June 9, 2008

If you are a manager worried about maintaining sales momentum in a shrinking economy, you will want to check out Selling Power’s Sales Leadership Conference to be held next month in Philadelphia, which I will also be attending and hope to meet you there. I’ll be sitting on the panel discussion on How To Recruit and Build a Team of A Players.

9:15 AM HOW TO RECRUIT ‘A’ PLAYERS

Top experts share how to recruit, select and build a team of ‘A’ players

Here’s the agenda:
www.sellingpower.com/leadership/PHI2008/agenda.asp

OVERVIEW:
In today’s increasingly competitive and complex business environment, you can’t expect to succeed during tough times with a “business as usual” mindset. To excel during a downturn, your sales organization needs change and change demands leadership. That’s where you come in.

Selling Power magazine’s Sales Leadership Conference is designed to help executives like you create inspired, high performance sales organizations. America’s top sales leaders give you invaluable ideas for leading your team to new heights and dramatically increasing your sales. Join the select group of forward-looking companies who will come away from this conference armed with the knowledge and power to successfully meet the future. If you are serious about staying competitive during an economic downturn, this fact-filled conference is for you!

Here’s what you can expect:

<li>Winning strategies for recruiting, hiring and developing A players in a tough economy. </li>


<li>Creating a Winning Sales Culture Learn the best practices of world class sales leaders for building the foundation for consistent success. </li>


<li> Creating the vital CEO - CSO relationship Discover how Heartland Payment Systems built a billion dollar business, created 83 sales millionaires and became the leading sales force in an intensely competitive industry. </li>


<li> Leveraging Sales 2.0 technology Learn how high performing companies harness technology to accelerate their sales pipeline, improve processes, close more business and outpace their competitors.</li>


<li> Increase Professionalism Learn how you can benefit from the new wave of professionalism in selling. Seize the opportunity to work with 32 universities that create 1,600 sales degree graduates ready to outsell your top performers.

<li> Network with an exclusive group of 175 top sales leaders (C-level), who will be eager to share their know-how, their insights and their connections to help you win. </li>

Act Now and Receive an Early Registration Discount!

This is a rare opportunity for you to receive the critical intel directly from America’s leading sales authorities. For more information or to request your invitation click here: www.sellingpower.com/leadership/phi2008/

Here’s the list of speakers: www.sellingpower.com/leadership/PHI2008/speakers.asp

Here’s part 2 of the interview I conducted With Dr. Rick Kirschner
regarding what managers can do to drive greater results, better motivate their salespeople and boost productivity by utilizing these powerful communication strategies.

KR: How can a sales manager leverage the power of persuasion to increase the motivation and performance of her sales people?

DRK: That’s a big question, big enough to write a book, so I did, two books in fact. That’s a key point of my Insider’s Guide and Playbook To The Art of Persuasion! But here’s the quick answer. Persuasion is the deliberate attempt to influence another person’s attitude in order to change their behavior. Once you’ve paid some attention, listened well and learned about what motivates your people, using the Kirschner Motivational Model or McClelland’s Model or Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs Model, or any other motivation model that appeals to you, it is important that you use what you’ve learned to speak to the motivations of your people in a way that moves them, engages them and connects them to a desirable future while offering them protection from an undesirable one.

This has to do with what you say, and also how you say it. The fact is that most people are listening emotionally most the time, and logically only rarely. So, no matter how logical you are in what you propose they do, you have to send signals that help your people feel that they should let themselves be influenced by you. Otherwise, you may be wasting both their time and yours.

There are known ways to package what you say for maximum impact. I call these packaging tools ‘signals,’ ‘guides’ and ‘themes.’ Signals speak to how you address the emotions. Guides make it easier for others to understand the logic of what you say. Themes are a way of structuring what you say to help you stay on track while saying it.

The more you use this kind of approach, the more successful you will be in getting a sustainable result.

KR: Teamwork is an important part of any successful sales organization. How can sales coaches increase commitment and elevate the motivation among their sales people?

DRK: Almost nobody goes to work wanting to do a bad job. Most people want to do well, and want what they do to matter. So it seems to me that teamwork happens when leadership happens, and leadership begins with you knowing the answers to three very important questions. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Why does it matter? Once you have the answers to these questions firmly fixed in your mind, you can help your sales people to find their own answers to these questions and then keep those answers in front of them as a reminder of meaning and purpose.

Of course, it’s one thing to have a lofty vision, and something else entirely when it comes to the rubber meeting the road. So to keep your people connected and focused, you simply must treat them with respect, keep them informed along the way, and give recognition whenever it’s due, and not just in the large things but in the small things as well. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for speaking up. Thanks for standing up. Thanks for keeping your promise. Thanks for following through. My mom used to tell me that there is always something to appreciate, you just have to appreciate the value of appreciation to find it.

KR: What are the most successful tactics used by sales managers/coaches when they are faced with bad behavior within a sales team that can negatively impact the entire team’s results?

DRK: Most of us can agree that what’s bad about bad behavior is the bad effect it has on morale, teamwork and getting results. There’s no getting around the fact that pushy, negative, disruptive and unreliable behavior is costly because it has real world consequences.

But I think it’s important to keep in mind that behavior is purposeful, people do what they do for what they consider a good reason, and labeling a particular behavior as good or bad may do little to influence whether you get more or less of it. More important, I think, is to understand what’s behind it for them. Then, using your understanding of their good intent as a reference point, you can help your people understand that the consequences of their behavior are self defeating to their good intentions. Done persuasively, and they’ll be grateful for the insight and opportunity to learn. And you, as a result, will get better results from your people.

So what specifically do you do when there’s a problem with someone’s behavior? First, observe it. Notice what is happening, when it happens, where it happens and how it happens. Then get together with the person or people involved, and learn everything you can about it from them. Set the stage by telling them what you’ve observed, where and when you observed it, and then ask them, “When this happens, what’s going on for you? What is your intention?” Next, tell them the self defeating part. “When you do that, here’s the reaction it gets. Is that what you intended?” And the answer is almost always going to be “No, it’s not!” That’s your learning moment, right there. “What do you think might work better?” Either give your people a chance to come up with a new choice, or, if they’re drawing a blank, either brainstorm with them, or tell them what you know could work better. In any case, you’ll have set the table for learning. A little reinforcement, and it becomes their skill for life.

To read more of Dr. Rick Kirschner’s suggestions for improving your ability to use persuasion to create positive change in your life, relationships, and work, visit Dr. K’s Blog here: www.drkblog.com.

As the economy heads deeper into a rough patch, companies must work harder than ever to meet financial targets. That means the pressure on salesmanagers to meet sales goals is huge.

We believe that a big part of producing sales results consists of supporting, coaching, and managing your people. Developing and strengthening coaching skills becomes essential to leveraging your competitive edge or you’re bound to get left behind.

Today our guest is Dr. Rick Kirschner, respected educator, popular speaker, executive coach, and best selling author of the ‘Insider’s Guide to The Art of Persuasion: Use Your Influence to Change Your World.” Dr. Kirschner offers some valuable insights for sales managers working to improve their skills as sales coaches.

KR: Rick, in your work with managers, what do you find to be the most common obstacle to building and projecting their authority and leading their sales teams?

DRK: Right off the top, I can think of a couple of obstacles. The most common one is the idea that management and coaching are about talking, that somehow talking takes priority over listening to understand. And I understand how this happens. In fast paced environments, it’s a natural tendency to put the pedal to the metal, to try harder, move faster, do more. The problem is that they wind up talking at their people instead of with them and to them. And the obstacle this lack of understanding creates is that without knowing what motivates your people, you can’t engage them where it counts.

When you understand what motivates your people, and it’s different for different people, you can speak with authority that is recognized as authority, because it is relevant and conveys experience and knowledge.

Then there’s the confidence problem. When managers come off as tentative, hesitant or uncertain, it tends to evoke these responses in their teams. This problem is the side effect of at least two missing pieces: first, not knowing your own motivation, and second, not being prepared to speak when you need to speak. The fact is, people want to be led, not managed, and they need to get that sense of authority from you, because it gives them confidence to do what needs to be done. They believe it when you believe it.

Now, it’s a legitimate question, confidence in what? After all, in these changing times, nobody really knows what’s coming next. And some degree of introspection is prudent for anyone wanting to thrive instead of merely survive. But you can have confidence in your motivations. You can have confidence in what you do know. And you can have confidence that under the right conditions, people will want to give you their best, to do their best.

KR: What are the key listening and communication skills that sales managers can improve upon as they work to develop and strengthen their coaching skills?

DRK: Essentially, there are two skills that are fundamental to success in coaching. The first is blending, the second is asking questions. Blending is the foundation of all successful relationships. It happens whenever you reduce the differences between yourself and another person. It happens whenever you send signals of similarity and commonality. And a failure to blend is the cause of most conflict, nobody cooperates with anyone who seems to be against them. If perception is everything in relationships, then sending blending signals is how you create the perception of partnering with your people in a process or project.

As for questions, I believe it was the stoic philosopher, Epicetus, who said “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Maybe this is the apt metaphor for the way we’re built, but I’ve observed that too many people just don’t get it. Although they certainly think they do. Ask just about anyone if they’re a good listener, and they’ll tell you yes. But most people do a meager job of it at best, instead drawing conclusions and then making statements instead of engaging people by asking questions.

Maybe the people who don’t ask very many questions are afraid of looking stupid. Maybe they think it makes them seem weak. Or maybe they think they’re supposed to have all the answers. Maybe it’s just a function of the fact that we can think faster, at 500 words a minute, than most people talk, which is about 130 words a minute. So it’s pretty easy to get ahead of what we’re hearing, or for our minds to wander to what we want to say when its our turn to talk. But a great coach understands the limits of his or her knowledge about another person, and explores that boundary to build the connection, rather than building the boundary and weakening the relationship. The key is curiosity. The less you think you know, the more you find out. The more value you place on what you can learn by listening, the less distracted you’ll be with your own thoughts.

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that ‘there is no such thing as a stupid question.’ That’s a great guide when it comes to everyone other than you! You can’t afford to ask dumb questions if you want to bring out the best in your people. When someone asks me a question, no matter how trite, simplistic or off the point, I welcome it and find the opportunity in it. But when it’s me asking, I think that there are dumb questions. They’re dumb if they fail to take into account things people have said. They’re dumb if they’re closed ended instead of open ended, unless I intend to bring something to a close. I want my questions to serve an intelligent purpose. I want to get to the deep structure of a person’s motivations and positions. I want to learn about their goals and aspirations, their desires and fears. Asking questions is a great way of leading people to their own resourcefulness. And I want my questions to inform, just as their answers will inform me. As a coach, the more you know, the more likely it is that you will know exactly what you need to know in order to elicit comfort confidence and credibility.

And it sets a great example for sales people, too. Because the best sales people talk about their customers’ and clients’ business rather than talking about the sales person’s business, and that’s only possible when they’ve been asking good questions.

To read more of Dr. Rick Kirschner’s suggestions for improving your ability to use persuasion to create positive change in your life, relationships, and work, visit Dr. K’s Blog here: www.drkblog.com.

Get Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions and Get $2,431.35 of Additional Materials From Today’s Top Business Leaders.
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In just 72 hours, my new book Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions (34% off: $19.77, Hardcover) made #1 on Amazon’s Best Seller List! Due to the overwhelming response, I decided to extend a grace period for this special offer to receive these bonus materials until Friday, May 2, 2008.

If you’re responsible for coaching or managing anyone, especially salespeople, this book will help you make the transition from manager to coach by developing the missing discipline of leadership – executive sales coaching. Most managers have never been trained to manage, let alone coach effectively. Discover a tactical coaching system for managers, business owners, coaches and executives – anyone who wants a proven and powerful method to coach and develop true champions.

There’s a huge bonus offer if you buy the book now—33 other authors and companies are generously giving away their ebooks, videos, audios and other valuable tools.

The book by itself is a great value considering you can get it for 34% off. Additionally you can get $2,431.35 of valuable materials from some of the greatest business minds around such as Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Ben Mack, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Michael Nick, CanDoGo.com, SalesDog.com, Landslide, Salesopedia.com, Salesconx, SalesHQ.com, SalesGravy.com and more, but you have to order before midnight, May 2 to get these extra resources. It’s like getting a library of powerful resources for every area of your life and career.

This offer was graciously extended once so don’t miss out a second time. Full details click here.

Get Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions and tons of extra materials from today’s top business leaders. Email your receipt to newbook@profitbuilders.com to receive your bonus package.

Order the book here.

How do we uncover internal drive? By using one of the most valuable tools as a coach – asking more and better questions. To uncover each person’s internal drive, schedule one to one meetings with each member of your team and invest the time asking questions to uncover what is important to them. Listen to their responses and ask more questions as you uncover what they most want.

Here are some suggested questions you can use during your one to one meetings in order to tap into a person’s internal drive, while uncovering exactly how you can best coach and manage them.

Questions will assist your employees in uncovering what internally motivates them based on their beliefs and values, so they can access their own energy to achieve it. You are also uncovering the style of management they respond to best. Moreover, you are setting up the expectations on both sides as to what to expect from one another. It certainly beats using your energy to push or stimulate interest or action based on your assumptions or beliefs based on what may work for you.

If you rely on pushing to get someone into action, they won’t move unless you’re there to push. It’s more effective to help them articulate what they want so they can begin to self-motivate.

The real benefit of getting this is that empowering people by tapping into their internal drive doesn’t drain your energy. Pushing for results is exhausting.

Get more coaching tips from Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.

Tips From the Sidelines: Make Acknowledgment Unconditional, Measurable and Specific

Communicate from Abundance Rather Than From Scarcity

What do people want most in their career? Statistics show that people want the positive reinforcement and acknowledgement that lets them know they are doing a good job.

The number one issue people have in the workforce today is, “Will I be valued and will I have a job in the future?” You want the people who are working for you to want to be there. Otherwise, what do you think they are going to spend their time doing?

Yet what do managers do to acknowledge their people’s value and appease their concerns? Instead, managers focus more on the problems coming at them rather than on their team’s achievements or solutions to drive continued, sustainable growth; continually putting out fires and jumping from one problem to the next.

The byproduct of acknowledgement is you build morale which breeds the type of culture that you are looking to create. Ask yourself, do you get acknowledged for something on a daily basis? Chances are, if you have not been the recipient of consistent, positive and authentic praise, then you may be conditioned that acknowledgment is not all that critical or effective. After all, we’ve learned from our predecessors. Just ask yourself, how often do you authentically acknowledge people on a daily basis?

Why don’t we praise our employees enough? Why are we so stingy with our acknowledgement? What are we afraid might happen? Do we feel that we only have a limited supply of acknowledgment and we don’t want to use it up?

Oh I can see it now. Here’s the visual, You are in your office one day and one of your salespeople comes over to you and says, “I just want you to know that I’ve noticed you are taking more time and interest in my work and with the positive reinforcement I’m getting around my behavior that’s generating some worthwhile results, I’m getting the sense that you are appreciating what I’m doing here more and more. Well, I just want you to know that you are making me feel just too good about myself and the company so, this has just got to stop!”

While this is an obvious exaggeration, the real truth is, we don’t acknowledge others more often because we either don’t know how to and are a bit reluctant to do so, are afraid if we acknowledge people too much they’ll start to slack off, simply don’t think it’s really all that important or we are afraid that it won’t come across as genuine.

They key to using positive reinforcement and acknowledgment as a powerful, motivating tool is to use it authentically, measurably and unconditionally, rather than issuing generic blanket and hollow statements of praise that sound like, “Good work!” Instead, recognize when something specific has occurred. Notice what the person did or how they have grown and praise them for who they are and who they are becoming.

General recognition such as, “I love the work you’re doing” or “You did a great job,” is not enough. It can actually backfire to work against you if the person you’re delivering the acknowledgement to feels it’s either inauthentic, conditional, a manipulative strategy or believes you have your own agenda attached to it. That’s why when you give genuine, honest acknowledgement; make sure it’s specific and measurable.

Be as specific and as measurable as you can be with your praise. Reinforce a behavior, activity, change, mindset or technique that you noticed which made a profound impact on their success and the results they’ve achieved. By acknowledging a specific behavior, the person knows what to reinforce and do the next time they tackle that task. In essence, you are reinforcing best practices while they’re doing it.

Here are three examples:

“You really demonstrated your ability to effectively follow up with Mary Johnson, the last sale you made. Your persistence, the way you specifically approached the conversation with Mrs. Johnson and the steps you took when honoring your selling system turned that volatile prospect into a happy customer. This is certainly an accomplishment to feel proud of.”

“I really appreciate you honoring this deadline and turning this proposal around for me so quickly, even with all of the other priorities that are on your plate. Your work through this process is a testament to your commitment to doing what it really takes to effectively manage an overwhelming workload.”

“I knew you could do an exceptional job on managing that new project and getting the team involved in completing it-and you proved me right! There were many opportunities to lose your cool or dump this project on to someone else but you maintained a positive attitude and a steadfast work ethic. I just want you to know I truly admire that in you and your commitment to see this through to completion.”

If your appreciation of a person’s efforts is truly authentic and sincere, you have the power to make an employee’s day. Besides, how else do your employees know if they are doing a great job? When they don’t hear about problems?” I have yet to hear about someone who left an organization because they were appreciated too much.

Since your people know the behavior to reinforce, your recognition will further sharpen their ability to self-generate results and solutions on their own rather than continually run to you.

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72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17. Ends Tonight.

Barrier Eight: Full Accountability
If you want to become powerful, hire a powerful coach. It’s a simple, yet highly effective strategy. If you want your salespeople to be powerful, you need to be a good role model for them. As you evolve, so does your team. Consider this truth: Your team is a reflection of you. If you’re not prepared to be 100 percent accountable for the success and failure of your team, if you skirt accountability in any way, if you lack professionalism or proficiencies in certain areas, your team will reflect these weaknesses. If you choose to evolve, so will your salespeople. If you want a world-class sales team, you have to become a world-class executive sales coach.

Barrier Nine: Competitive Managers
The most effective leaders develop other leaders. They encourage their people to perform as well as they do—even better. That is the sign of a true master and the real testament of a great manager. But what if the manager perceives his coworkers and subordinates as a threat? What if the manager is driven strictly by ego, the need to prove himself and his worth? What if this manager thinks he has survived only by keeping a competitive distance from his peers and salespeople? I’ve known managers who don’t share their tools and best practices with their salespeople for fear their salespeople will outdo them. These are likely to be inferior managers who will seek to selfishly leverage the coaching relationship in a way to better themselves and their position rather than for the betterment of their sales team.

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72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Great managers realize that one of their key roles is to maximize the productivity of their team and ensure they are operating at peak performance. The consequences of not having your sales team live up to their potential are severe: a decrease in sales, lower morale, higher turnover, and client attrition. Additionally, there’s the stress every manager feels from the added workload each time there’s a vacancy in a position, sales that need to be made, and territories that have to be covered.

Now, compound this challenge with the additional responsibility managers often have. Aside from being responsible for the production and development of their sales team, some managers are often responsible for hitting their own sales numbers and production goals.

With long work hours, deadlines, and personal responsibilities, something gets sacrificed. As such, managers find that developing, coaching, and retaining their staff takes a back seat to the problems and challenges that arise daily. Even with their best intentions, managers don’t often have the time and resources needed to effectively coach their staff or a strategy to identify and develop the essential skills and core characteristics needed to become a masterful coach. As a result, morale and productivity suffer.

Through the eyes of a salesperson, this lack of attention and support translates to a feeling of isolation. Quite often salespeople believe that management simply doesn’t care, won’t take the time to work with them, or simply isn’t available. This environment becomes the perfect breeding ground for high attrition and deteriorating performance.

What is management’s fundamental problem that proliferates dismal results, inefficiency, and failure? While most managers may have the theory down, they struggle to convert these leadership principles into actionable, measurable steps and a process that can be duplicated consistently. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions cracks the code and solves the most pressing issues that plague most managers today. This book makes it possible for any manager, business owner, or executive to develop the missing discipline of leadership: coaching.

Most leadership programs train in ideology rather than in developing a core competency or skill. Nothing more gets accomplished other than identifying another great concept in leadership, an overanalyzed theory, or an attribute the greatest leaders possess. Although they are sound principles, they’re devoid of a specific, measurable process and a practical application that generates the results you seek. With a team of salespeople to manage, objectives to reach, and expectations to meet, you need measurable results fast!

Increased global competition, a rapidly changing marketplace, and less face time with customers and employees are forcing companies to reevaluate their selling and leadership strategies. With more business conducted across various communication platforms and more sales teams operating in a virtual environment, these managers question how proficient they can be at managing their team at a distance—especially since they have never been shown how to do so effectively. Managers do not always have the luxury of calling a face-to-face meeting and instead find themselves supporting, coaching, and managing their people over the telephone. Developing and strengthening your telephone coaching skills becomes essential to leveraging your competitive edge or you’re bound to get left behind.

Top leaders know that in order for their people to live their fullest potential every day, they need someone in their corner supporting them throughout the process. As such, a growing need for a proven, long-term solution that can be rapidly deployed to continually develop and retain top talent while maximizing new business opportunities has sparked the evolution of this new kind of manager: the executive sales coach.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event Ends Thursday April 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Look at the resources you get here.

Remember, this time sensitive event ends April 17 at midnight.

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72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17. Ends Tonight.

Barrier Six: Confidentiality and No Judgment? Sure, Boss!

Lets get right to what you’re thinking. Your role as supervisor or boss presents some inherent problems with coaching that need to be addressed head on.

Given the parameters, guidelines, and principles necessary to be a masterful coach, trust is critical to make the connection. After all, if your employees can’t trust you as their manager, forget even trying to coach them. Coaching requires an elevated level of trust that transcends the superficial trust between employees and management.

And what if some of your salespeople already have a problem with you as their boss and now you’re going to try and coach them? How does that get handled? Do you think any of your employees are going to just come out and say that? Think again.

As a result, this relationship could quickly turn into more of a mentoring rather than a coaching relationship. This is a major reason why companies bring in an expert coach from the outside who doesn’t have any direct ties to the company as a manager would.

Barrier Seven: Anyone Can Manage, Not Everyone Can Coach

“I’m really not cut out to be a coach.” The hard fact is there are managers who want to be coaches, managers who need to be coaches, and managers who shouldn’t be coaches, and probably shouldn’t be managers, either.

Companies that force all managers into a coaching role make a costly assumption that all of their managers would actually make great coaches, just like every college athlete should automatically make the pros. The rules work the same. Desire, attitude, ability, and skill will always be the formula for becoming a successful coach, or athlete. Then there is the mistake of pushing managers to do something they don’t want to do. Managers can easily sabotage their own coaching efforts, and in the end, corporate may learn the wrong lesson: “I guess our internal coaching program didn’t work.”

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Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions
A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives (Hardcover Edition)

Get my book 37% off and additional valuable materials here.

If you’re responsible for coaching or managing anyone, especially salespeople, my new book will help you make the transition from manager to coach by developing the missing discipline of leadership – executive sales coaching. Most managers have never been trained to manage, let alone coach effectively. I deliver to you a tactical coaching system for managers, business owners, coaches and executives – anyone who wants a proven and powerful method to coach and develop true champions.

Endorsed by thought leaders such as Dr. Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy, Dr. Tony Alessandra, Anthony Parinello and more, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions fills the void between what great managers need to know and do as a great coach in order to:

<li>Turn underperformers into super-achievers, fast. (Under 30 days.)</li>

<li>    Attract and retain top talent.</li>

<li>Motivate their team through the Art of Enrollment&#8482;, the new language of leadership.</li>
<li>Empower their people to solve their own problems and become fully accountable using the L.E.A.D.S. Coaching System&#8482; - rather than being dependent on you.</li>
    <li>Handle difficult people without conflict and determine when to let them go without collateral damage.</li>

Since the success or failure of any organization leads back to the actions and behavior of one person; the leader, it’s critical for every manger to upgrade their leadership style and approach. You’ll discover how to facilitate a coaching conversation that fits your management style, as well as the strategies of the world’s greatest coaches through dozens of case studies spanning over 15 different industries and professions, a 30-Day Turnaround Strategy, coaching and communication templates, a library of masterful coaching questions and an easy-to-follow coaching process to leverage each person’s fullest potential and develop a team of winners.

** 72 HOUR BOOK EVENT ENDS THURSDAY**

Purchase Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions by April 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. You can spend hundreds of dollars separately or you can invest about $20.00, order one copy of the book today and spend not one penny more. Look at the resources you get here.

Plenty of books espouse new management and leadership theories for managers, but few show you how to actually coach your people on a daily basis in a way that creates measurable change. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions provides a proven methodology and tactical strategy for coaching that bridges the gap between theory and execution so that you can achieve unprecedented results -today.

Remember, this time sensitive event ends April 17 at midnight.

Get the book 37% off and hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials here.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Barrier Three: Surrender Your Agenda When Coaching

What if your boss walked up to you today and said, “Your career, your bonus, your position in this company, and your salary will depend on how well your team performs. That said, I want you to start coaching all the people on your team, one on one. Hold them accountable and be unconditionally supportive, while surrendering your agenda and maintaining objectivity.” Could you do it?

My clients consist of a myriad of companies and professions, all shapes and sizes, selling products and services in practically every industry and profession. Yet, the one truth I share with them is this: “When you work with me as your coach, this will be the only relationship you have where it will always be 100 percent about you.”

If you’re an internal coach, this may be a stretch to fully surrender any agenda or attachment to your sales team’s performance, especially since their performance directly reflects on you. In such cases, there’s an inherent challenge for you, as the business owner or manager, to separate your agenda from theirs and have no personal expectation from the relationship other than your unconditional commitment to their continued growth and success. It’s going to take some adjustment on your part to develop an unconditional and authentic relationship with your salespeople.

Overcome these internal obstacles using the strategies outlined in Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Look at the resources you get here.

Remember, this time sensitive event ends April 17 at midnight.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

5. Develop Your Personal Style of Coaching
When people ask me what my style of coaching is, I say, “Direct yet light, exploratory, action-oriented, comprehensive, easily adaptable, conversational, enjoyable, tactical, and results-oriented. I’m your safe sounding board, your advisor, accountability partner, cheerleader, personal trainer, and consultant.”

Building off the attribute we discussed under number 4, developing your own coaching style is something that doesn’t happen immediately but as an organic process as you coach more and more people. The most effective coaches have learned to trust their heart and, in turn, trust their personality. Their style of coaching complements who they are naturally. These are the coaches who reign supreme, for they know that the very thing that their salespeople or clients find attractive in them is who they are, not simply what they do. Give yourself permission to be the authentic you and let your gifts radiate throughout the coaching you deliver.

It is perfectly normal and natural to have resistance to making the transformational shift from sales manager to sales coach. Considering what is required of you, it is a tall order. Much more is expected from the sales coach than the sales manager. However, imagine what would be possible for you and for your sales team once you make this transformation. For those managers who are willing to do so, the rewards are abundant.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Look at the resources you get here.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

4. Coach from Your Heart, Not from Your Head
When I first started coaching I had a master list of questions I used to ensure I was in fact asking the right questions. (I share these questions with you in the appendix of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.) After coaching dozens of people over the course of my first several months as a new coach, I realized that the greatest coaches coach from their hearts, not their heads. That is, rather than focus on the “Five Steps to Coach Anyone” or some cookie cutter model that can be bought off the shelf, the truly masterful coaches go many layers deeper in themselves to become the most effective coaches they can be. There is certainly a place for templates and a step-by-step model when coaching as I’ve outlined throughout my book. However, once you have evolved into a coach, it defines who you are, not just what you do. It becomes part of you. Rather than simply “doing” coaching, you are now coaching from your heart as a natural expression of yourself.

The most effective way to uncover and connect with someone else’s heart, spirit, drive, and passion is to first tap into your own. The more you, as a coach, trust and use your gut feelings, your intuition, your instincts, the more of an impact you will have on the people you coach.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Look at the resources you get here.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Here’s the third of five characteristics that the world’s greatest coaches share.

3. Sometimes they really need the answer!
So, give it to them rather than throwing another question at them, which does nothing more than frustrate the person you are coaching. The sad truth is, most coaches can’t give the answer. Why? Go back to the first quality. You can’t get the answers from a coach who hasn’t been where you want to be.

Interestingly, most people need more than just a coach to reach their goals. They also need someone who can give them the best solutions, sometimes the answers, and reduce their learning curve (via training, advising, and consulting). Only an experienced coach who possesses great business acumen and experience in the real world can do this.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Look at the resources you get here.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

2. A top coach is a model of what is possible to achieve.
The most effective way to teach others—our employees, clients, even family members—is to exemplify that which we want to teach. From the time you walk into the office, your appearance and disposition, as well as how you handle problems, talk to clients, complete tasks and projects, your work ethic, and how you demonstrate your commitment to your people as their manager, sends a message to your staff that says, “This is how it is done.” The “Do as I say not as I do” approach to managing is no longer effective. Managers need to think beyond their spoken word and evaluate their behavior to fully identify the overall message they are really sending to their staff.

A hard truth to embrace but one that rewards every manager who does is this: Businesses take on the complexion of their owners and management, both their strengths and weaknesses. You can’t expect your team to go the extra mile, feel great about their work, be highly organized, and be fully accountable for their performance if their leader is not.

The greatest leaders know that in order to have an impact on others, they need to change themselves first. If you want to accelerate team performance in ways other than through training and coaching, upgrade the message you send in your communication, which also encompasses your actions as well as your behavior. You owe it to yourself as well as to your team.

You are their manager and have a responsibility that transcends monthly numbers or year-end sales targets. You create the atmosphere and culture among your team. You develop the parameters that determine exactly how effective your sales team can be each day. Are you setting them up to thrive or simply survive? When you have the power to make a difference in just one person’s life, you are a leader.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 – 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. Click here to learn more and look at the resources you get.

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