The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

-Laozi

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A New Year's resolution is a tradition in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their life. The New Year brings a fresh start and the opportunity for sales managers and sales teams to set goals and intentions for the coming months. 

Perhaps you, or a salesperson on your team, had a lousy 2019 and are ready to make some changes in 2020. A resolution can help reset the compass — here’s a list of options to help kick off the New Year and improve your (or your sales team's) sales performance.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we addressed the overall power of employee engagement. In part two, we learned how transparency could be used to boost overall employee engagement. In a nutshell, workplace transparency helps set the stage for employee engagement — the essential element of a positive and productive workplace cult

In this final part of the blog series of how to improve your company culture in 90 days or less, you’re going to learn how to take your employees from feeling motivated about your company culture vision to acting on ideas that will increase employee engagement.

We often use sports to relate to management behaviors to avoid. 

Reflecting back to 2011, there’s How to Build a Winning Team for your Sales Organization, then there's, Do You Onboard New Sellers Like the Cleveland Browns Onboard New Quarterbacks? Both articles provide insight on how to learn from coaches and teams' mistakes and apply lessons learned to sales today.

In this installment, let's focus on leadership — specifically, how a leader should respond and react when they make a mistake. Warning: sports analogies are included in this post.

- MOTIVATION -

"Become the person who would attract the results you seek."

-Jim Cathcart

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No doubt, the holidays are crazy. You're working hard to close out the year, planning for the next year, and trying to finish as strong as possible. Outside of work, there's a list a mile long —holiday parties, shopping, family, friends, wrapping, cooking, etc... 

Besides being arguably some of the best athletes ever, what do Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods have in common?

They’re all, or were, known for being the hardest workers during practice. Jordan and Brady were famous for being the first on the court and practice field and the last to leave. Tiger hit thousands of golf balls on the range every day. They began their careers practicing hard and with a mindset that they would get out of the game exactly what they put into it.

Persistence, discipline, competitive spirits, drive, and resilience — athletes and salespeople share a lot of common traits. However, one noticeable difference is that salespeople rarely practice or rehearse.

Someone once said that perceptions can’t be wrong because it’s a perception, an opinion and impression of someone else. However, perceptions are often wrong because if they were right, they would be called facts.  

Whether we deserve it or not, we’re judged by every person that we connect with. The words that come out of our mouth firmly establish an imaginary tattoo on our forehead as we stand in front of a quality prospect.

Perception is everything, and how you’re seen by your team, prospects, and clients is a key to success. New research shows that you have 27 seconds to make a positive impression and 1 minute to prove value in any given situation. Like it or not, how you look, dress, and speak helps people to form an opinion of you.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we addressed the overall power of employee engagement. Engaged employees mean a reduction in regrettable turnover, increased productivity, and an increase in key customer retention. 

In part two of this series, we’re incorporating transparency as a way to boost overall employee engagement. When done well, transparency creates trust between employers and employees, helps improve morale and lower job-related stress, and therefore increases employee engagement, boosting performance. An added bonus — being transparent is absolutely free, which gives it a notable ROI.

- MOTIVATION -

"You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end."

-Jessica Herrin

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The things you do are often more powerful than the things you say. 

New business prospects are more likely to increase their engagement level when they know a seller truly cares about them and their business. Think about your own buying habits—are you more likely to do business with someone who cares about you compared to a slick talking salesperson who only cares about making a sale? 

Great sales managers truly want to grow and develop the salespeople that report directly to them. And, we’re not just talking about the new hires to the organization. We’re talking about all the salespeople they are responsible for.

At our Talent Focused Management workshop — a workshop that sales managers who are clients of The Center for Sales Strategy attend — we highlight a famous quote from Peter Drucker:

“It is the people who determine the performance capacity of the organization.”

The best investment a sales organization can make is to commit to grow and develop its people. The great news is that salespeople want to learn and develop. In fact, the 2019 Media Sales Report found that 95% of salespeople said that learning and development are important to them. One of the best ways to grow and develop your salespeople is through the effective use of feedback.

Sales managers in every market say the same thing —finding great salespeople is hard. We empathize, but of course, it is! Salespeople are often really good at selling themselves, and when you do hire, it takes six months to a year to know whether you made the right decision.

This is one reason you must develop a plan and execute that plan at all times. Managers often reach out to us looking for creative ways to recruit people to their companies. Unfortunately, most wait until they're in need. If you're waiting for an opening on your staff to begin recruiting salespeople for your talent bank, it's too late! 

Corporate culture has arguably always been important, but in recent years it’s become a popular point of discussion. To some, it’s become a buzzword, with an overabundance of content and discussions surrounding it. However, our 2019 Media Sales Report revealed some telling information related to how salespeople and sales managers feel about the culture of their company and industry today. 

Company culture is becoming even more important as the modern workplace continues to evolve. This is proven throughout the report as the biggest takeaways are related to how prepared salespeople feel to face the future and how likely they’ll be to recommend their company as a great place to work.

- MOTIVATION -

"Always do your best. What you plant now, will harvest later."

-Og Mandino

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These days, there's a quick fix for everything. From a 21-day diet to a 3-step skin care plan and a 24-hour credit repair, it's our natural instinct as humans to look for quick solutions to our problems. We’re impatient by nature, and we want the kind of solution that turns everything around now.

While some of these quick fixes may work in the short-run, most are not sustainable and they leave you in worse shape than you were before. Ironically, the quick fix delayed the real solution.

In our world of quick fixes for everything, we also expect a quick fix to be applied to sales. However, the best sales performance solutions combine a jump-start plan to deliver immediate results together with a long-term plan to assure sustainability. And, the long-term plan must include three fundamentals.

When it comes your bottom line, employee engagement is a powerful source you must have for growth and profit. 

Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, and a two-way commitment and communication between an organization and its people.  A strong company culture means employees are engaged.  In turn, there is:

• A reduction in regrettable turnover
• Increased productivity
• Increase in key customer retention

In part one of this three-part blog series, we'll address each attribute of a strong company culture, as well as tips on what you can do right now to lead the charge of increasing employee engagement at your own organization.

Why is sales enablement important? Because buyers are more informed, and selling is more challenging than ever before. Our 2019 Media Sales Report found that some of the major challenges in sales today are that sales reps’ time is not actually spent selling and salespeople are simply not equipped with relevant materials.

Sales enablement is a strategy that aligns marketing, sales, and operations while lowering costs, increasing revenue, ensuring brand integrity, and ultimately closing more deals. Even the most talented sales reps can benefit from the right support, structure, and technology.

So, why did nearly 1 out of 4 sales managers feel that they don’t have the right sales collateral pieces to help their sellers in all stages of the sales process?

You’ve secured the appointment with the decision maker. You’re excited and feeling positive about the sales call. You’ve prepared for the meeting and think you have all the right questions. You move in for the close and just when you think it is about to happen, they throw you a curveball, “I need to talk this over with some other people in my company, can I get back to you next month?”

Other people? But aren’t you speaking to the decision-maker with the power to say yes? Of course, but you didn’t conduct the due diligence on the prospect’s decision-making process to uncover any possible decision influencers.