The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

As a sales manager, your time is valuable, and managing your sales team tops the list of priorities. How much time and with whom you spend your time is critical to achieving sales goals.

But where to start? Most of us spend time with those we think need the most attention, those not meeting goals. Our instincts are to “fix” people. But take a minute to consider if this is a good use of your time.

What if you spent time with your top performers instead? Focusing on people development is a key to employee engagement and retention, which leads to bottom-line growth.

Before choosing which prospects to target, it’s best to generate a long list of leads so you can narrow down to the best leads. Using the categories you’ve identified as a good fit your business, decide which sources on this list are right for you to generate your own list of leads.

Every career has challenges, and that’s certainly true for sales professionals who often experience selling highs and lows.

Sales pros face numerous obstacles in their quest for success. They might have a difficult sales territory that requires lots of travel away from home. They might face a selling slump because of factors beyond their control such as an economic downturn or even a pandemic like COVID-19.

Sales managers can support their teams by motivating them to weather the rough times and inspiring them to keep growing in their careers and persevering even when their goals seem difficult–even impossible–to attain.

Here, we’ve created a resource to help managers motivate their sales professionals to keep striving and building their careers day after day.

Hiring and coaching salespeople would be a lot easier if people had their own manuals or care instructions that listed their top strengths and included advice for helping them reach their full potential.

Wouldn’t that help you select and retain more top performers?

One of the most difficult things in leadership, and in life, is to recognize and admit when we have made mistakes or might have done things differently.

As we develop more skills in leadership, we begin to see mistakes as opportunities for growth, improvement, and innovation when we can look at them through a lens without judgment or blame.

When it comes to sales, you might feel as if there are many factors that are outside of your control. To an extent this is true, but when it comes down to it – you actually wield more influence over the situation than you think.

Once you realize what you can control, and what you can influence, you will feel more confident approaching prospects and delivering solutions and recommendations to your clients.

Helping sellers improve sales performance is an important—perhaps the most important—part of a sales manager’s job.

A key part of the process of improving performance is evaluating a seller’s performance. Tracking and evaluating important metrics will serve as a source of celebration as well as a way to add focus for future training and skill development.

Please note, this type of review and evaluation should not be confused with the typical annual review required by HR departments. HR reviews serve some purpose, but rarely serve as the catalyst for improving sales performance.

Holding people accountable is tough.

You have to be tough and sometimes even be a jerk, right?

92% of potential candidates have abandoned online job applications without finishing them. Tedious, repetitive application processes send candidates a message about the employer that isn't great.

To attract better candidates, it's time to dump the old system. Instead, recruit employees and sales talent by thinking outside the box. 

Although recruiting qualified candidates is a different process in different fields, anyone can try one of these six surprising strategies to recruit great candidates.

Before you can close the deal you first have to schedule the first meeting with the prospect’s decision-maker. Often, that’s the most challenging element of the sales process. Many sellers express the same frustration. “We have a great story to tell, but we’re simply not getting enough at-bats.”

Here are five ideas to help your sellers get off the bench and into the game.

What is the best way is to start a conversation? Ask the other person a question. 

We learn by asking questions.

Smart business people never stop asking questions. Your prospect probably forms their opinion about you based more on what you ask them, than on what you tell them.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers” - Voltaire

Trigger Warning... If you get easily offended by brutally honest feedback that might seem harsh and mean, you might want to skip today's blog post.

Ok, now; that we've gotten that out of the way, here's that brutally honest and possibly mean content:

You should NOT invest resources into poor-performing salespeople!