The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Starting a new job can be nerve-wracking, especially in sales, where the pressure is on to deliver results from day one.

As a manager, it's your job to not only set your new hires up for success but also to ensure they are a good fit for your team and company culture.

While experience and skills are important, don't underestimate the power of raw talent — it's often the key ingredient to a successful salesperson. But once you've hired a talented newbie, how do you turn that potential into actual results?

Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods are all known for their exceptional talent and success in their respective sports. However, they also have something else in common: they all had coaches who played a significant role in their careers.

Some might argue that it was their coaches — Bill Belichick, Phil Jackson, and Earl Woods —  who helped turn their natural talent into the greatest athletes of their sports. It's clear that even the best of the best need and value the guidance of a coach.

We call ourselves account executives and consultants, but do we behave like consultants? 

Or do we act more like salespeople who are just there to close a deal and cash a commission check?

When I started working straight out of college, I sold advertising for a local radio station. I was 22 years old, so my real-world business experience was limited. As I grew from a salesperson to a sales manager to an executive at an advertising agency, my business acumen and expertise increased. As my business acumen increased, so did my ability to help clients. I started to behave less like a "seller" and more like a consultant who was there to help my clients.

It was a game-changer for me.  

If you are like me, the idea of your sales team working remotely was beyond your imagination. Every once in a while, you might hear a rumor about a salesperson that worked from home a couple of days of the week, but they were more like myths than reality. Oh, sure, they are "working from home," and I saw "Big Foot" run across my backyard.

However, with the pandemic, the world changed seemingly overnight.  

You went from a team that worked 100% in the office to a team that worked 100% remotely, and now that COVID is "over," you have a team that works in a hybrid model. 

Have you changed your management style to match the new reality of a hybrid sales team?

Parenting small children is not easy. I recall when my daughters were toddlers and how exhausted my wife and I were at the end of the day. We fantasized about when they would be older and more independent. We imagined parenting would be a lot easier.

Well, as I prepare for my oldest daughter's wedding in two weeks, I can tell you parenting older children is different, but it's not necessarily easy. The challenges change, the decisions become more important, and our role as parents evolves.

Finding talented salespeople has never been easy.

Finding naturally talented salespeople has always been more difficult than finding successful sellers. Far too often, we confuse success with talent. We go after the big name at the big competitor who has some big sales numbers. Experienced salespeople tend to have bad habits that follow them.

We default to looking and hiring experienced salespeople over inexperienced talented salespeople because it's easier.

I wanted to title this blog "Top performers WANT to be measured, but poor or average performers NEED to be measured," but I was told that isn't a very strong title for click-throughs.

Nevertheless, I will continue with this blog despite my disappointment. 

As you know, your best salespeople want to be better!

• They want/need feedback.
• They want to know the score.
• They want to know how they compare to others.
• And they want to be measured so they can see how good they are compared to the rest of the team. 

Holding people accountable is tough.

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

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!

You waste time! A lot of time. And so do I.

It's an epidemic in the world today. One of the biggest challenges that organizations and salespeople face is the lack of productivity while feeling like they work all of the time.