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.

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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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.