The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated.

At least once a week, I get asked by a sales leader if there is a business book I would recommend they read that will help them improve their game. That is a tough question to answer, because there are so many very good books out there, and depending where you are in your career (or your current business situation, or what you have already read), the right book for you could be one of several. So instead of picking just one book, I thought I would provide a list of five books that would make for great reading this summer.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, or Independence Day. It's a day that we as Americans reflect on our freedom, our heritage, and our history. In honor of this, we asked a few of the CSS team to chime in for this post. We asked, "If you could pick one historic American leader that would make a great sales leader today because of their strengths and talents, who would it be?" Here's what they said. 

This post was originally published on SalesHacker.com.

The weekly sales meeting — you know the one. The whole crew gets together for what amounts to an hour-long discussion around menial housekeeping items or which sales rep got a little closer to nailing a sale.

Certainly it’s important information in its own right. But, it’s not worthy of eating up an hour that could be better used securing leads. The substance of the old-school sales meeting, in essence, belongs in a weekly email.

I read a recent study that shared many interesting things about music and how much it does for humans. Some things noted in the study are that music:

• Enhances intelligence, learning and IQ
• Improves memory performance
• Improves concentration and attention
• Helps work productivity
• Helps fight fatigue
• Improves mood

Whether you're motivating yourself or your sales team, I think anyone in sales would like a little bit of all of those. So with that said, I've collected a list of songs from our team and compiled a list of motivational songs to help you boost your sales productivity! 

As a person, you probably have an inborn knowledge of what your strengths are personally, as well as professionally. You might be a great cook, a strong tennis player, or great at board games. You know that you create strong relationships with clients, are great at the close, or really creative in helping your clients.

I work with a lot of B2B sales organizations.
Some perform well.  Some perform not-so-well.

Why have a manager who cannot move their people to performance?

That would be useless, right?

But the reality in today’s business is there are too many managers who fit this description. Why is that? Why would a manager, despite his or her best effort, be unable to activate their people? There are two primary reasons, and they have an interactive relationship with each other:

1. The Manager Doesn’t Have a Lever (a Powerful Relationship)

Lots of managers have a friendly, or at least cordial, relationship with their people. But not what we call a robust relationship. A robust relationship is one that’s useful to the manager wishing to improve the salesperson’s performance, and, therefore, the organization’s performance. It’s a relationship that gives the manager the power to accomplish this essential aspect of his or her job.

If you open an underwater door and let a fish out of an aquarium into the ocean, he is free. Free to swim around the sea! But if you let him out of the water completely, he is not really free. The fish needs water to live — this restriction is a good one. The fish also needs room to swim — the restriction that keeps him caged is not a good one.

I was talking to a client last week who was feeling defeated because his team was not meeting every goal he had set out for the year. I get it, good sales leaders hate to lose and should be upset when they don’t deliver the number. But this is a very strong team, delivering strong performance. And they keep setting tough goals in lots of different areas. They have a big vision for where they are going! They aren't going to be able to hit every goal, every time.

Here’s why. When you have a passion or burden for something, there are fears that come with it. You can only be a fearless leader if you are leading in an area that you don’t have a passion for or don’t really care that much about. So rest assured the fears are normal. The real question is, what do you do with the fears you have? I have a two-step plan that I think will help.