The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The realities of COVID-19, coupled with legacy sales issues, are making it more difficult for sellers to set appointments with new business prospects. Problems inhibiting a seller’s access to decision makers — like a lack of trust — have been compounded by the uncertainties of the current business climate. The bottom line, already a tough job, is now even more difficult.

Simply put, helping sellers develop expertise in the Identify and Connect steps of the sales process is needed and will provide a high ROI on training time. Specifically, improving skills related to finding prospects and setting appointments will increase the number of prospects in the sales funnel and lead to cash!

When dealing with severe levels of change, it’s natural to reign in and hyper-focus on the activity we feel is most essential to surviving and thriving in that environment. In sales, that core activity would include things like the need to continue identifying quality prospects, connecting with decision makers, and discovering their needs and desired business results.

Activity is important, but a knee jerk reaction to keep approaching those activities the way you always have will not be effective when business cycles are at their most volatile.

As a sales manager, how can you do more teaching and less telling?

It's not uncommon for salespeople to get frustrated when the only thing they hear from their sales manager is that they need to have more activity, increase the number of asks they have, and boost the dollar amount of the asks they have. Salespeople know this. They want to be taught how to do that. They want training and teaching, and not just telling.

The majority of participants that attend a “typical” training program or workshop will forget 70% of what they were taught within two weeks. Our goal for the Talent Focused Management (TFM) workshop is to provide clients with strategies and tactics that they can actually put into practice immediately.

Here are some takeaways from sales managers that will enlighten The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) clients, as well as others, as to why —and how—not all workshops are created equally.

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.

All great sales managers will tell you that training and development are the cornerstones for building an exceptional sales team. The sales industry constantly changes and evolves as prospects learn and alter tactics to deal with enthusiastic salespeople. And, every salesperson needs to learn how to adapt to these changes and continue to grow in their field of knowledge.

This is why sales managers and salespeople share common ground when it comes to learning and developing new skills, but as the 2019 Media Sales Report found, there’s still room for improvement when it comes to performance.

Over the years I’ve written posts about my favorite NFL team, the Cleveland Browns. Most of my previous posts reflected on their losing ways and focused on “what not to do” as a manager.

This post is different. This post sheds a positive light on the Browns related to activating talent and tells a nice story about how a new leader transformed the same players from losers to winners by changing five things. 

Imagine that: The same players being coached (managed) differently producing significantly different results!

As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts, I’m a long-suffering fan of the Cleveland Browns. My team loses more games than they win. The Browns are also infamous for something else: the team has started 28 different quarterbacks since 1999! Many of these poor souls were drafted by the Browns and then thrown into the fire before they were adequately prepared, only to fail. 

When onboarding new hires, managers have a lot of things to think about. What is the onboarding plan? Will there be pre-boarding? Who will train them? Who do they need to meet and who will show them around and introduce them to the office, co-workers, etc.?

But just as important, what is your new hire’s onboarding plan? If they walk in and have no plan and no goals, chances are they will struggle to find success in their new role. Some new hires will start day one with a clear plan or will have a plan and goals set within a few weeks, but some will need help and guidance in this area.

The Best New Hire Gift: Clear Expectations + Realistic Goals