Sales Blog with Sales Tips

Just about every sales professional I’ve ever worked with has thought of – and dreamed of – becoming a sales manager.

There are numerous reasons for this: boredom in current position, more income, get away from the monthly quota grind, etc. The following are four attributes that upper management looks for before promoting a sales professional into sales management.

The Four Traits Of Aspiring Sales Managers
1. Recently I heard an executive of a very large company say that the reason he promoted a certain individual into sales management was her receptiveness to feedback. Being open to feedback is critical.

2. People like working with people they can count on. Are we on time? Do we take care of important details? Can people trust us? A sales manager’s sales team and the VP of Sales need to know they can rely on the sales manager.

3. Change is something sales managers have to deal with on an hourly basis. If we can’t elegantly handle change, we should take ourselves out of the sales management candidate pool. A good sales manager copes with dramatic change while softening the impact to his or her sales team.

4. Sales professionals who want to become sales managers know they need to grow in their careers and in their industry. They want to grow. Sales tips blogs, magazines, podcasts, seminars, professional organizations and books are part of their ongoing learning regimen.

We need to demonstrate these four qualities in order to be considered sales management material.

It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
While you might fantasize about being a sales manager, let me warn you that it’s not all roses. Think carefully before you pursue this career path.

You’ll likely have to travel 50%+ of the time. Sounds glamorous. It isn’t.

Top sales professionals frequently make more than their sales manager does. When you factor in a compromised quality of life (e.g. travel), it exacerbates the compensation issue.

The sales budget assigned to a sales manager  is much more burdensome than that of the individual sales professional. Why? You have to rely on others to meet your budget. You’re really going to hate this if you’re a control freak.

The higher up the food chain you go, the less understanding (i.e. forgiving) sales management is of missed budgets. Your VP of Sales couldn’t possibly care less that four members of your 12-person sales team were out with hepatitis all last month.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
One last thought. We’ve all heard the axiom, “Good sales professionals don’t necessarily translate into good sales managers.” It’s true.

However, the opposite is also true. Don’t take yourself out of the running if you’re not the top producer in your company and want to pursue a career in sales management.

Further sales tips reading:
When Interviewing for a Sales Job, Look for These Things
When Interviewing a Sales Applicant, Look for These Things
Interviewing and Hiring Salespeople
Sales Management and the Four Levels of Sales Development

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>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
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Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
—
Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
—
—

Sales forecasting is the curse of every sales professional. It’s an art and a science that we all struggle with.

Why Our Sales Forecasts Frequently Miss The Mark

• We feel forced to tell our sales managers what they want to hear.
• In our desire for more sales, we operate from a position of baseless confidence.
• We don’t understand our industry.
• We aren’t properly qualifying our prospects.
• To create the illusion of a full funnel, we hang on to dead prospects ad infinitum.
• We don’t develop our skills at reading a prospect’s buying/not-buying signals.

Sales Tips For Sharpening Your Sales Forecasting Pencil
1. Re-qualify them. Don’t be afraid to re-qualify prospects in the middle of a sales cycle. It’s a good idea to constantly check the cards your fellow gamblers are showing when betting in Vegas.

2. Understand the steps of your sales process. If your company doesn’t have a defined and effective sales process, create one of your own. This will act as a benchmark.

3. Get real. Look at your normal closing ratio and apply it to the prospects in your pipeline. After you do that, reduce it by 25% to take into account all the unexpected delays, budget problems and competitive moves you’ll undoubtedly encounter.

4. Look for signs of commitment from the identified decision makers. If there is not a shred of skin in the game from them, then let them die a natural death. Remove them from your funnel.

5. Know your industry. It’s hard to anticipate buyers’ next moves when we don’t know their game.

6. Be sensitive to the vibes your prospects are sending out. Once we establish a relationship with them, they rarely tell us when they are unequivocally no longer interested. We have to be sensitive to their vibe or meta-message. The biggest mistake I see here is when sales professionals don’t make eye contact with prospects. A prospect’s eyes rarely lie.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
Forecasting is an important part of being a sales professional. Your employer doesn’t want you to overestimate or underestimate the business you’ll be bringing in. Your proficiency at this art and science will enhance your credibility with your sales manager and within your organization.

Further sales tips reading:
4 Sales Tips For Managing Your Pipeline
Are You Asking This Powerful Qualifying Question?
3 Reasons You Need A Sales Process

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
—
Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
—
Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
—
—

My new book, “Comatose Management,” is now available from amazon.com.

For more information about the book – including a short video book trailer, overview, reviews and how to order – please see the information at the bottom of this post.

Review By Lorri Freifeld, Editor-in-Chief, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine

“Through simple but effective and engaging stories, Sheaffer shows how bad management landed corporate America in its current financial predicament. ‘Comatose Management’ illuminates basic truths that most of us prefer to ignore throughout our careers — preferring to believe our managers are brilliant but eccentric rather than overindulged, ego-maniacal, psychotic, or just plain clueless. Here’s a wake-up call for all companies — and all employees at every level.”

Review By Janet Rush, Author Of Nine Books Including “Zig Ziglar Presents…Janet Rush On – Customer Service”

“Experience is the best teacher and the master of all traits. ‘Comatose Management’ brings to its readers the real life trials and tribulations of corporate employees and how you, whether in management or not, can survive and succeed. Thank you, Scott, for incorporating so many real life examples.”

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
—
Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
—
Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
—
—

A Sales Tips Blog subscriber recently wrote to me:

“…As a new sales rep, I used to dread role-plays. Those were typically done with a manager, and that pressure was far greater for me than meeting with a CEO. Perhaps you can give some ideas for both Sales Managers and less experienced Sales Professionals on how to improve those teaching/learning opportunities…

“Thanks again for all the great sales blog thoughts! Trevor A.”

Why Most Sales Role-Playing Exercises Are Junk
1. Sales managers normally handle role-plays, as Trevor notes. This adds a level of anxiety that isn’t present in real selling environments. We tend to perform for the sales manager instead of exercising our real world selling skills.

2. Customers and sales professionals are usually sitting face-to-face during telephone role-plays. How many customers have picture phones which provide body language cues?

3. For role-plays to be a true learning experience, most sales managers think they need an audience. They want the whole group to learn something. How often do we make sales calls with 20 people observing? The worst examples of this are role-plays done with the participants using microphones in front of an audience of hundreds. Get real.

4. Every call we make is not a first call, yet almost all role-plays are first calls. Great, the sales professional can repeatedly demonstrate the ability to introduce himself or herself; now what?

5. In virtually every role-play I’ve observed (too many), the person who is acting as the customer plays it either as a pushover or an extremely difficult person. In the real world of sales, we operate 98% of the time in-between those extremes.

Sales Tips For Role-Plays That Actually Teach Something

• Bring in a real customer. It doesn’t get any more authentic. Every selling organization has customers that would be more than willing to help in this area. I’ve done it myself with great success. Most sales managers don’t do this because it takes planning and they’re afraid of what they might hear as feedback from the customer.

• Use real customer scenarios when staging a role-play. Instead of creating a make-believe customer on the fly, gather information from a real customer and use them for the role-play. This makes things more believable.

• The sales manager needs to play the role of the sales professional sometimes (I love seeing sales managers sweat when the tables are turned). Salesperson to salesperson role-plays work well too. Sales managers need to avoid playing the role of the customer.

• Participants need to sit back to back when conducting telephone role-plays. This precludes any body-language input.

• Lose the audience and conduct role-plays with just the customer, salesperson and possibly one other person. Don’t always conduct them in a conference room either. Use a real office and have the customer sit behind the desk.

• Practice 2nd, 3rd and 4th calls to customers. A contract signing role-play is critical, yet almost never done.

• When playing a customer, pick the middle of the road on the nice-guy vs. bad-guy continuum. This is the temperament level we normally encounter with customers.

Sales Blog Wrap Up
Hope this helps, Trevor, and thanks for your question.

Further reading:
The Four Mandatory Steps of Customer Meeting Preparation

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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