Blog - Braveheart Sales Performance

Batter Up! Applying Sports Theory to Sales Performance

With the beginning of baseball season I find myself thinking about what those baseball players have done all winter to prepare for the season. It is a long and grueling season with 162 games per team in MLB. It isn’t too dissimilar from an effective sales year or career. The best salespeople recognize that their year is like a marathon. They have to consistently and methodically perform.

I believe that most MLB players spend their off-season preparing for the upcoming season. They don’t sit around and eat bon-bons, expecting that they will show up for Spring Training in perfect form. They […]

Five Most Common Complaints About the Sales Team – Part Five

As the final installment in my series regarding the most common complaints I hear about the sales team, I have saved my personal favorite for last. “My salespeople can’t close.” I hear this a LOT. Many times this statement is followed by some other comment such as “Can’t you teach them some closing tips? They just don’t seem to know what to say.”

It really isn’t that easy, although there are others out there that will tell you that it is. It isn’t, because frequently the fact that they can’t or don’t close is merely a symptom of some other lurking problem, […]

Five Most Common Complaints About the Sales Team – Part Four

#4 Salespeople Who Fight for the Wrong Deal

As fourth in a series, I will discuss today another one of the five most common complaints about the sales team. Today’s article is focused on those salespeople who try to get every deal done and fight for the ones that don’t fit. I hear this complaint frequently and sometimes it even ends up with the sales manager or president just giving in and letting the salesperson do the deal, even when it isn’t the kind of business they really want. Then there is frustration about the salesperson and the time they waste […]

Five Most Common Complaints About the Sales Team – Part Three

#3 They Aren’t Who They Appeared To Be in the Interview

The third biggest complaint I hear from business owners and sales managers about salespeople is that they aren’t who they appeared to be in the interview. If you hire the wrong person it is your fault not theirs. Everybody is going to be on their best behavior in the interview. Any salesperson with an ounce of skill will probably try to bond with you so you like them. The good news is that this problem is totally fixable. But the problem lies with you as previously stated. Frequently we see […]

Five Most Common Complaints About the Sales Team – Part Two

#2 They Wait for the Phone to Ring

This is the second in a five-part series discussing the 5 most common complaints I hear from business owners and sales team leaders. Read the first installment here. If you have been in business for more than five or six years then you may remember a time when the phone rang and you had enough or more business than your salespeople could handle. Since the economic downturn began several years ago, that dynamic has shifted to the point where most salespeople need to actually proactively generate some of their own business. […]

Five Most Common Complaints About the Sales Team – Part One

#1 My Salespeople Don’t Ask Enough Open-ended Questions

As a sales consultant for a number of years, I have heard countless frustrations and complaints from owners and business leaders about their sales teams, mostly because those owners are interested in an increase in sales and they don’t see it happening. My next five articles will look at the top five. This is #1.

My Salespeople Don’t Ask Enough Open-ended Questions.

Inconsistency or inability to ask good questions is merely a symptom of an underlying cause. The reason they don’t ask could be caused by a variety of things. Some of which you, as […]

How to Be a Sales David When Going Against Goliath

I was talking with a physician about the dilemma associated with the primary care physician business today. She likes maintaining an independent business, but it is more difficult to do that cost effectively. And what she is also up against is the large advertising budget that large healthcare systems have. Well you might be saying, what does this have to do with my business? Doctors don’t have to sell. Well, it has everything to do with your business if you are a typical small or medium sized business where there is a very large competitor in the market.

If you are […]

Sales Manager Blocks Improvement Attempts. Don’t Be Held Hostage.

We were engaged by the owner of a small, but growing company to analyze his sales team and its effectiveness. During the discussion about the different players on the team and what he was trying to accomplish, I learned that the real reason the owner was interested in outside help was because he was concerned about the effectiveness of the sales manager. The sales manager had been in the industry for years and was quite knowledgeable so was very valuable to the organization, but the owner was concerned that the manager wasn’t doing all that was necessary to get the […]

Dumping the Crisis Management Burden on Sales Managers Dampens Growth

In my last article, Crisis Management Hampers Sales Managers’ Effectiveness, I discussed the shocking amount of time that many sales managers are spending on crisis management. I conducted a rough poll of business owners regarding this topic and provided a list of possible ways that the sales manager could be spending the bulk of his or her time. Much to my disappointment, the vast majority of the business owners polled indicated that their sales managers spend the bulk of their time in crisis management. This is valuable time that they could be spending coaching and motivating their salespeople to improve […]

Crisis Management Hampers Sales Managers’ Effectiveness

I just returned from sunny Marco Island, FL where I was speaking to a group of business owners about sales management. Actually the title of my program was “Ineffective Sales Management Kills Growth… Duh”. The group included both business owners who directly manage their sales teams as well as business owners who have dedicated sales managers.

As I usually do I discussed the 5 essential skills of effective sales managers: Coaching, Motivating, Holding Salespeople Accountable, Recruiting and Mentoring. By the way you can download my new eBook, The 5 Essentials of Effective Sales Management, on this topic. Without fail, when I […]