6 Things CEOs Need to Watch If They Want Better Sales Performance
I have identified 6 main things CEOs need to focus on to improve sales performance,mostly in the form of how to manage your sales manager more effectively. […]
20 Sales Management Practices You Should Leave in 2015 – For Good!
The New Year approaches and here at Braveheart, our thoughts are filled with visions of the sales transformations to come. With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of poor sales management habits you should ditch as we start gearing up for an amazing sales year in 2016.
Here are 20 ineffective sales management practices you should ditch before they hurt your fresh start in 2016:
1. Hiring in desperation.
Hiring under a time crunch is unlikely to yield your best results. Give yourself some breathing room. Consistency in hiring excellence comes through ongoing recruitment efforts — that means looking for the next great salesperson before you need […]
18 Critical Questions CEOs Need to Ask Their Sales Managers
Written by Frédéric Lucas. This was originally posted by our OMG Partner affiliate in Canada, Prima Ressource and has been translated from French with minor adaptation.
As a CEO or business leader, you need to have regular conversations with your sales managers. This is true regardless of your managers’ skill level.
These conversations allow you to get an accurate understanding of the current state of your sales force while mentoring and coaching your sales managers. To get the answers you need, you have to ask the right questions at the right time. Here is our time-saving list of questions that every leader should ask of […]
Our Top 5 Sales Management Blog Posts of All Time
Some of our readers have been loyally following our posts from the beginning, way back in 2012. Others have discovered Braveheart’s Sales Management Blog more recently. If you stumbled upon us in the past year or two, you likely missed some of our most popular posts.
Here are our top five most widely-read posts of all time (plus three of our favorites). If you haven’t read these Braveheart classics yet, I think you will find them still relevant and full of useful insights.
1) Sales Managers Need to Spend 50% of Their Time Coaching Salespeople
Published on December 5, 2013, this post is short […]
How to Cure 3 Pervasive Sales Management Ills
Are you overwhelmed by an incessant barrage of questions from your sales team? Frustrated because they aren’t doing the things you did automatically as a salesperson? Perhaps you are exhausted from hounding them about meeting their obligations.
Never fear, sales managers . . . each of these three pervasive sales management ills has a relatively simple remedy. The best part? The solutions are in your grasp, and have been all along.
#1: The Avoider Disorder
You tend to avoid conflict. In a sticky situation, your art of avoidance may elevate to the level of Where’s Waldo?
The Problem:
You’ve let one (or more) of your […]
Sales Coaching: 4 Strategies for More Questions
Written by Frédéric Lucas. This was originally posted by our OMG Partner affiliate in Canada, Prima Ressource and has been translated from French with minor adaptation.
Effective implementation of a consultative sales approach means asking lots of questions. The art of query is a skill that sales managers should also develop to be more effective at coaching their sales team.
Asking lots of questions is rarely a natural ability in people, even among journalists! It’s a skill that is developed through practice and learning.
Your role as manager should lead you to coach your team and ask questions. Here are four strategies to help you.
Strategy # […]
Mastering the Art of Questioning is Not Just for Salespeople
Managers: Improve your sales management effectiveness . . . and minimize your burden
Just as we teach salespeople to be awesome question-askers, as sales managers, we also need to be experts in the art of questioning. The questions asked may just need a little tweaking.
All too often, sales managers feel the burden of directing their sales team. If your salespeople come to you with questions throughout the day, you may feel pressure to respond as an authority. I don’t believe it’s a conscious thought; still, the burden is squarely on the sales manager’s shoulders to tell the sales team how to […]
CEOs: What Should You Do About Your Sales Managers?
What does your sales manager do? What is he or she supposed to do?
If you are like many other CEOs and business owners, you have two different answers for those questions. My colleague, Karen Brown, recently blogged about the widespread misperceptions over sales managers’ value. We often witness a baseline misunderstanding about what role the sales manager should be playing in the organization.
Frequently, there is an expectation that the sales manager will sell and manage. And, in fact, the sales managers often have been promoted from the sales team after proving themselves as sales superstars, which may encourage ongoing dependence […]
Sales Managers: How to Win at Joint Sales Calls
I had a great conversation with a highly talented VP of Sales of a successful sales organization the other day. We had a spirited debate about the role that a sales manager should play in joint calls with their sales reps. So this got me thinking more deeply about how to best approach those joint calls for the greatest success. (Do you have an opinion about it? Weigh in on Twitter, or in the comments).
Of course there are two time frames when considering success, so it depends on your time horizon as to what success means.
For short term success, it […]
How to Fix the 5 Most Common Sales Team Defects
I wrote about this a few years ago in a series of blogs but I wanted to do an update that sums up the common causes of problems with sales teams — and their fixes— in a single article. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list.
Here are five of the most common defects in sales teams:
1. Your salespeople aren’t asking enough open-ended questions.
2. Your salespeople wait for leads to come to them.
3. Your new salesperson didn’t turn out to be the person you thought you were hiring.
4. Your salespeople go after the wrong deals.
5. Your salespeople don’t close.
Problem #1: […]