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The Unprecedented Sales Management Challenge for 2009
Sales managers are facing a set of challenges that they've never experienced before. They think their team is focused on generating sales, but they are completely distracted.
Featured Author:
Lee Salz
Lee B. Salz s a sales management guru who helps companies hire the right sales people, on-board them effectively, and focus their sales activity using his sales architecture® methodology. He is the President of Sales Architects , the C.E.O. of Business Expert Webinars and author of “Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager .
Lee can be reached at lsalz@SalesArchitecture.com or 763.416.4321.
Business Expert Webinars is the leading provider of business eLearning programs. With content for everyone in the business setting, these live events are designed to help you take your game to the next level without breaking your wallet. Visit
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More articles from this author:
Lee B. Salz
“Managers need to shift away from fear based management and develop more of a collaborative coaching culture. You cannot inspire others when you are afraid and you can’t be inspired when you’re full of fear and worry. Conduct more frequent one-to-one meetings, build greater accountability by relinquishing your role as Chief Problem Solver and have less tolerance for mediocrity. Ultimately, management needs to adapt, innovate and evolve or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits.”
-Keith Rosen, Executive Sales Coach and author of the award winning, “Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions”
“In tough times, sellers must be at the top of their game. As a sales manager, your job is to infuse your team with fresh thinking – to make sure they have the knowledge and skills to deal with today’s challenges. Start a “book of the month” club. Register for webinars or teleseminars put on by sales experts. Encourage sign up for sales e-newsletters. Lead weekly “how we won” sessions. For maximum impact, start now!"
-Jill Konrath, Sales Strategist & author, Selling to Big Companies
“Sales managers must help salespeople to maintain clarity, calm their nerves, help them function, keep them positive, get them motivated, challenge them to perform, urge them to fill their pipelines and hold them accountable to all of that. And talking the talk isn’t quite enough. When conducting pre-call strategizing, coaching must include how the account or call plan will be executed – with role play – so that sales managers are certain their salespeople truly have the ability to get it done. Your pipelines may have been thrown into a holding pattern. Orders haven’t canceled or been lost to competitors; they are simply delayed. The sooner that everyone gets over their initial reaction to the recession and gets back to just doing business, the sooner that money will loosen up and start changing hands again.”
-Dave Kurlan, Sales Development Expert, and author of “Baseline Selling”
“To get the malaise out of your sales team give them permission to press the “off button” and shut out the negative media. Protect seller’s natural optimism – have contests for the best joke of the day – buy coffee for the winner. Equip them with the winning words – role-play the very words decision-makers long/need/want to hear: which are how your product increases revenues; decreases expenses; mitigates risk.”
-Leslie Buterin, founder ColdCallingNetNews.com
“We read & hear the doom and gloom every day about this economy. Well, I believe we need to start managing our attitudes and mindsets, as well as our sales efforts. It is time to look at all the challenges, issues and problems as OPPORTUNITIES wearing disguises. Strip off the disguises, identify the opportunity and deliver a solution. Be positive, persistent, proactive and patient in this time of change.”
-J. Glenn Ebersole, “Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”
“Here’s my best piece of advice to those leading sales teams today: Do all you can to continually boost your staff’s confidence — confidence in themselves, confidence in their product, and confidence in the problems your product solves for your customers. Suggestions on how to do that: Remind them of successful case studies often. Feed them creative ways to confidently answer your top objections. Work with them one-on-one to develop their own individual style, so they sound and act naturally confident. Today’s customers have NO margin for error in choosing their suppliers; do all you can to help your staff be the ones that others can trust to make them look good!”
-Bill Guertin, CEO, The 800-Pound Gorilla and author of Reality Sells: How To Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again by Marketing Your Genuine Story
“Many sales teams are not only going through a big wake up call on the economic front, but are going through an earth moving generational shift…from Baby Boomers and Generation X running the show to men and women under the age of 30 making critical business decisions for our organizations. At the end of the day, they want to know “How are my ideas being incorporated and actually applied to our sales processes to make us better at what we do?”
-Bea Fields, Leadership and Generation Y Consultant and co-author of the book “Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders”
