Kevin Hallenbeck

In the business world it’s often been said, “Our strongest asset is our people.” But how often is it stated that they are also your greatest weakness? Every business can benefit from a reality check. If you use a systematic strategy for developing the people in your key roles, that reality will likely reveal the valuable human assets on your team.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Every plan begins with a vision of a successful outcome. We encourage salespeople to dream big and work hard toward their vision of professional success. Effective CEOs and team leaders will always have a vision of what a top performing organization looks like.

Every salesperson should have their own ‘cookbook’ that provides the ingredients and the right directions to produce satisfying results.
Recipes for success come in many different flavors, styles and portion sizes. Every salesperson with any measure of achievement has used a plan, an approach, a method, and techniques that have produced positive results.

Writing and submitting business proposals is a lot of work without a guaranteed outcome. By virtue of spending time learning your prospects’ issues, meeting with them, offering recommendations, writing and producing the finished proposal, you’ve essentially become an unpaid consultant and invested a lot of professional man-hours without compensation. Even if you win the contract, you can’t always recover the cost of pursuit.

Providing regular field support is a welcomed responsibility for those sales managers and CEOs who want to be proactive in managing their sales teams toward higher achievement levels. Plus, if it isn’t fun, it will be interesting and eye-opening to say the least.

Brian, an inside sales rep, spent too much of his time chasing deals that ended up going nowhere. He knew it; his sales manager Francine knew it. Late one Friday afternoon, Francine asked him to give some thought to the matter, and to come up with some ideas about why this was a problem for him.

Sales coaching, rather than “managing” or “supervising,” is generally the most effective way to help improve the behaviors, attitudes and even techniques of salespeople, especially the ones who show promise but who have reached a plateau above which they can’t seem to climb any higher.

Here is a simple strategy model that helps you and your team optimize their time in the field.

The better salespeople understand the reasons and benefits, the easier they will find the transition.

Strong relationships with customers can make a positive difference to a company’s sales growth. There is a tendency, however, for some salespeople to focus way too much on the “softer side” of selling and neglect the strategic activities that lead to measurable results.