Q & A for Sales Leaders: Communicate Expectations

Q & A for Sales Leaders: Communicate Expectations

Sales Leaders need to communicate expectations of their sales persons directly to them. It should not be a secret. It should also not be a matter of negotiation.  If you have not given clear and specific expectations, the sales people will default to what feels...
Q&A for Sales Professionals:  Conflicting goals

Q&A for Sales Professionals: Conflicting goals

Question:  What do I do when my goals don’t match the company’s goals for me? Answer:  This is a question that I hear, in one form or another, pretty regularly. I can look at this is in two ways – expressing two different situations.  In the first, there is a...

Q & A for sales professionals: Five minute pitch

Question:   A customer (a contractor) has given me and one of my competitors five minutes to present our respective products to him. I know all the features and benefits of the product, but I don’t want to be like everyone else and give him what he’s heard before.  At...
Q&A for Sales Managers:  Goals in an uncertain economy

Q&A for Sales Managers: Goals in an uncertain economy

Question:  How can I set sales goals with any degree of reliability when this year’s economy is so uncertain? Answer: I can appreciate your problem.  The economic atmosphere is so uncertain it’s difficult to predict what is going to happen even a month from now. But...
Best Practices for Sales People #6: Plans every sales call

Best Practices for Sales People #6: Plans every sales call

It continues to amaze me that so many sales people shuffle into most of their sales calls with very little, if any, prior planning.  I suppose that is why this is one of the practices of the best. Most surveys of how field sales people really spend their time conclude...