One constant is the resolute expectation that sales managers continually improve performance. No matter how successful a sales team or selling organization is at the moment, there remains a need for continuous improvements in productivity and profitability. For a number of sales managers today, this call to achieve even more has become a stain on an otherwise spotless management career. And, according to numerous sales managers, the question is simple: “How do we get even more sales than we are currently producing?”

As a training and education company that offers both advanced selling skills and management leadership education and coaching; and having educated and coached more than 40,000 professional sales leaders; we have come to what we believe are some very credible conclusions. Consistent improvement requires 5 key components for success.

Key components for continuous improvement success:

1.      Understand that business improvement is never finished.

Leonardo Da Vinci said that “Art is never finished, it’s only abandoned.” It’s important for sales managers to recognize and communicate that improvement never stops. No matter how successful a sales professional, sales team or company becomes, the need for consistent improvement persists. The most successful sales managers don’t sell every change to employees. They build employee improvement by creating a work environment where improvement is expected and then simply lead their team in the current direction of perceived opportunity.

One of the fundamental sales manager and/or leadership mistakes we’ve witnessed time and again is the communication to the company or team that the current goal is the finish line. It’s great to get the team pumped up and engaged to achieve the current goal; but don’t give the impression that the achievement of the goal is the final resting place of success. It’s only a stepping stone on the way to the future, and with different information or strategy this goal may also change.

2.      Define and communicate your current perception of success.

We all know that to be successful in business we must continually change as information, circumstances, and opportunities change. It is important for sales managers to consistently focus their employees on the current view of success. Don’t worry about what you cannot control, but focus instead on the things that you can do that will take you closer to your current goals. Tomorrow we may decide to proceed in a different direction, but based on our current vision of success, we can ask “what tasks should we perform today that will take us closer to our goals?” By helping employees understand and work toward the current goals, daily improvements lead to greater success however it is currently defined. Remember that like life, business is a journey and a process, not a series of destinations and plateaus.

3.      The shortcut to improvement is the people.

The most successful managers know that true, sustainable business success can only be achieved by the development and improvement of their most valuable resource – their employees. Managers must focus their daily decision and work effort around developing their staff. Great managers know that it is much more difficult to achieve any objective when your staff is unprepared or lacks the ability or attitude to accomplish the goal. At Learning Outsource Group, we focus managers on what we believe is the number one management leadership priority: “Developing my staff to perform their job responsibilities better than I ever could,” or at least to the best of their capability. Managers can only do so much of the work themselves before they reach the inevitable point of diminishing returns. Great leaders diversify their abilities to and through their team or organization in order to best leverage the talent and ability of many to achieve greater goals. Only by developing our staff can we continue to make the necessary business improvements and continue to achieve greater goals.

4.      Focus on daily behavior and activity.

Once the current goal has been defined and communicated, every employee and manager should focus their intentions and efforts toward the work that can be performed today which should move the team closer to the goal. As I’ve said many times in sales and sales management training programs, “Success comes most easily from doing the right things… every day!”

For selling professionals this means working from a daily plan that they have determined will take them closer to achieving their portion of the overall goal. This means that sales managers should lead and coach to those daily employee goals, activities, and behaviors. If managers wish to achieve and improve on current and future goals then it must be understood that weekly, monthly, or quarterly goals are more easily accomplished by helping sales staff stay focused on the daily behavior and activity that will eventually culminate in overall success.  And if sales managers want salespeople to be consistently more successful and continually improve over time, then they must understand that improvement is incremental and that it is the daily implementation of the effective strategies and tasks, performed with the appropriate professional attitude, that delivers long term, ever increasing improvements.

5.      Celebrate small successes!

A very common mistake by managers is allowing good selling efforts to go too long without review or recognition.  Once a manager truly understands the improvement value of focusing on daily behavior and activity, then celebrating small successes becomes a natural opportunity for leveraging daily employee achievement into grander team and company goals.

Most selling days contain a lot of work with very little selling reward. And yet, selling professionals commit to the work and selling challenges anyway. Sales managers who monitor and coach daily sales activities and behaviors create many more opportunities for coaching and employee improvement motivation. We should never underestimate the power of recognition and appreciation when motivating others to step outside their own box for consistency and improvement. Celebrating the smaller daily activity and behavior successes of employees will create a working platform much more conducive to meeting the ever increasing expectations for improvement. Showing employees that you care about them and what they do every day is one way to positively encourage people to try and do even more.

Utilizing these 5 key components can empower sales managers to achieve continuous improvement with their team and throughout their career.

Kim D. Ward – Director of Training and Education – Learning Outsource Group

©Learning Outsource Group 2013

The post Sales Leadership: Keys to Unlocking Consistent Improvement appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.

Benefit #2:

Motivation is “internal” not “external.”

In order to achieve the plans you create for yourself it is extremely important you begin to visualize not only the end result but also the path you must travel to those achievements. Developing, consistently reviewing, visualizing, and, if needed, changing your written plans, allows you to make better decisions, effectively organize time use, and reduce stress.

We’ve learned over time that “if it’s going to be … it’s up to me!” We can’t count on others to be our motivators. It’s nice when it happens, but we are each in charge of our personal motivation. Visualizing and understanding the path in front of you, while completing the tasks you’ve envisioned to produce your chosen results, motivates you to keep pressing onward. A Tactical Map places the focus on internal motivation by helping you understand the course ahead of you.

But there is an additional value of Tactical Mapping, which shouldn’t be overlooked.

Benefit #3:

Anything you think about long enough and hard enough is bound to come true.

If you consistently think of good things, you receive good things. If you consistently think of bad things, it’s the bad things that manifest in your life.

As we’ve said, we’ve learned that we all need, at some level, personal and positive motivation in our lives. The trick is to find those motivators that can be sustained over time and not just “fire you up” and get you started. Too often people come up with great “ideas” only to have the ideas and the result fade away over time. You need a mechanism that allows you to stay focused and motivated during your journey. Working with Tactical Maps provides you with common and consistent motivation that helps you “stay the course” and achieve higher levels of chosen success. The journey detailed on your map can fill your thoughts.

According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, (The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit Formation), too much or too little motivation can actually work against you in achieving your goals. Too much motivation and we tend to burn out too quickly. Too little motivation and we tend to become frustrated while waiting on longer term results. Tactical Mapping provides the appropriate amounts of stimulation and motivation in order to achieve the most profound short-term and long-term results. If your goal is to improve your selling skills or to learn consultative selling, for example,  a Tactical Map can help you identify the steps you can take to do so.

For help in starting your own Tactical Map, we’ve created an exercise to get you started.

From Ward and Cooke, We’re on Your Side! Copyright © 2006 by iUniverse.

The post Planning for Success: Sales Development Part 2 – Lessons in Leadership appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.

Vision + Planning + Competent Effort = Results

Most people have some idea of what they’d like their future to be. We’ve heard employees say things like, “Someday … I’d like to work on a team where everyone gets along.” Or, “Someday … I’d like to do work which excited me.” We’ve even heard, “Someday … I’d like to be a manager.”

Well, someday could be closer than you think. We’d like to help you bring the distant horizon in your mind into clear focus and closer to you.

We’ve gained some valuable knowledge on our journey from employees and sales professionals to sales managers and we’d like to pass on to you the catalyst that can bring your chosen future closer to you and maybe even into your current reality.

Success doesn’t come to you … you go to it!

The first step in creating your own future is “Vision.” You can begin developing your vision by working through the “Dreams List” and “Career Map” exercises on the Learning Outsource Group website. There are many people having some level of difficulty seeing their future inside their current company. There’s nothing wrong with that if it has always been their intention not to stay. Still, if you would like to achieve higher levels of personal opportunity and satisfaction with your current company, we believe we can help. The exercises you’ve already completed will help you to envision more happiness and satisfaction from your relationship with your company.

The next step is to begin to develop a Tactical Map. This map should include a series of steps and tasks you plan to accomplish which will speed you on your way to your desired goals. The Tactical Map has three specific benefits. We will discuss the first benefit in this post.

Benefit #1

A one thousand-mile journey begins with a single step. – Chinese Proverb

Quite often people have a general idea of what they would like the future to look like, but no clarity of steps, procedures, tasks or work which needs to be produced in order to achieve it. A tactical approach needs to be created to achieve the more expansive and possibly longer “Big Picture.” A Tactical Map helps you to understand more clearly what actions should be taken in order to logically realize the larger vision you’ve begun to create for yourself.

In the next post, Planning for Success: Sales Development Part 2 – Lessons in Leadership, we will cover two more benefits gained from creating and using a Tactical Map.

From Ward and Cooke, We’re on Your Side! Copyright © 2006 by iUniverse.

The post Planning for Success: Sales Development Part 1 – Lessons in Leadership appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.

More times than not these days, when a salesperson meets a customer for the first time, the customer appears to have preconceived ideas about the salesperson long before they ever get to really know them. And … they are not normally good perceptions. Have you ever wondered why this sometimes occurs when you meet new customers?

Fortunately, many customers’ negative perceptions of “salespeople” have nothing to do with you, your intentions toward them, or your personal selling style. The real reason this happens so frequently is because as human beings our perceptions are forged in our previous experiences. And many of the previous experiences that customers have endured with other salespeople have not been good ones.

As we have suggested in sales training and sales management training classes for almost 20 years, if we consider the previous attitudes and behaviors that customers have endured from salespeople over the years, it’s no wonder that customers do not initially like or trust salespeople when they initially meet them. I’m sure we’ve all had one or more experiences with the “stereotypical” salesperson and as such we can certainly relate to this common customer perception.

The time has come to rise above the selling traditions and attitudes that our customers no longer care for. We must do what we have always known to be right, and in doing so we rebrand professional selling … as some of the most honorable and valuable work a person can do!

If you want to change the customer’s perception… then change the experience! By behaving differently than customers might expect, we differentiate ourselves from other salespeople and experiences that customers do not care for.

The term “Customer Centric” has become very popular in business education and sales training circles over the last few years. We at Learning Outsource Group agree that salespeople and their companies should become more “customer” focused in their approach to selling and servicing their clients. And yet, it is likely that many professional salespeople still do not understand what Customer Centric really means or how it should be exhibited as selling behavior.

Let’s start with a very simple explanation of the term Customer Centric. According to the businessdictionary.com definition:

Customer Centric means creating a positive consumer experience at the point of sale and post sale.

We believe that by becoming truly Customer Centric in their selling approach, salespeople can both competitively differentiate themselves and their company but also stand a much better chance of getting past the selling barriers that customers have created to repel the stereotypical salesperson behavior they no longer care for.

In our sales education classes we suggest that there are three things a salesperson must do to become more Customer Centric in their selling approach.

Customer Centric Selling Skills:

1.      Eliminate stereotypical selling behavior from their selling approach.

We have worked diligently over the years to help salespeople replace old “control and persuade” selling techniques with more contemporary strategies and behaviors that help customers walk a decision path of self discovery. Only by eliminating all of the behaviors that customers perceive as offensive and replacing it with proper consultative selling behavior can we encourage customers to view us as different and be more motivated to partner with us in their decision.

 2.      Maintain a constant focus on helping customers improve their condition.

The short cut to the sale has always been the customer. Only by focusing on the customer, their current condition and plans, desires, and goals for the future, can we successfully partner and align with their decision process.

According to research, customers are tired of salespeople scheduling appointments and then spewing presentations about features and possible benefits. Customers are aligning themselves with those salespeople who ask questions, understand the customer’s goals, and then work with the customer to design the right solution and help them achieve measurable goals.

3.      Maintain a full and consistent sales funnel and pipeline.

Selling professionals need to do what is necessary to keep them in the most Customer Centric position. As an example, in our sales training classes, we always reinforce the need for consistent prospecting. We cannot leave ourselves in a position where we need the sale more than we desire to help the customer. Maintaining a full pipeline which is loaded with enough possible business to help us meet or exceed our selling goals is the way we ensure the opportunity for a Customer Centric attitude at all times.

An effective way for sales professionals to differentiate themselves and shatter the negative salesperson stereotype is to focus on Customer Centric selling. By replacing pushy selling strategies, keeping a focus on helping the customer, and keeping a full sales pipeline, you, too, can stand out and overcome your customers’ negative perceptions, and win more profitable business.

Kim D. Ward – Director of Training and Education – Learning Outsource Group

© Learning Outsource Group 2013

The post Sales Strategy: Selling Differentiation Through Customer Centric Selling Skills appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.

How many times have you thought about creating a plan? If you’re like many people you’ve probably thought about creating plans for some specific purpose and you may have even done some planning.

Here is a great reason for planning:

When you don’t know where you’re going… all roads lead there.

                                                                                Paraphrased – Lewis Carroll

It’s easy to end up lost or unfulfilled when you lack direction and purpose. Most people seem to have some idea of where their life is heading. Very few actually create written plans for the trip. We all possess the ability to achieve our own happiness, and we should employ the tools that will produce for us the future we have chosen. In sales and consultative selling, a clear plan is the quickest path to success.

We are all moving toward our future. We will go happily and willingly, or we will go kicking and screaming. But, we’re all going.

Tomorrow never comes. Some people are waiting on tomorrow. They think, “I’ll start my planning… tomorrow. I’ll change my attitude… tomorrow.” Tomorrow, I’m going to start figuring out what I want and how to get it.” Tomorrow never comes.

If we are going to get the most out of the job we have today and the work we do, we must start to evaluate our current position and define what our intentions are for our current and possible future roles with the company.

As your managers, we know some of you are occasionally frustrated with various components of your job. It’s O.K. We sometimes get frustrated too. The perspective we prefer to focus on is:

What do I expect to get out of the relationship I have with this company? And, am I getting what I need in order to be happy? If not, what am “I” doing about it?

We believe every employee should routinely ask him or herself these questions. We want you to be happy at work. We want you to feel productive here. The truth is… if you determine what you want and will share that with us, it makes it a lot easier for us to help you obtain it. One of the best ways to guide you is through sales coaching. We have some suggestions and tools that help us managers to get the most out of our job and we’d like to pass those strategies on to you.

Ten Career Enhancement Strategies:

1. Be Aware

Take mental notes. Stay alert and be aware of the people and situations around you. This awareness will provide you with the opportunities that we all need to learn new things that could enhance our situation, career and potential.

2. Learn Something New

Try to learn something new every day. This doesn’t mean you have to try to learn a new skill every day. It may be something like a better way to communicate with peers, your supervisor or other departments. It may be as simple as choosing to work each day with a positive attitude and happy disposition.

3. Align Yourself With Your Company

Understand what the company’s mission and goals are. Attempt to find ways to contribute to the “big picture.” Understanding your role and how it fits into the scheme of things will help you to gain a sense of personal value and take you off of the home team bench by putting you in the game. Ask yourself, “How can I make a difference from my current role or position?” We all know that opportunity is more likely to come to the person who applies him or herself. Figure out what the company wants to accomplish and find a way to participate in that achievement.

4. Look for Your Next Opportunity

By engaging yourself and your job you begin to create opportunity for yourself which, in many cases, would not otherwise occur. It becomes much easier to get engaged and stay engaged when you’ve identified the next step in your career. The most important question in taking advantage of any opportunity or solving any problem is, “what am I willing to do next?” Engaging yourself helps you to create personal satisfaction and engaging your job helps you to uncover opportunities for your own happiness. We know if you don’t get what you need on your current job you may begin to look elsewhere. We’d love to have you continue to work with us!

5. Do the Right Thing

Honesty, trust, integrity and credibility are the cornerstones of all great relationships. Regardless of our role in the company, we all have a responsibility to perform our job function to the very best of our ability. Let people know that you care. Like you, we also care about our clients, the people we work with and the company mission. Doing what is right is always the right thing to do. Consider that everyone eventually leaves the company. How will people remember you? What legacy will you leave behind? Help those that struggle. Be an inspiration to those in need. Always tell the truth and, if you make a promise, do your very best to keep it. Doing these things helps us all to live a life worth living.

6. Be Proactive

Look for ways to improve what you do. No matter what your role with the company, those people who look for ways to make things better commonly find better ways. Those who expect things to worsen commonly find problems as well. Make the choice to proactively participate. You have great value and so does your perspective on our business. Find a way to participate beyond the company’s normal expectations for an employee in your role and we promise it won’t go unnoticed. Sales training and sales management training can help you to improve the skills that you bring to the company. We believe your ideas and creativity have merit.  Please allow us the opportunity to understand them so we can partner with you to make things better for everyone.

7. Communicate Up

We don’t really want to tell you what “to do.” We would prefer you make those decisions on your own. Still, we would like to know what “you’re doing.” So help us. Please communicate up. We may have some special insight, which might help you use your time more effectively. Or we might possess some special knowledge that could make your job a little easier. When employees keep managers informed of plans and outcomes, it helps us to more often work from the “same page.” Besides, we want to give you feedback. Communicating up allows us more opportunity to express exactly what we think about the job you’re doing and provides a forum for us to thank and recognize your good work.

8. Be Patient with Peers

We know you bond with and appreciate some peers more than others. That’s natural. We are all more likely to appreciate those people we like. And yet, everyone has value and the potential to contribute at some level. Be patient with everyone and you may find that someone will actually contribute in an unexpected way. A new employee that knows very little about her new job may bring a level of enthusiasm that has declined in a more tenured player.  The more tenured player might use this same enthusiasm to pull himself out of a slump. One the other hand, tenured players may possess certain knowledge about the nuances of a job or a company that newer employees might find useful. This contribution may assist the newer employee in improving productivity or personal satisfaction.  Every one around you may, in some way, benefit your growth, development and opportunity on the job.  So… be patient with peers! Leverage your time, talent, attitude, skills and abilities with others.

9. Balance Work with Play

We’re sure you’ve heard, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Work hard. Make a difference. Make improvements and smile while you do these things. Enjoy the time that you have with family and friends. Enjoy hobbies. Get plenty of exercise and eat healthfully. Remember that we don’t live to work, we work to live. So live well and balance work with play.

10. Create a Career Map and Review it Regularly

We are all better prepared when we know where it is we want to go. By creating a Career Map that consists of Values, Interests, Attitudes, Competencies and Career Strategy we define our best possible work related situations. By reviewing this map regularly, we keep the vision of our priorities and desires fresh in our minds so we may most easily uncover and identify the best path to our chosen future. Understanding your current selling skills can empower you to value your strengths and improve those areas that are a challenge to you.

For help in completing your own Career Map, we’ve created an exercise to get you started.

From Ward and Cooke, We’re on Your Side! Copyright © 2006 by iUniverse.

The post Creating Your Future: A Sales Coaching Message from Lessons in Leadership appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.

A successful person will take responsibility for what needs to be done… and do it.

The challenge is many people are working very hard, attempting to do the right things, all the while losing sight of why they were willing to accept the responsibility in the first place.

More people today are having greater difficulty imagining any long-term future inside their current company.  According to The Herman Group, creator of The Herman Trend Alert, several recent studies suggest as many as 40 percent of American workers have mentally “checked out” of their job. These studies also suggest more than half of American workers are at some level dissatisfied with their current job. Wow! How can such a large percentage of American workers be somewhat dissatisfied with a job most of them applied for and were subsequently hired for?

Finding answers involves understanding the questions.

There are many reasons for the dissatisfaction so many Americans feel. Some of these reasons are:

1. Changing business environments
2. Competitive job markets
3. Corporate reorganizations
4. Mergers/ acquisitions
5. Changing technology
6. Increased personal economic pressures
7. Poor or slow communications
8. Unfocused work energy

In order to begin the process of creating and achieving reasonable satisfaction in our work life, we must work for what we believe are important reasons.  If we are to actuate our journey and achieve reasonable satisfaction from working we should first attempt to answer the question, “Why do I work?” This can be especially important in the sales profession as consistent communication with management and effective sales coaching can help you answer these questions and keep your motivation high.

A prominent American automotive corporation did a survey several years ago and, among other questions, they asked one thousand 45-year-old males, “Why do you work?” The most popular answer to the question was, “Because I have to.” This answer suggests two things:

1. Many people work because of the responsibilities they’ve chosen to fulfill to their loved ones and creditors.

2. These same people may lose sight of their longer-term dreams and goals because of the sometimes-overwhelming short-term responsibilities they choose to accept and attempt to achieve.

Undefined and unwritten dreams fade away.

One example of this is that many young adults today have the largely un-clarified dream of someday achieving some form of financial independence. Still, history and reality suggest without receiving help, very few people are actually going to achieve their financial desire. Less than 5% of Americans actually achieve this status, and we live in a country that provides some of the highest levels of opportunity in the world.

Without some form of written plan to keep us focused on attempting positive headway on the road to financial freedom it becomes very easy to become entangled in the day-to-day issues, which seem to require so much energy. Over time, we can lose sight of dreams for the future and become frustrated with our lack of progress. Focusing on longer term objectives and maintaining our motivation is something that we pay attention to in our sales management training programs.

When we produce work focused on only short-term gain we often create for ourselves long-term pain.

Many people also desire to work in some role providing them with the opportunity to be interested, challenged and personally satisfied. And yet, the Herman Group’s study suggests that over half of Americans are not realizing any level of this desire either.

We need dreams to keep us focused, energetic and directed when many of the issues and requirements at work attempt to tax us beyond what we feel are our reasonable capabilities. There are always so many people pulling at us from every direction.  In an attempt to satisfy the needs of everyone around us, the day-to-day work of the job may become even more difficult to enjoy. We may even begin to feel as if no one really cares about us. If we don’t keep our dreams fresh and vivid in our minds we can become so focused on the “fray of the day” that we can actually loose sight of the bigger picture that we’ve envisioned. Ultimately, we may set ourselves up for the long-term pain of never realizing the hopes and dreams that we had for ourselves when we where younger.

Dreams fuel the desire to persevere through hardship

And what about personal hardship? We know you have a life outside of work. As managers, so do we.  Another reason our dreams are so important is that we contend with the issues of our personal life as well as the issues of the job. It can all become a little overwhelming and we can easily lose our enthusiasm for a job that many of us hoped would help us to get a leg up on our future opportunities.

We’re all more capable than we know.

As human beings we have each been given a gift. This gift is an ability to endure much more than we believe possible and achieve much more than we believe ourselves capable. All we need do, in order to begin exploring and realizing our potential, is to employ the mechanisms that enhance our natural abilities. A positive outlook is one of the first steps in sales management development or leadership effectiveness.

Consider this observation from Benjamin Franklin:

A life without dreams becomes hardship.

There is an old saying that goes like this:

Whatever we vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.

               Anonymous

We believe this to be true.

Use our worksheet Create Your Dreams List to help define your dreams and goals in life.

From Ward and Cooke, We’re on Your Side! Copyright © 2006 by iUniverse.

The post Dare to Dream: Sales Management Development – Lessons in Leadership appeared first on Learning Outsource Group.