Look for patterns

When monitoring your sales peoples activities, look for patterns. For example question why they make multiple calls on some prospects, and only one or two on others. If this is because the regular calls have higher potential or the rep is making progress this is acceptable. If they make frequent calls on accounts that are nice to the reps and avoid the prospects who give them a hard time this is a bad thing. Avoiding pain is the natural thing to do, but it is not the productive thing to do. Help your reps manage their territories and hold them accountable for calling on the accounts that will grow their revenue.

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Thanks Jim Busch

Words for Leaders

"Catch people doing something right"

This phrase, made popular by management guru Tom Peters, describes the attitude of a good leader. If you only notice your people when they are doing something wrong, after a while they will tune you out. You will be pegged as a constant complainer. You should always strive for a 3:1 ratio, making 3 positive comments for each negative one. In practice I far exceed this count. If people hear good things from you, they will pay close attention to your words.

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Thanks for reading, Jim Busch

Collecting intelligence

Many years ago I was part of the U.S. Army Security Agency. Their purpose is to collect intelligence on our country's enemies. This isn't as cool as it sounds, there were no cloaks, daggers or vodka martinis shaken or stirred involved. Mostly the ASA collects newspapers, records radio and TV broadcasts and scans magazines. They analyse these to look for patterns that might give off a clue to what the "bad guys" are up to. You can perform the same role for your company. Have your reps collect as much information about the competition as possible. Have them ask their customers for collateral materials and proposals from competitors. Keep a file on each competitor and review them to look for patterns in their activities. Put together a competitive profile for each competitors. This will help your reps to formulate sound competitive proposals and to counter competitive objections.

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Thanks Jim Busch

Words for leaders

This is the motto of the United States Navy Construction Battalions the "Seabees":

"The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer."

I like this quote because of the attitude it promotes. It is up to us as managers to set the pace of the organization. We should always here a clock ticking in the back of our heads. We should always want to "get on with it" no matter how challenging the task before us. During WWII the Seabees built airstrips in record time in the middle of a jungle while under heavy attack. This makes getting a project done on deadline look pretty easy.

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Thanks Jim Busch

How we earn our money

When you get down to it, we get paid for having substantive conversations with our reps. Each day we should talk to the reps about what happened the previous day and what their plans are for the current day. This should only take a few minutes and will keep you constantly up to date on your rep's activities. The reps should report out on the business closed, the new contacts made, commitments for future business and potential problems. They should also be able to tell you the area they will be working that day, and the business they expect to close. When reps report out on their performance and plans they become accountable for their activities.

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thanks Jim Busch

Words for Leaders

Here's some good advice from "25 Management Lessons From the Customer's Side of the Counter" by James H. Donnelly, Jr.

"Management and leadership are exercised outside the office, not inside the office."

I am a huge fan of Errol Flynn movies. These idealistic films portray the world as it should be, rather than how it is. There is a line from "They died with their boots on" that I love. As his regiment is about to go into battle Flynn's character is asked "Where will the General's headquarters be located sir?" to which Flynn replies "At the head of the attacking column!" Take Errol's advice, the best way to know what is going on and what your people need is to place yourself in the middle of the action.

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Thanks Jim Busch

Should you hold a sales meeting

Some people think meetings are a waste of your sales people's time. I agree if the meetings are unplanned and disorganized. I like to hold a short meeting the 1st thing on Monday morning to get the reps started and set the pace for the week. Throughout the week I put notes, ideas and issues for my meeting into a folder. I use this folder to plan a quick motivational and training meeting. I see this as a jump start for their week. Next week I will cover what I include in my meetings.

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Thanks Jim Busch