Your Sales Management Guru

When You Leave

Sales leaders sometimes travel and sometimes they even take the time for a vacation! I can remember leading a sales management workshop 10 years ago when at a break it seemed almost everyone ran to a phone to check in and “put out fires”. Two of attendees stayed behind and chatted casually about the class or other topics.  It was a clear study of who were in control and perhaps who were not, the two sales managers must have known that even without them, their team and organization would continue to function.

In today’s world with text, email, vmail and mobile phones staying in touch is easy-sometimes too easy.  There are a few rules in leading a high performance sales team when out of the office.

One: Make your team independent of you. Many first time sales managers feel they must “serve” their team and solve all their problems. While support is critical, absorbing their problems  does not solve their problems, it only adds to yours and  limits your time to be effective on the strategic and key tactical actions you need to  take to be successful. When a salesperson presents a problem to you remember to say:  “What are your 3 recommendations?” This will help them pre-think the issue before burdening you and perhaps solve the problem themselves.

Two: Assign Responsibility. When you are going to be away for a period of time, assign one or several salespeople to various roles. Obviously you may limit their responsibility, but allow someone to run the Monday Morning Meeting or lead a Sales Training program and if you have new or younger salespeople on your team, make sure each has an assigned senior to provide mentoring. These small tasks allow you to test and train others for future sales management roles.

Third: Turn off your phones.  When you are at a conference or workshop or even taking a day off, enjoy the time to focus and clear the brain or what I call, “get some fresh air”.  Sure you can check your email from time to time but limit it to three times a day.

If you are living in a crisis mode and need to be in constant contact with everyone then you might like to take the sales management Audit Analysis on our web site to find out what you need to focus on to improve your sales management systems. www.AcumenManagement.com

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd. “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!   Ken provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.  

Email:   Ken@AcumenMgmt.com  Web:  www.AcumenManagement.com Blog:  www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

The Mental Side of Sales and Leadership

 I read a quote once supposedly by Jack Nicklaus: “golf is 80% above the shoulders” and as a bogey golfer I have come to totally appreciate that comment and admittedly it is a problem for me.  I asked Jim West, our Director of Golf what his recommendation would be for a book or video on the mental side of golf…he quickly suggested:  The Golfer’s Mind, play to play great, by Dr. Bob Rotella, I found it on Barnes & Noble and four days later it arrived.  On the plane to Seattle Sunday morning I read about ¾ of the book. It’s an easy read with “ah ha’s” throughout the book, with great idea’s, practical suggestions and stories of his client’s of t he Pro’s we see on TV and the battles they face and philosophies they use to maintain their mental focus for 72 holes.

In reflecting on the Dr. Bob’s recommendations it is easy to translate the same thoughts to our world of sales and sales leadership. There are 29 short chapters in his book. The first chapter is:  “A Golfing Philosophy”; what is your sales philosophy?  “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t selling” has been mind. The author describes the need to relax and enjoy the challenges golf brings and the importance of controlling the mind at all times. In sales we have peaks and valleys, successes and failures as professionals; you must work to control your subconscious mind-feeding positives, and not becoming distracted on the golf course or during a sales process.

Goals and Dreams is another chapter. Dr. Bob breaks down the reality of goals vs dreams, they are actually different elements to success, in my keynote I speak to the concept of dreams and goals and the fact there are no unrealistic dreams, only unrealistic timelines.  In sales we must set our dreams, and then specific tactical goals that will help us achieve the dreams. Setting your Target is another chapter, in this work he describes clearly focusing on where you want the ball to land, finding a very specific detailed spot, a tree, a 3 foot spot of fairway, the back of the hole before you putt and then letting the  relax body execute. Having a specific planned objective for every sales call becomes critical and then relaxing to reduce tension allows the professional to achieve meaningful conversations.

As you can see there are so many common elements between sales and golf, other chapters: Planning for Success, Trust, Practicing to Play Great, Setbacks, and Building Rhythm of the Game to simply name a few more… What’s the bottom line?

As professionals we must commit (another chapter) to excellence and one important aspect is being mentally strong and prepared to win. What will you do this week to improve your professional success?  Buy the book for each person on you sales team? It will improve your golf game as well.

Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com

Blog:  www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

No Regrets, a Do-Over Recipe for Success

 This weekend I was working on my next book and the ending of my chapter described  my keynote program: “No Regrets, a Do-over Recipe for Success”.  I thought I would share this with you as we move into the dog days of Summer.

 This is what a No Regrets, Do-over Recipe and Building a Personal recipe for success is all about. Abraham Lincoln made the comment, “It’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” It’s important to be able to bring balance together, learn to use the ingredients you have, and know what you want from life. Start with being a better person and try to make the world a better place.

 I like to suggest that it’s all about three little words, and then some. These three little words are the secret to success. They’re the difference between average people and extraordinary people in most organizations. Extraordinary people always do what is expected and then some. They’re thoughtful of others, they are considerate and kind, and then some. They meet their obligations and responsibilities fairly and squarely, and then some. They are good friends, helpful neighbors, and then some. They can be counted on in an emergency, and then some. I’m thankful for people like this; they make the world more livable. Their spirit of service is summed up in these three words: and then some.

 Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com   www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com  (blog)

Growing Your Company: The Power of Net-New

Partners who focus on net-new clients will see growth; but you’ll need focus and correct execution to really pull out a win.

• Over the last few years as we’ve worked with partners in strategic planning sessions to help them build predictable revenue, one trend we’ve found is that clients who focus on adding net-new clients experience greater revenue growth.

Bringing on net-new clients requires careful focus and execution in several key areas:

1. Company leaders must set the stage by asking: Is this a goal we (management committee) are all committed to achieving? If the answer is yes, then the first metric to be set is a specific number of net-new clients sold per quarter. Depending on the size of the organization, it may be appropriate to then determine metrics by practice for net-new revenue and net-new clients per quarter.
2. Create a marketing plan to assist in attracting net-new prospects. You should expect to spend additional marketing dollars as compared to simply marketing to your existing customer base. We normally recommend that each potential prospect must be “touched” eight to 12 times by e-mail, direct mail, phone calls and other campaigns. The secret to a successful campaign is touching various job titles at each prospective organization, such as president, VP of sales, marketing, human resources and CFO. The marketing messages must be unique and specific to each job title.
3. Next in the game plan is to consider sales compensation or sales contests to build excitement and awareness of management’s interest in this objective. In creating sales compensation plans we often create an additional percentage or dollar bonus on all net- new clients sold if sales or revenues are greater than X dollars. These may be based on monthly or quarterly objectives. In some cases a sales contest is set up to replace competitive vendor installations with Microsoft Dynamics ERP or CRM applications. “Wanted” posters can be hung up with the bonus dollars visible — marketing needs to be aligned with this campaign as well.
4. Management must consistently reinforce the vision to the entire company — as well as to the sales team — at monthly company meetings, sales meetings and in all written communication where appropriate.
5. The last area that’s important is the dashboard or scorecard. This is the measurement tool that shows by company and by individual salesperson the existing and past performance against the stated objective. From a current status perspective the sales leader would want to track:

• Number of net-new calls per week and per month
• Number of net-new proposals per month
• Number of net-new opportunities in the pipeline
• Dollar value of all net-new opportunities in the pipeline
• Number of net-new opportunities sold, QTD and YTD
• Dollar value of net-new opportunities sold, QTD and YTD

The classic line, “What gets measured gets managed,” is the secret. If management pays attention to its objectives and pays attention to the execution and actions of marketing and sales, the desired results will be achieved. Each month both executive and sales management ask the questions: Are we on target? If not, why not? What are you going to do to fix the problem?

One other point we like to recommend: You should graph these numbers to show the trend analysis. This will help you link the marketing and sales actions to the results and will help the salespeople better understand the correlation between goals, actions and results.

The important element to understand is, once you have captured this net-new client, you now have the goal of earning a greater portion of their “IT Wallet Share.” The second, third and fourth sales will be easier and earn higher levels of profitability.

About the Author

Ken Thoreson is managing director of the Acumen Management Group Ltd., a North American consulting organization focused on improving sales management functions within growing and transitional organizations. You can reach him at ken@acumenmgmt.com.  www.AcumenManagement.com or www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com 

Making it to the Top

Making it to the Top, and other phases like it typically refer to exceeding your sales quota or becoming a top performer in your organization. Sales leaders have used these words to create sales contests, set goals and sales themes for the year and …so have I, and last Friday I made it to the top!

First, I will be honest, I took Friday off.  At 7AM eleven people drove about 90 minutes to Smoky Mountain National Park to begin a 5.5 mile hike up Mount LeConte and reach its pike at 6600 feet. Secondly, it was a hard and difficult hike. On a hot day, we crossed mountain streams, climbed over rocks, walked along four foot wide ledges holding onto to a wire cable for support and for over 3 ½ hours- we made slow and a steady upward climb.  All eleven of us made it to the top!  After a lunch and some rest we then hiked down the same path 5.5 miles.  After the eleven mile hike we wearily took off our boots, sipped our last water and slide into our cars for the ride home-as a treat we stopped for two big scoops of cold tasty ice cream.

Yes the analogy is correct!  In my keynote programs I describe “dream setting” and the need to have a vision for your life both personally and professionally.  I had set my sights on climbing Mount LeConte four years ago-there are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic timeframes and when I heard the hike was planned I set aside that day-I made a commitment. I actually purchased two new hiking sticks, I invested in myself. And I worked hard to make it up and down that mountain, success does not come easy, you have to earn it. Everyone on that hike kept each other’s spirit strong as we all tired, persistence is an element of success. We worked together until everyone was safe and back to the parking lot with a sense of pride of accomplishment and then we treated ourselves for achieving the objective, rewards bring sense of pride.

What are your goals for the rest of the year?  Or next year?  Successful sales leaders have their personal and professional in are in balance and have a vision and defined goals for their lives.

Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com

Blog:  www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

It’s Almost August-5 Steps to Finish Strong

As a strategic sales leader you need to be proactive in your thinking and actions.

By now the summer is almost over and you need to be concerned about exceeding Augusts’ quotas, achieving September’s goal and the fourth quarter sales numbers. What should you be thinking and doing, here’s a quick checklist.

1)      Ask each salesperson to identify if their top prospects/decision makers have vacations scheduled during the next 45 days and if they do, will they delay planned decision dates.

2)      Review your pipeline values by stage at 30, 60, 90 days to identify if you have enough opportunities for the future and if you can “move ahead” or accelerate their decision points. Do you need a few quick marketing lead generation programs?

3)      Carefully measure your leading indicators to see if your salespeople are taking the summer off. Leading indicators are sales actions that will lead to demonstrations and/or proposals.

4)      Do you have third and fourth quarter sales contests planned?  “Sprint to the Finish’ could be a theme? The contest could be based upon yearend sales by person or a team plan: where the entire sales team wins by exceeding the sales budget for the fourth quarter.

5)      Schedule a company picnic lunch where the sales/marketing team cooks and serves the meal for everyone else in the company. This will build team work and shows appreciation for everyone that serves sales during the rest of the year.

Why all this special attention?  It is not uncommon for people in general to slow down during July and August; family vacations, sports activities, weekend events-all sorts of activities can begin to take away the focus that is necessary for high performance teams to excel. As a sales leader your focus and energy has to rise to another level to maintain the intensity that is necessary for success.

What other ideas do you have to ensure your 3^rd and 4^th quarters are success?

Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com

                                                Blog:  www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

Finding Opportunities

Last week I spoke at Microsoft’s World Wide Partner Conference, with 14,000 attendees it was a terrific event. The amazing action to watch was the volume of conversations taking place-not necessarily just on the Expo floor but EVERYWHERE!

At this event Microsoft has created a software tool called “Connect” that allows anyone registered to search the registered list of attendees and arrange for a meeting in a predefined area for a 30 minute “speed date” or even to arrange a meeting at some other location.  Plus attendees had the opportunity to network at the evening receptions, (several every evening), at breakfast, lunches and hallway accidental meetings.  The noise and energy of people from all over the world discussing their business, asking questions and find new opportunities was impressive.  From my personal experience I had good accidental meetings with individuals from Russia, Poland, Greece, the Czech Republic and the US were we discussed and shared business thoughts and laughs.  In other unplanned and in my prescheduled meetings I had the opportunity to discuss; Acumen’s expertise, new business opportunities and enhance new relationships with other vendors. I know from past experience that conversations held, an idea created and information shared can lead to future business opportunities next month or next year.

Also that this event I met individuals that may not lead directly to new business but their new knowledge of Acumen’s expertise and experience could lead to referrals or the uncovering new relationships.  Some of these individuals I have known for years and some were first time contacts.  These contacts were discovered in airports, hotels, walking down the street, hallways between meetings or while simply waiting in line for another prescheduled meeting.

What does all of this mean to you?

 What are you doing each day, each week to find new opportunities, opening up new relationships or building up your network?  When I started my business I set a goal of meeting two individuals a week simply to build up the awareness of my practice.

 As sales leaders are you expecting networking activity in your monthly salesperson’s business plans?  Are you measuring or inspecting the types of networking they are participating in?

What creative ideas are you using to find new opportunities?

Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!

Acumen Mgmt. provides Keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.           Ken@AcumenMgmt.com   www.AcumenManagement.com

Blog:  www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com

Is your organization and your sales team suffering from:

Puny Revenues?  Weak Results? It Maybe Time for a Sales Leadership Workout!

 A  one &  1/2 Day Regimen for Getting  Your Sales Organization in Shape  

Build a proactive approach to Sales Management 2.0 that creates predictive revenue and a self-managed sales team.  Learn how other top performing sales leaders have muscled up their teams to pump up predictable revenues. Here’s what they have to say about the event:

 “Great Content, Energetic Deliver, High Value.”     “Outstanding, just what I needed.” “Informative, educational, spot-on!”    “Inspiring” Information and tools you can use immediately” “Intense!” 

 The Skinny on Sales Leadership Workout:

 Schedule: Day One, 1:00 PM – 5:30 PM; Day Two, 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM

 Next Location: Waltham, MA August 4th & 5th,  Hasbrouch Heights, NJ August 19th/20th

Regimen:

• 10 proven ways to boost sales in 90 days
• The 9 Things Great Sales Organizations Do & How To Do Them
• What you need to build predictable revenue
• Building sales compensation plans that work
• Creating a self managed sales team
• Understanding how the “Cloud” will impact your organization
• Building a salesperson’s business plan focused on results
• Motivating your team to higher levels
• Creating a self managed sales team
• Strategies to help you hire, train and retain a top producing sales team
• How to coach, mentor and hold more effective sales meetings

Your Workout Bag Includes $870 of Free Extras:

• Your Personal Sales Leadership Assessment ($375.00 value)
• The Sales Manager’s Tool Kit                    ($495.00 value)
• Sales Management Guidebook                    (Priceless!)

 REGISTER to Earn Early Bird Discount : 

 www.resource-technologies.com/workout.php

Ken@AcumenMgmt.com

Learning from Losing

In most of our client consulting engagements we strongly recommend that “win/lost” reports are completed. This is a process of reviewing all sales that occur and those that don’t!  We suggest this action is performed in two steps.

The first step is between the sales manager and the salesperson, during this phase the sales leader simply probes as to what the salesperson believes are the reason the prospect purchased or did not purchase your solution. Questions are asked regarding levels of communication, perceived benefits, pricing and competitive situations. We normally recommend this conversation takes place during a sales meeting-it is NOT a grilling.  This is a group coaching and training experience, the review should be designed to help the salesperson and the members of your sales team to share experiences or ideas as to what worked or what did not work.

The second step is a conversation between the “X-prospect or new client” and either the sales manager, president or an independent source.  If the sales manager was active in the sales process with the salesperson, then the President/independent source should conduct the interview. Most people may not be as honest or straight forward with an individual that had been involved in the process.  During this conversation more detailed questions should be asked to uncover the reasons you won or you lost.   I like to find out:  When did the prospect really make up their mind? What was the perceived benefit of your firm? What did we do? Or what could we have done to win the opportunity? Who won the opportunity? What were the price points?

During this research we have uncovered areas for additional sales training, enhancing marketing messaging and more closely monitoring the sales actions and strategy during the sales opportunity. In most situations the salesperson did not establish trust & confidence early in the sales process, skipped a step in the sales process or they failed to prove your value proposition during the sales process.

If you would like a copy of a Win/Lost Report template, send me an email. Ken@Acumenmgmt.com

What have you learned by losing?

Creativity…. It’s a Sales Thing!

 There is no question about it, top performers are more creative that your average salespeople. They seem to come up with unique ideas to prospect, find ways to enhance client relationships and they close more effectively. Sales leadership requires creativity as well, sales managers that are exceeding sales quotas, hiring and developing their teams and building a sales culture require huge levels of a creativity quotient.

The good news? You can enhance your creativity by “working on it”…In my Keynote, No Regret’s, the Do Over Factor, I share three tenets for personal and professional success, creativity is one of those three foundations.  I have listed nine actions you can work on to develop mind patterns that will enhance your creativity power.

• Track your ideas:  keep a notebook and write down all your ideas-about anything, it is amazing what happens when you build an active list.
• Inquiring minds want to know: be inquisitive, ask questions, increase your levels of interest
• Learn about different things: study a language, read a book, take a course, get active
• Avoid set patterns:  break your habits, floss your teeth differently, brush your teeth in different sequences, drive to work on a new route
• Be open: listen to others, try to accept new ideas
• Be patient in observations: take the time to watch a bird fly, look at the woods more closely,  look for new patterns, watch the river flow
• Engage in hobbies: your mind must dis-engage from normal business stress,
• Improve sense of humor: learn to laugh, even at yourself
• Be a risk taker: try something different, the adrenalin will cause a positive impact on your brain.

 I would like your comments and thoughts about how you enhance your creativity. What was the most creative sales tactic you have used? What were the results?

BTW: Thank you for reading our blog at:  www.YourSalesMangementGuru.com, it was recently ranked by two separate organizations as a Top 20 and Top 50 Sales Blogs. See our Press Release below:

Acumen Management Group President Cited by Two Leading Sales Industry’s Online Organizations for Social Media Savvy and Blog Excellence

InsideView’s IV50 and BuyerZone’s All About Leads 20 Top Blogs Laud Ken Thoreson’s Online Acuity

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., June XX, 2010—Ken Thoreson, Acumen Management Group president, has been cited by two of the sales industry’s leading online sales organizations for his social media savvy and blog excellence—InsideView’s IV50 list and BuyerZone’s All About Leads 20 Top Blogs. He joins InsideView’s select group of sales professionals who are playing a significant role in providing insight to their peers about the use of social media. In making the announcement on its blog, InsideView described Thoreson as “bringing a wealth of “old school” expertise to our list of savvy sales professionals, sharing his expertise on Twitter and in a variety of publications.” BuyerZone’s All About Leads blog covers online lead generation, nurturing, sales, and more. The article describes the blogs it recognizes as “informative, detailed, and engaging sales blogs written by professionals in the industry.”

Thoreson writes Your Sales Management Guru blog and contributes regularly on LinkedIn and other online publications. His collective social media involvement and leadership is helping usher in a new era of sales that meshes with the customer 2.0 experience. “Sales 2.0” entails leveraging the same social media used by customers—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs and others.

Thoreson said, “Social media acuity is quickly becoming a factor in sales success—for bolstering brand awareness and credibility in addition to intelligence about customers and prospects. I strongly urge clients to ensure that their sales organizations take advantage of this increasingly pervasive force, and our workshops help them do that.”