Your Sales Management Guru

After the success of the Microsoft’s “Building Your Business in Challenging Times” road shows, I’m excited to announce that Acumen will be hosting a Microsoft-sponsored series of IW Business Building Sales Clinics. These webcasts will be held every two weeks and are tuned to increase sales. They will target executives, marketing and sales leaders and will be solution-based — with live and interactive sessions. The content will be driven by the Microsoft Partner community, with Microsoft Teams with Partner interviews and Acumen insights. We will offer tips, ideas and provide answers to partner questions and discuss winning strategies. There will also be a BIZ Builder Forum for you to participate in, with Q&A capability.

The goal of the program is to help you drive business, learn more about Microsoft resources and increase your market share. Join me on Twitter (MSFTBizBuilder) for details, times and up-to-the-minute ideas (the first one starts April 13 at 9 a.m. PST; more details via Twitter and a link to come later). 

I will certainly update you on this blog too! Check out my recent RCPmag.com column, “Sprint to the Finish!,” for sales ideas or e-mail me.

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We have been discussing the three concepts that sales managers must focus on and the ingredients you need to have in your sales leadership pantry. This time, let’s talk about control.

Many of you who have attended our workshops or listened to our keynotes or Web casts know that cooking is a hobby of mine. I own in excess of 150 cookbooks and at home I frequently experiment in developing new creations or adaptations to existing favorites — I’m always looking to refine and improve each recipe. This experience reinforces my client recommendations that successful, high-performance sales leaders build a “prescriptive” approach to growing and managing their teams. 

Much like a good recipe that details the specific measurements/ingredients required to create an entree, a sales leader must understand and develop the measurements required for building predicable revenue. These measurements, or “standards,” become the basis to ensure your sales team achieves current and long-term success — your recipe for success. 

We recommend that sales and marketing organizations each set four to five key performance indicators. Once these standards are determined, each sales person must be measured against those standards. A professional sales leader knows that based upon the maturity, experience and knowledge, each salesperson could have a slightly different set of actual ingredients. Even so, the actual KPI categories will be the same for all. 

By setting standards, measuring actual performance to them, you build a control process to ensure your recipe for success turns out right each and every month. Your job is then to refine your recipe. 

Let me know if you want me to expand this subject and discuss the specific standards and KPIs partners are using to improve their teams.

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Last time, I mentioned the three ingredients that sales managers should have in their leadership pantry to maintain sales focus:

• Discipline: Orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior.
• Accountability:“Obligated to give a reckoning or explanation for ones actions.
• Control: A standard of comparison for checking the results of an experiment or process.

We recommend that you actually share these definitions with your sales team and your entire company; this will help you increase everyone’s focus on the need to execute brilliantly during challenging times. Accountability means that every department and every person — sales, marketing, delivery and admin — must be held accountable for meeting the expectations of their job. 

(Hint: The expectations or standards must first be set). 

By explaining the definitions first to your teams, you can fight the reaction of “this is micro-management.” It is not; it is simply good management. Next, we discuss the concept of how “control” makes it all work. 

If you haven’t RSS’ed this blog, be sure to do it — the link is here. And don’t forget to check out my Web site for more selling resources

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I enjoy cooking, and in that spirit, we’ll build these next three blogs as my secret recipe for creating a wonderful and satisfying entree.

Last time, I listed three ingredients for success: 

Discipline: Orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior. 

Accountability: Obligation to give a reckoning or explanation for one’s actions. 

Control: A standard of comparison for checking the results of an experiment or process. 

This time, let’s review Discipline. This relates to self-discipline for the manager as well as organizational discipline. To use an old phase, “It’s great when the trains run on time” is the prescriptive analogy for what I am suggesting. A well-run sales organization knows that meetings start on time, are well organized, information that is expected is delivered on time — no excuses, training is completed and all sales processes work! 

When we interview top performers who leave organizations, their reasons for leaving are seldom earnings; it’s the organizations sloppiness; frustrations that “nothing” works easily and lack of professionalism. Building discipline is an every day focus. 

Our recommendation of the quarter was that in tough times, sales execution/training needs increased levels of focus. Twice a year, your entire team should read a new sales book. Our recommendation: Selling to Big Companies, by Jill Konrath (2005, Kaplan Business). Also check out http://www.sellingtobigcompanies.blogs.com/, a great site to find information and order your copy.

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