Your Sales Management Guru

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

Tags: Sales Contests, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Training
Posted in Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Motivation | 1 Comment »

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

Tags: Networking, sales leadership, Sales Management Training
Posted in Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Training, Sales Training | Comments Off

Is your organization and your sales team suffering from:

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 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:

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 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
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• Building sales compensation plans that work
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• Building a salesperson’s business plan focused on results
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• 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

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Ken@AcumenMgmt.com

Tags: sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Training
Posted in Recruiting, Sales Compensation, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Training, Sales Training | Comments Off