It’s up to us as leaders to build a culture of expectation. This culture should be well understood by our sales force and repeatable over time. Over the years I’ve tracked, monitored, coached and taught leaders about maximizing performance. One thing stands out in leadership team strategy; there are no highly successful “accidental” sellers.
Leadership Team Strategy
I’ve bucketed up what I believe to be the most important traits in highly performing sales organizations and sellers.
They define goals in real time – 30,60,90,120 days. Great sellers re-visit, re-fresh and work on the big picture. They stay out of the weeds -Fewer- Bigger- Better. Super sellers feed their brain with what’s next. How can I be better? Be nimble? The best account executives know when to quit or to change the game plan. The strongest sales organizations remove obstacles and avoid slow decisions or no decisions.
I believe that high performing sales teams develop a new business culture as insurance against churn. It’s also a way to hedge their bets, re: making budget. They also focus on growing share by asking a few key questions. What is our fair share? Do we have the information at the time of negotiation to track and manage to our share goals? What does good, average and bad look like? What is our governance plan around share expectations? What are our share goals by month, by quarter, by account, by seller and manager?
Highly successful sales managers build the right types of teams to get the job done by focusing on the following:
- Providing Individualized training & support when needed
- Prioritizing & focusing on higher revenue potential opportunities
- Removing excuse “creep”
- Trimming the tree – moving accounts quickly when the results aren’t there.
- Filling the bench so that downtime from replacing people is minimal
- They are clarity & purpose driven – communicating simple & clear expectations
- There is transparency in contributions
- They do the right thing at the right time, on time
It’s the sellers and managers who break down the complicated task of “making a sale” into manageable pieces. Those that prioritize them with the right sense of urgency experience the most success. Selling by accident isn’t selling!
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