13 MUST-KNOW FOR SALES LEADERS

Leading a sales team is not the easiest job in the world. Honestly, it is probably one of the toughest. Get to know the 13 critical components for successful sales leaders.

ARTICULATE THE SALES PROCESS
Design the sales process to align with customers buying process. Arm sales managers with high-impact questions.Align selling activities in each stage to align with buying decisions.

IDENTIFY WHAT GREAT LOOKS LIKE
For each role, measure and improve productivity by understanding capacity and capability. Recruit and select new hires according to competencies. Perform a talent audit, keeping in mind current and future roles.

TALENTS NEED DEVELOPMENT
Deploy onboarding programs for sales managers. Support development with just-in-time tools. Measure the impact investment in staff development.

ENGAGE EXECUTIVES
Engage sales, connect strategic accounts with appropriate sales leader to create equality in the relationship. Use sales leaders to coach and mentor sales teams to drive the right behaviors. Ensure leaders engage with critical sales initiatives.

PAY FAIRLY
Reward, reward, reward. Design simple compensation that aligns with the customers focused sales strategy. Reward for strategy execution and desired behaviors not just for quota attainment. Assess pay fairness by channel, sales role and planned mechanics- avoid bias at all cost.

DEFINE MARKETING, DEFINE SALES
Align marketing and sales based on what customers need and how they buy. Develop service level agreements that clearly define responsibilities and accountabilities. Define the role of marketing in the nurturing process.

STRUCTURE SALES
The right way, structure based on go to market strategies that align with how customers buy not how you sell. Understand what channels customer used for buying and create strategies to leverage them.

GET TERRITORIAL
And plan accordingly, adjust territorial plan to align with levels of likely customers needs, not merely population density. Develop growth strategies and action plans that are customer-focused. Create strategies to keep sales teams aligned with customers in their territories.

CREATE EFFECTIVE ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
Identify high account potentials. Create an account management plan that fully enegages the client from a needs perspective. Align internal resources to plan.

DEVELOP KEY METRICS THAT MATTER
And use them. Define measure of success in each role.Define key predictive indicators. Identify lagging indications of performance.

FORCE FORECASTING
Master the pipeline. Develop a cadence methodology and discipline around sales forecasting. Improve accuracy of forecasting through use of key predictive indicators. Inspect quality and quantity of the pipeline.

ADOPT A CRM TOOL
Enforce accountability and usage of technology. Engage sales team to ensure quality data is entered and updated. Leverage a CRM tool to provide insight into forecasting.

ENABLE SALES
Provide tools that are integral to key activities within the sales process. Use technologies that parallel solutions to client expectations and buying styles. Encourage the use of technologies like CRM application overlays.

3 SENTENCES YOU SHOULD BE SAYING REGULARLY

Do you consider yourself to be highly creative? What about adaptive? Flexible?
Highly creative people tend to have fluid, flexible, adaptive minds. Here are 3 statements that creative people can make easily and which you learn by regular practice.

Admit It When You Are Wrong

The first is simply, "I was wrong." Many people are so concerned with being right that all their mental energy is consumed by stonewalling, bluffing, blaming and denying. If you're wrong, admit it and get on to the solution or the next step.

Face Up to Mistakes

Second, non-creative people think that it is a sign of weakness to say, "I made a mistake." On the contrary, it is actually a sign of mental maturity, personal strength and individual character. Remember, everybody makes mistakes every single day.

Be Flexible With New Information

The third statement that creative people use easily is, "I changed my mind." It is amazing how many uncomfortable situations people get into and stay in because they are unwilling or afraid to admit that they've changed their minds.

Be Willing to Cut Your Losses

If you get new information or if you find that you feel differently about a previous decision, accept that you have changed your mind and don't let anyone or anything back you into a corner. If a decision does not serve your best interests as you see them now, have the ego-strength and the courage to "cut your losses," to change your mind and then get on to better things.

Action Exercises

Here are 2 ways you can break out of narrow thinking patterns and become more creative.

First, be willing to admit that you are not perfect, you make mistakes, you are wrong on a regular basis. This is a mark of intelligence and courage.

Second, with new information, be willing to change your mind. Most of what you know about your business today will change completely in the coming years so be the first to recognize it.

4 STEPS TO THE FAST TRACK OF PERSONAL SUCCESS

Did you know that it's not what you have but what you do with what you have that will determine your success or failure?

Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist said that the story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves short. He said people have a tendency to settle for far less from life than they are truly capable of. Many people are spinning their wheels in careers where they should be moving rapidly onward and upward. What can you do to put your career on the fast track? Here's how:

Choose Your Parents Carefully

Someone once said that the key to success was to choose your parents carefully. That may be partially true but it is even more important to choose your job or career with great care. The choice of a job or occupation for which you are ideally suited comes before anything else. If you try to work at something you don't enjoy or don't believe in, you'll never be happy, and you'll never be successful.

Be the Best at What You Do

Which leads us to the next point. If you want to reach the stars in your career, you have to become excellent at what you do. You have to pay any price, go any distance, spend any amount of time necessary to "be the best." Extraordinary rewards only go for extraordinary performance; average rewards for average performance; below average rewards, insecurity and failure for below average performance. And here's a vital key, you are being paid today exactly what you're worth - no more, no less. If you want to earn more, you must increase your worth, your value to others.

The Key to Motivation

The reason why choosing the right career, why doing what you love to do is so important, is because unless you really care about your work, you will never be motivated to persist at it until you become excellent. And until you become excellent at what you're doing, you can't move ahead.

The Key to Peak Performance

The antidote to these fears is the development of courage, character and self-esteem. The opposite of fear is actually love, self-love and self-respect. Acting with courage in a fearful situation is simply a technique that boosts our regard for ourselves to such a degree that our fears subside and lose their ability to effect our behavior and our decisions.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do to be more successful in your career.

First, set high standards for yourself and recognize that anything that someone else has achieved, you can probably achieve as well. There are no limits.

Second, select one key skill area that is important in your job and resolve to become absolutely excellent in that area. Start today to get better and better.

SUCCESS LEAVES TRACKS ---------- FOLLOW THEM!

Do you know what the central skill of success is? It is your ability to manage your time, to focus and channel your energies on your highest value tasks, which will determine your rewards and your level of accomplishment in life more than any other factor.

Success Leaves Tracks

When I began searching for the secrets of success many years ago, I discovered an interesting principle: success leaves tracks. A wise man who had studied success for more than 50 years concluded that the greatest success principle of all was, "learn from the experts."

Learn From the Experts

If you want to be a big success in any area, find out what other successful people in that area are doing, and do the same things, until you get the same results. When I studied the interviews, speeches, biographies and autobiographies of successful men and women, I found that they all had one quality in common. They were all described as being "extremely well organized." They used their time very, very well. They were highly productive and they got vastly more done in the same period of time than the average person.

Be Both Effective and Efficient

High performing men and women were both effective and efficient. They did the right things, and they did them in the right way. They were constantly looking for ways to improve the quality and quantity of their output. As a result, their contribution to their organizations was vastly higher and therefore much better paid, than the contributions of the average person.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, develop a study plan today to learn from the experts in your field. This can save you years of hard work.

Second, decide what is the most important thing to do, and then decide how to do it.