Are You Using These 4 Critical Steps of Sales Leadership?



Sales leadership stepsSelling a lot of material is no longer just what you want your sales force to do.

Demands and expectations of customers are growing.  You must satisfy their needs.

Information technology is giving you more date, in more user-friendly.  The result is you need to more finely direct your sales force with the insights you now have.

Getting the sales force to do what you want them to do!

You have to decide what you want your sales force to do − that directly comes from your strategic plan or sales strategy. Therefore, you must develop a strategic plan and then create expectations for your sales force to support that plan.

Develop a list of the three to ten most important things you want the sales force to do − sales should be one of them, gross profits should be another.

Make sure your list can be easily, fairly, and accurately measured.  One measurement could be calling on new prospects, which measures activity.

The 4 critical steps of sales leadership again are:

  1. 4stepsDevelop a strategic plan.
  2. Create a set of 3 – 10 most important sales behaviors.
  3. Fine tune them until they are easily, fairly, and accurately measurable.
  4. Measure and reward the behavior you want.   Toasting measurable results or regions and/or sales people will get everyone’s attention.

Don’t expect great results if you only deploy and hope

4 steps to sales leadershipCreate a high performance sales team by holding accountability, goal setting, strategy developing, resource identifying, and quarterly or monthly conferences with each of your sales people.

At these conferences, do the following:

  1. Hold them accountable for what they said they were going to do
  2. Help them set goals
  3. Help them create a strategy
  4. Ask − how can I help

Follow these steps and your team will not only have better direction, they’ll better understand how critical their role is in delivering the results that the company needs and they signed up for.

Good Selling!

Comments

6 responses to “Are You Using These 4 Critical Steps of Sales Leadership?”

  1. INSIGHTOVATION.COM Avatar

    Great post Greg! I agree, I work with companies on execution of ‘Business Strategy’. Once the business sets its strategy, think of it like a chain. Each link of the chain represents a ‘functional area of the company’ and their ‘functional strategy to support and link to the overall strategy’. There should be a ‘Sales Strategy’, a ‘Marketing Strategy’, a ‘Ops Strategy’, a ‘Financial Strategy’…(you get the idea)… articulating how each functional area will beat the competition. The capability of the business to execute its strategy is only as strong as … you guessed… the weakest link! That’s why, as you say, “Sales Leadership’ providing a strong ‘Sales Strategy’ that links to the ‘Business Strategy’ (and is aligned to the “Marketing and Ops Strategies’ etc.) is an important part of the overall plan. Good selling!

  2. Bikash Avatar

    marketing and sales strategy should be aligned togther, but individual department must have thier own targets and goal

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