7 Quick Ways to Lead a Sales Team to Maximum Sales Impact!

Intro

On this episode of Sales Management Mastery we're going to give you 7 quick ways to lead a sales team for maximum sales impact.

Great sales leadership skills really do little good without any sort of tangible sales results.

The best sales leaders know that they have to harness their leadership skills for maximum sales impact.

And if you can't do that, you are obviously not a great sales leader. There's plenty of people that tell me that they know great sales leaders but they are always at the bottom of the ranking, so exactly how great a sales leader are they really should be measured based on how they are doing on the bottom line.

Bottom line for you and for your organization is increasing sales results, or over the goal, or over a year end, or quarterly or a monthly or weekly goal, is achieving that, if not over achieving that on a regular basis.

Every action a leader must take has to be gauged by the sales results that they bring.

We are going to talk today about 7 quick ways to lead a sales team for maximum sales impact.

1. Begin with a strategic overhaul or results gap. This is defining the results that you need from your organization, or your department, or your team what we call the results gap. Looking at what it actually is, you can then plan a strategy to get from where you are to where you need to be. The real key is to be brutally honest as to where you currently sit. This is a good time to face the brutal facts. If you're not where you need to be, you need to call you team out onto the carpet and tell them so. And if you are at goal, or want to exceed goal you maybe need to tell them that as well, Maybe give them a pat on the back and prompt them to even higher sales achievement than what they are currently doing. But the first thing is to know where you sit, and to look and the gap and figure out where you need to be.

2. Take responsibility for your sales results. As a sales leader, the buck really does stop with you. You can't blame your sales people, you can't blame the economy, you can't blame the government regulations, you can't blame foreign competition, or bad luck, or anything like that. This is all buck passing. Not only does it undermine your leadership, but also it undermines your effectiveness to get quality results. It undermines moral, but it undercuts the possibility of change and positive change in terms of improvement. Number 2 is take responsibility for your results no matter how good or bad they are. And typically when they are good, you want to take the responsibility and when they are bad you want to blame everyone else. It really should be the opposite. You should take responsibility when things are bad, but shower recognition and share that power and responsibility for great results when things are going the right way. So number 2 is take responsibility for results good and bad.

3. Clearly communicate your expectations and sales targets. A common complaint that I have seen throughout my sales management career of sales people is that they don't know what is expected of them. This is why we talk so much about setting expectations, and setting the bar higher in the Sales Management Academy, you need to tell your sales people exactly where they stand so that they know exactly where they currently are, and so you have a measuring stick or a frame of reference to where you want them to be. If a sales person doesn't know what is expected of them, then shame on the sales leader. The sales person should know, but the sales leader should figure out which sales people don't understand what the expectations are and make sure that they go and coach them and inform them and lead them in the right direction. So that focus makes clear what the organization will or will not do. That kind of focus is important for you as a sales leader.

4. Make sales results your ultimate litmus test. Weigh every idea or strategy that comes to you against the basic question, which is: What will have the biggest impact on our sales results? Which strategy or which idea will have the biggest impact on sales? Don't adopt a strategy or idea just because it seems like a good idea. Think of it in terms of what impact will it have on sales results? If you make sales result the ultimate litmus test, you'll make better decisions over the long term.

5. Know and use every group member's capabilities to the fullest. This is a really important one, because what we are trying to do at Sales Management Mastery Academy, is to harness the inherent talents of your individual sales people, and draw more out of what they are good at, and minimize what they aren't so good at. This is a basic concept which takes the path of least resistance as a sales leader. Therefore you're not fighting against the grain, or pushing water up hill, in the fact that you are trying to change someone into being someone that they aren't. Knowing and using every sales persons capabilities and talents to their fullest capability is the key to being able to lead them in the right direction. Personal results usually enhance the company's results. If someone is really good at a certain skill, if you can put them in the right position to achieve maximum sales result based on that skill, then you've just enhanced your ability to lead as well as get great sales results which is your ultimate goal as a sales manager.

6. Measure results. And do it in a way that employees can easily understand; whether you are standing at a sales meeting doing charts and graphs showing where everyone stands. Or you as the general manager showing the sales force exactly where sales are for a specific month, by doing lists or rankings, this is what really drives people to overachieve, by measuring results, especially measuring their results versus others. Because sales people in general are pretty competitive people. Whether it's the facts that they come from sports backgrounds, a lot of sales people have sports backgrounds and they have a hyper-competitive spirit. If you can pit them against each other, you can enhance your own leadership, and you can also enhance sales results as well.

A good example of this is the great industrialist Charles Schwab, was visiting on one of his steel mills and he took out a piece of chalk and he wrote on the floor the number of steel ingots that shift had produced. And the night shift saw that number and they took that challenge and they produced more ingots than the day shift and wrote that number in chalk on the floor. So as the days went by, productivity escalated from shift to shift to shift. Use this powerful analogy. Writing results on an industrial warehouse floor is certainly a simple way to do it. Make it very simple. Don't do it in esoteric terms. Show charts, show graphs, show rankings, highlight the rankings, send out ranking bulletins, always pitting people against one another because it spurs competition, enhances your leadership, and enhances the bottom line and pushing sales in the right direction

7. Most important out of all the ways to lead your sales team: Stay in the loop and get feedback from all of your sales people. Asking them frank questions about what is going out in the sales environment. Measuring the progress, being out with them on a daily basis, if not a daily basis, maybe on just a couple of important calls. Obviously sales managers do get caught up in a lot of administrative activities. Being out there and managing by walking around, which is one of the most famous management philosophies that has come down the pike in the last 30 years. But being out there and understanding exactly what sort of challenges they are facing. You may need to alter some of the goals that you have based upon the environmental challenges and things that are going on. But the important thing is that you stay in the loop at all times so that you stay focused on the sales results, which is the ultimate endgame as a sales manager.

REFRESHER:

7 Ways to lead your team for maximum sales impact:

1. Begin with the strategic overhaul. Define the results that you need you're your organization. Look for that results gap. Guide your strategy based upon that gap.

2. Take responsibility for the results. Don't blame it on environmental factors or a bad economy. Take more responsibility for bad results and spread around the glory on good results.

3. Clearly communicate expectations and targets. One of the big complaints of sales people is that they really don't know where they stand versus their target. This is extremely important for them to know exactly where they are heading at all times.

4. Make sales results the ultimate litmus test of any of your decisions. Make sure you are measuring it versus what impact ideas will have on your sales bottom line.

5. Know and use every sales persons capabilities to the fullest. Draw out more of their talents and minimize their weaknesses.

6. Measure results in clear, cut and dry results. With charts, rankings bulletins, like Charles Schwab writing on the factory floor. Measure those results and pit your sales people against each other to bring out those competitive juices.

7. Stay in the loop. Get feedback from your salespeople by being out with them in the field. Ask frank questions of your sales team to know what their main challenges are so that you'll be able to guide your leadership message to make maximum impact.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales manager training.

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The Impact of the Internet on Contemporary Literature

Literature basically is everything that has ever been written. Anything from the earliest poems of Homer, to today's web pages, can be considered literature. But for a specific sense, there are various kinds of literature. Literature can be written in a specific language, like English Literature or be written by a specific culture, such as African Literature. But literature really means more than printed words and the internet certainly is a part of literature. I should note that the word literature comes from the French phrase belles-lettres, which means "beautiful writing". When a piece of work is called literature, it is usually considered a great work of art. The internet literature does not necessarily have to be this way for the fact that no one controls the internet literature. In the following essay I am going to speak about the impact of the internet on literature of nowadays.

There are two main classes of literature which are also present on the internet: fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is writing that an author creates from the imagination. Authors may include personal experience, or facts about real people or events, but they combine these facts with imagined situations (Moran, 45). In non-internet literature the project undergoes at least some sort of censorship in terms of what words can be used, yet the internet allows the authors to put anything they desire on the web site and enjoy it. Most fiction is narrative writing, such as novels and short stories. Fiction also includes drama and poetry. Nonfiction is factual writing about real-life situations. The principal forms of nonfiction include the essay, biography, autobiography, and diary (Browner, 90). The internet presents a new forms--internet pages, or internet books.

People read literature for a variety of reasons. The most common reason for reading is pleasure. People read to pass the time, or for information and knowledge. Through literature, people meet characters they can identify with, and sometimes find solutions for their own problems. With literature, a person can often understand situations they could not otherwise understand in real life (Koehler, 28). Often, just the arrangement of the words can be enjoyable, just as a child likes the sound of "Ring Around the Rosie", even though they might not understand what the words mean. There are four elements of literature: characters, plot, theme, and style. A good author has the ability to balance these elements, creating a unified work of art. The characters make up the central interest of many dramas and novels, as well as biographies and autobiographies. A writer must know each character thoroughly and have a clear idea about each ones look, speech, and thoughts. The internet literature is not difficult to create for the fact that unlike "traditional" literature the internet literature requires minimal start up costs (Moran, 47). And because reading usually involves convenience, at some point of time one would not be surprised to see convenient electronic devices that could be transported anywhere and would download books from the internet and present them in digital format.

Motivation is the reason for characters actions. A good writer will be sure that the motives of a character are clear and logical. The internet writers do not have to be this way, they are not controlled and they hardly risky anything by publishing online. Setting is where a character's story takes place. The plot is built around a series of events that take place within a definite period. It is what happens to the characters. No rules exist for the order in which the events are presented. A unified plot has a beginning, middle, and an end. In literary terms, a unified plot includes an exposition, a rising action, a climax, and a denouement, or outcome. The exposition gives the background and situation of the story (Browner, 93). The rising action builds upon the exposition. It creates suspense, or a reader's desire to find out what happens next. The climax is the highest point of interest, also a turning point of a story. The denouement is the conclusion. The theme is the basic idea expressed by a work of literature. It develops from the interplay of character and plot. A theme may contain morals, to warn the reader to lead a better life or a different kind of life. The internet literature does not have to be this way at all because no one controls it. The write take minimal risk in terms of investment, yet possibly can find readers from all over the world, which can pay for the e-book and download it to their own computers, is very high (Moran, 49).

A serious writer strives to make his work an honest expression of sentiment, or true emotion. They avoid sentimentality, which means giving too much emphasis to emotion or pretending to feel an emotion. A writer of honest emotion does not have to tell the reader what to think about a story. A good story will direct the reader to the author's conclusion. Style is the way a writer uses words to create literature. It is difficult to enjoy a story's characters or plot without enjoying the author's style (Browner, 98). The style of an author is as important as what he is trying to say. Point of view, or the way a story is presented, is another part of style. A writer may tell a story in the first person, using the pronoun I, as though the narrator were a major or minor character in it. Or, the writer may use the third person method, in which the narrator stands apart from the characters and describes the action using such pronouns as he and she. There are two types of third person views: limited and omniscient. In the third person limited point of view, the narrator describes the events as seen by a single character. In the third person omniscient, or all knowing, point of view, the narrator reports on what several characters are thinking and feeling. Reading is an intently personal art. There are no final rules for judging a piece of writing. Often, people's judgment of a work can change as taste and fashion change. Yet the classics continue to challenge readers' imaginations and give ageless advice. Shakespeare will most likely be as popular a hundred years from now as he is today. That is power of literature. Literature is timeless (Moran, 53).

It should be noted that literature can have many and different values on a person and it is the internet that allows literary values to be delivered to the audience without any barriers. It is all depending on the story and the value or moral issue the author wants, you, the reader to get out of it. The value literature had on me was actually hard to put into words. But to understand the value of literature you must know the definition of value and literature. Value has many meanings but there is two that relate (Browner, 102). Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor and a principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable. Literature is a body of writings in prose or verse. Literature produces value because it is basically an analysis of an experience or situation (Koehler, 30). I got a different value out of each story. With Mark Twain's The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn it showed me that one does not have to be civilized or conform to the ideas of society to become cultured or mature. With Huck Finn he ran away from everything that was considered civilized (Moran, 58). He had nothing and really did not want anything. But at the same time he experienced and matured living dangerously. This made me value Huck's adventure and take it as my own. Huck proves his maturity when he comments on how the king and duke dupe the villagers into believing that they are the dead man's brothers, and Huck says, "I never see anything so disgusting."(Twain 163) Even though the king and duke commit an awful act on the villagers he still feels sorry for them when they get tarred. Huck comments, "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."(Twain 225) In William Faulkner's Barn Burning it told of a man named Abner Snopes who burned barns when upset or mad. This was his way of getting back at them. "Barn Burning" has two very evident struggles (Browner, 105). Abner oppresses his family just as the upper class has oppressed him. "Barn Burning" to me is based on misdirected anger. Which is basically happening in these days. For example, a teenager and his parents have it out, he leaves, and now his anger is directed toward anything in his pathway. "Barn Burning" has a value in that it shows in life that people actually misdirect their anger. Such as in the school shootings and bomb threats that have occurred in the past couple of years (Koehler, 33). Just like Abner Snopes felt like an outsider to the upper class, so did the students who committed these violent acts. In "The Swimmer", it made me value life and what it brings. Because if your not careful or you do not watch out it will past you up without notice (Browner, 109). As with "Everyday Use", one of the daughters did not value who she was or whom she was because she was going out looking for her history. Which she already had at her fingertips.

Conclusion:

In conclusion I would like to note that reading all of the literature which colleges and universities assign to their students involves very high costs to the society in terms of paper consumption and time wasting (that involves going to the library, or to the book shop, etc). The internet and the ability to download the books from online to one portable device would reduce the costs, save the trees, and will make people more efficient. I realize that there are a lot of things that we as people in this society take for granted. Literature has made me value a lot of experiences and situations so far and I enjoy holding the paper book in the evening preparing for the next day, yet I do not protest against the use of the digital technology to create digital books that would contribute not only to the efficiency but also to the reduced costs to the whole society.

Holly Odom is a freelance writer working for essaymart.com - on line Custom Writing/Research company. She specializes in Social sciences, Arts, History and English literature. During 2005, earned became one of 10 best writers at essaymart.com.

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