The Sales Management Challenge is a program where difficult, real-world sales management scenarios are presented and sales managers, executives and thought leaders share how they would tackle them. Our charge is to help sales managers make informed decisions in their roles through their participation in this skill development program.
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Do you know star quality when you see it?

So, you want to hire sales stars. Many candidates may shine, but are they made of the stuff to enrich the business lives of customers and your team? The cover story of this month’s issue of SOLD Sales Executive comes from Neil Shorney. He explains four challenges you face when trying to identify and recruit sales stars. He suggests the solution may be to look internally for those on your sales staff who are ready to shine. You already know them and the cost of a promotion is much less than recruiting externally.

Respect is more important than an order

One of the qualities of a sales star is the ability to earn customer respect. A sales star has the confidence to tell a customer he or she could do better…and then has the skills to help customers achieve. The best customers want salespeople who aren’t afraid to tell the truth, and they are the customers you want. When you find a sales star with this ability then you want him or her too.

SOLDLAB.com will help you and your team shine

When you look to your current staff for your next sales stars, make sure they visit SOLDLAB.com. It’s their best source of ideas and information and podcasts to educate and motivate them to shine their brightest. They can access it 24/7 from wherever they are currently shining on your customers. You can also direct them to visit our Facebook page and Twitter feed to learn the latest bits of news and tips that could even help them on their next sales call.

What's Inside Issue #4:

Cleaning the shark’s teeth

Sounds like a dangerous job? The little remora fish is the master of that job…and the shark allows the remora in its mouth because it’s more beneficial to work together than work apart. That’s called a symbiotic relationship and it’s the best kind of relationship with your customers. Focusing on your customers is the theme of this month’s issue… and your success (as well as your customers’) is dependent on you putting their interests first and helping them achieve the results they want.
Forget the lingo! Speak the customer’s language

A major takeaway from this month’s issue is how much more important it is to listen to your customers instead of them listening to you. Not only is it the best way to learn what they really need from you, but also you’ll hear the words they use to express that need…and those are the words you must use when communicating with them. Forget the sales jargon and all the “techno-speak” about your products and services. Ask questions… listen… speak your customer’s language… and you’ll be able to deliver the goods and a great looking sales report to the boss.

Take SOLDLAB.com wherever your opportunities take you

Need more courage and support to enter the shark’s mouth? You’ll find them at SOLDLAB.COM! Your online repository of ideas and information and podcasts for today’s salesperson and sales environment is available 24/7… and in whatever corner of the world you’ve found a new sales opportunity. Even though the time gaps in your busy schedule may be small, use them wisely to check our Facebook page and Twitter feed throughout the day for updates.

What's inside April 2013:

Don’t you hate it when a speaker gets up and waxes on poetically about themselves for the first 5 minutes of a presentation? It’s all Me, Me, Me. You’re yawn, yawn, yawning.

Why is that? What makes you fall into a stupor of boredom when a speaker focuses on himself first?

YOU – you are missing.

This is why YOU is the most important word in any presentation.

Minimize I & Maximize You

As a speaker, you are the conduit of information that will inform, persuade, inspire or entertain your audience. Yep, you are just a conduit in a presentation. When the focus is on the I – this how I work with my clients or I do this or I do that – you’ve just made yourself the most important person in the room. Maximize you – minimize I.

This goes for bloggers too – do you find your self clicking away from an article because there are more “I”s in the first paragraph? I do. I don’t care about the I – I care about seeing myself in your content.

Michael Goldberg covers the topic of networking. He speaks about how to start a conversation in a networking environment where you have to connect with people that you meet for the first time, how to make a conversation work, what questions to ask and what topics to raise to make the conversation fluent.

Mentoring new sales reps is a technique many companies use to “jump start” new sales reps. It’s a logical approach providing new sales reps with an opportunity to work with someone besides their sales manager to learn about the customer base, product portfolios, marshaling internal resources, etc.

Sometimes companies put in place formal sales rep mentoring programs. In those situations, mentors are given training as to what mentoring is, how to be an effective mentor, roles and responsibilities, feedback techniques, and so forth. Many companies consider the mentoring program as part of a “pre-management” development effort for the sales reps serving as mentors.

Are you icky when you negotiate? When negotiating, the icky factor is not only a turnoff, but it can also be the death knell of the negotiation.
With a U.S. Congressman being perceived as being icky, as the result of recently getting caught in a spectacle that was made worse by the manner in which he addressed the situation, the question becomes, what makes one appear to be icky?
If you wish to avoid the perception of being icky in your negotiations, observe the following four insights.

How Do You Manage a Salesperson Who Always Asks for Lower Pricing?

The Top Ranked Sales Experts suggest their solutions in real-time here http://salesarchitects.net/smchallenge/How-Do-You-Manage-A-Salesperson-Who-Always-Asks-For-Lower-Pricing

“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”

-Richard Branson

He’s a high school dropout with two arrests and one night in jail under his belt. He’s also a billionaire. And he’s not afraid of failure. In fact, Richard Branson, Virgin Entrepreneur, holds the X Factor belief that failure is a good thing — and a necessary part of learning. He says, “You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” As one who has fallen often, Richard Branson sure has learned a lot, despite the dyslexia and poor math skills that led to his early departure from formal education.
What does this mean for you as a sales professional? It means you should embrace failure. As Branson says, see failure as an opportunity to learn. When you fall, don’t well on what you “shoulda, woulda, coulda” done. Just think about what you’ll do differently next time. When Branson found himself facing a potential legal record on suspicion of tax evasion, he didn’t wallow in all the mistakes he’d made and everything he didn’t know. He paid his fine and spent the next two years learning money management so that he wouldn’t make the mistake again.

This X Factor approach also means that embracing challenge is a good thing. I always tell sales leaders that their job isn’t to make their sales pros’ lives easier, but to make them better. That’s an X Factor belief too — not looking for external circumstances to improve, but finding a way to improve yourself. Branson tackled the airline business when it didn’t make sense based on all external factors. But Branson did it anyway. He just found a way. It wasn’t based on everything lining up perfectly. In fact, he says if he’d always waited for things to line up, he wouldn’t have gone into any of his businesses. Branson said, “I mean, if I relied on accountants to make decisions, I most certainly would have never gone into the airline business. I most certainly would not have gone into the space business, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone into most of the businesses that I’m in.” Hello risk taker! That’s the kind of brashness that comes with being unafraid of failure. And it often happens to precede success.

This article was published in SOLD Sales Executives Issue 3.

Gone are the days when managers wanting to motivate their staff simply had to call a team meeting in the office anytime and everyone would be there. As a result of remote working and flexible hours it is very rare for most of the team to be in one building at the same time, certainly not without several days’ warning. So managers have had to harness instant communication technology, using email and websites to explain the benefits and maintain the momentum for their staff motivation scheme. Technology moves on and more and more of us are accessing the internet and emails via mobile phones, rather than computers. So once again, managers must reconfigure their operations to adapt to “mobile motivation”.  
Of course mobile technology brings new forms of messaging into the equation. In addition to email, intranet, websites, and text messaging, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media provide a wealth of opportunities that should be considered.