Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Great Expectations

The key and also the down fall the most of the managers that I've spoken to recently have involved setting clear and succinct expectations. From what I gathered to most effective managers us some of the following to maintain high job satisfaction, high retention and increased morale.

Here are key components to setting clear expectations:
  1. Be clear yourself – understand where you are driving to and what it will take to get there
  2. Keep it simple – the best expectations are ones that you can translate easily
  3. Write them down and repeat often – avoid thinking that people “should” know and make it clear, visible and say it often.
  4. Provide Support – if you’re expectation is to do 10 sales calls a day or fulfill 15 customer service requests a week (both tangible and easy to measure) then make sure you’re creating the time and space for you’re employees to do those things
  5. Be sure that you’re expectations are about what people can DO – managing by result is something we so often default to because results drive our business, but getting people focused on what they can DO and how often you expect them to DO it is critical for morale and for turning your business around

Why do clear expectations matter?

  • People thrive with clear expectations: most of the sales people I talk to are given clear results objectives, but nothing about the thing that they can control, which is the activities required to get the results.
  • You provide yourself or your employees a framework in which they are able to define success and link those things to their own activity
  • There’s a saying that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers, well clear expectations can lead to higher job satisfaction and lower turn over

Monday, January 5, 2009

Six Things You Must Stop Doing to Reach the Top in Sales

I found this article in an old archive and thought it pertinent to today's market... enjoy.

Six Things You Must Stop Doing to Reach the Top in Sales
By Dave Anderson

In sales as in life, there are things you have to give up so you can go up. Making tradeoffs is part of paying the price to reach your next performance level. Following are five strategies for building a higher degree of excellence and consistency in your career.

Stop waiting for something to happen and get busy to make it happen. Stop living passively and take action. You can't sit or wait your way to the next level. You'll have to climb there and that mean's you need to make something happen….today…..right now!
To develop an action-bias: Strike early each day and stay in motion all day. Resolve to go from order-taker to order-maker.

Stop just putting in more time and begin putting more into your time. It's not important that you get everything done each day; what is vital is that you get the right things done each day!
Work within the disciplines of priorities or you work yourself to death : Identify your highest-return activities and schedule them. Identify your highest leverage customers and make time for them.

Stop making excuses and start making results. You can go from failure to success but you can't go from excuses to success because excuses stop you from acknowledging what the real problem is: you.
What is the number one excuse you use to explain away your lack of greater success? Decide to give this excuse up now!

Stop treating training like it is punishment. If you don't realize the value of training you are either arrogant, ignorant or both. If you don't think you need training, let me set the record straight for you: you're not that good! Professionals in any field never get so good they don't need to practice so don't think for a minute you're the exception.
The level of your practice will determine the level of your play: Which skills are you working on this week? Which product or services are you committed to learning more about this week? If you can't be specific, you need to get serious about the selling profession. You can't get more than you have until you become more than you are.

Stop planting the seeds to your next rut during the good times.
When you find yourself in a rut it's not the result of something you did last night. It's a series of bad decisions and failed disciplines you've sown over time just now manifesting themselves.
The good times can put you to sleep. They make you believe that since you've “arrived” basic disciplines like prospecting, practicing and planning no longer apply to you. The results of this foolishness don't show up overnight but they will show up over time. It's inevitable. You don't have to do anything extraordinary to make a great living in sales but you must consistently do the ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Stop hanging around with losers.
Don't hang around with an easy crowd because you won't grow.
Spending time with the fellowship of the miserable: whiners, complainers and gossips will cut your paycheck in half: at the least. Those you associate with on the job influence your values, attitude and discipline. Choose your associations carefully because eventually you become like them. Associate with people who elevate not devastate you.