The sales team was underperforming due to issues with sales leadership such as lack of training, too much time spent on reports by management, and unmotivated reps. The sales executive made adjustments by holding a participative planning meeting with the team, setting goals with individual reps, providing coaching, improving training, and implementing continuous promotions. These changes resulted in the team improving from 80% of their goal to 140% by the end of the quarter. Effective sales leadership through engagement, goal-setting, coaching, training and incentives can turn around poor performance.

1. The economic growth rate could be better. Many
companies have negative or low growth. That means sales
departments are under-performing. Or, it means the loss
of customers is greater than new customers coming in.
Most executives will still equate that to not enough sales.

2. In one company we engaged, in booming times they were
selling 10% of total revenue or $400 million a year. Now
they are at half that number. What does this mean to
them and you? Commissions and bonuses are lower! This
is a death-blow to sales reps motivation. As a sales leader
you need to ramp it up and find an antidote to these
depressing results. The good news there are five powerful
sales leadership strategies you can use today to "fire" up
your sales team. The kicker-you might have to change to
succeed.

3. What Change?

4. The truth is most sales deficits are self-inflicted. If you
want your people to be better you have to be better. For
example, a sales executive called us because his numbers
were flat. After further investigation we found a few
issues:

5. Too much management time on the computer, reports and
meeting.

6. Little or no sales training going on.

7. Fewer sales reps.

8. Discontented and unmotivated reps.

9. No promotions in place.

10. Does any of this sound familiar? We discussed this with
this sales executive and adjusted priorities. We held a
sales meeting with the team to identify the problems.
With all of this input we finalized a plan with our leader
and his direct reports and hit the ground running. By the
end to the first month, progress was made. Their final
quarter of the year they went from 80% of plan to 140%.
Noticed what happened here. People weren't fired or
chastised. The leadership made adjustments and
improved their efforts. The sales team responded
successfully. Excellent!

11. 5 Sales Power Actions You Can Take Today

12. Re-plan: Analyze results and meet with your team. Do the
session differently. Change the room around. Go outside
to a hotel if you can spend the money. Conduct the
meeting differently. Instead of dictating change, engage
your team with brainstorming and discussion groups to
gain their input and buy-in. Do highly participative
training. Have some fun, too.

13. Set new goals: Do one on ones with each rep to review
their performance. Make it a dialogue not a monologue.
Problem-solve together about how the rep can win. Relate
new expectations to their income potential and their
personal goals.

14. Coach: The most under utilized tool to sales management
is coaching. Schedule this as if it's a meeting with the
President of your company. Use coaching to build your
team up not beat them up. Do this with every rep based
on your goal-setting discussion. Get in the field and
interact with customers, and lead by example.

15. Train: Begin additional training in your planning meeting.
Reps hate training that is boring and adds no value. All
reps, even the best, need on-going training. Look at the
superstars of any sport. How do they keep their edge?
They out prepare everyone else. Why should salespeople
be any different? So, improve your training process. Get
outside help to power-up your approach.

16. Promotions: One sales leader we have worked with over
the last five years has this adage-always have something
going on! In order words he believes in continuous
promotions with incentives for his team. Why? If you do
the above four strategies with consistency and passion
your reps will begin to improve because you are becoming
a more effective leader. Promotions will challenge your
sales team to explode their numbers. You will also
discover good team competition that will bring out the
best in each rep. One basic rule to follow: give everyone a
chance to win.

17. These five Sales Power actions will give you a boost if you
stick with it. Your success as a leader depends on it. The
danger is to get started and then fall back to old habits.
Whatever you do, stay persistent. Get a coach or partner
to assist you if needed so your change in mindset becomes
permanent and sales go up. Finally, remember this,
Anatole France said, "To accomplish great things we, we
must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also
believe!"

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