The crux of any business is to operate successfully in a highly competitive world, which simply gets measured by the size of the profits that are generated. While a number of other parameters are also used to gauge how an enterprise runs, profit still reigns supreme and therefore the key to the success of any business, is to formulate an effective strategy to increase profits.

Business success is the result of co-ordinated focus on different ways to thrive and remain on top, which could translate into numbers of (a) customers, (b) enquiries,(c) units sold/serviced or for that matter even abstract and difficult measures to customer satisfaction, but in the end, it is always how in some form ‘to increase profits’, or simply how to run a profitable business.

Here let us taking a look around into a small shopee store with a peculiar sounding name Lovelysweet Candy Parlour, who run a popular candy business in a local neighbourhood of downtown Philadelphia. LCP or Lovely as they are called, sell a variety of candies of many makes, colours, flavours and of course tastes and suited to customers of all ages, as attractive small goodies which cater to people of all streams in wide range of events/likes. Let’s see how these 'Lovely' folks go about their job of churning a profitable business from basic but creative thinking.

Push 1: LCP thinks innovatively and creates customer interest offering a ‘freebie’, an attractive packet of lip-smacking chocos which are price-tagged at 4 dollars, along with each $50 spent. Just an attractive poster display could make the customer buy for a minimum of $50, instead of stopping at $40 or 41 or so, and when he / she opts for the ‘freebie’ the counter girl offers a “double-pack” for just 6 dollars.

Push 2: LCP next offers a 20% discount by means of a small coupon card or something close to it on the next visit / order which quietly but effectively builds customer loyalty but unobtrusively mentioning “when the buy is for $200”.

Push 3: LCP ensures that the packing on each product is attractively and convenience-wrapped, since many of them are meant as gifts – so the contact information, phone or name merges as noticeable part of the packing but unobtrusively spreading the customer net to the giftees as well.

Push 4. LCP often uses co-sponsoring events closely intertwined with like businesses such as flowers, bathing products and so on, improving visibility all the way.

In effect what we did see is a simple demonstration of business success, adopted by the Lovelys. The focus was on three basic steps (a) to make each customer to buy a wee-bit more, (b) to make him/her to buy more often, and thirdly (c) to make others to buy – in effect widening the customer base.

While these steps do not seem to be directly targeted on increasing profits, they really are, as the attack is on the in-built systems, to discover and tap the hidden resources from within, and finally turn towards a more successful business. In reality, efforts were on quietly to increase profits in each step. Increased profits would not only be the means but also the end, leading to business success and ultimately towards more profitable businesses which can thrive and grow - no stopping possible.

The average attention span of the average adult is 12-14 seconds. If your sales presentation lasts more than 1 minute, don’t flatter yourself thinking that most prospects hear or remember what you say.

In a recent sales survey, it was discovered that most salespeople cover 5-7 features during their presentation. When asked what the prospect remembered 24 hours later, they mentioned only one of the features. Guess which one? Not the first one, or the last one, but the one that related to their need, want, problem, desire or concern.

So what is the key to an effective sales presentation? Only cover the features and corresponding benefits of the issues that are of interest to the prospect. People buy for their reasons, not yours. They buy emotionally, and then justify their decision logically. Therefore a powerful presentation does the following:

1. It comes from the prospect’s perspective.
2. It is interactive.
3. It is a conversation with an agenda.
4. It blends a balance of emotional appeal and logical reasons.
5. It is brief.
6. It lets the prospect tell you what he wants and/or needs.
7. It qualifies interest in the features as you move along.
8. It tests the prospect’s interest along the way with trial closing questions.
9. It adjusts to the prospect’s personality style.
10. It is customized and tailored to each prospect.

Most salespeople go into what I call a “feature dump.” One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that THEY TALK TOO MUCH. How about you? Are you giving more information than you are getting?

Most good prospects are ready to buy before they tell you. Just give them a chance, and they will help you sell them.

Sooner or later, every salesperson experiences a down period of sales results. These periods, where your continued activity seems to yield less than satisfactory results, are normal and to be expected. None of us can keep up a pace of 200 miles per hour day after day, month after month, year after year. The key is to keep your attitude positive, your focus on what is working, and your activity levels high regardless of the results.

In my best selling book, Soft Sell, I share the idea that there are a variety of sales slumps. In this short tip, I will only discuss four. They are:

1. An attitude slump.
2. A prospecting slump.
3. A presentation slump.
4. A closing slump.

An attitude slump is where you find it difficult to maintain your confidence, poise, commitment, dedication, persistence and motivation. This can be due to a number of causes. Some of them are: a) you have lost belief in your organization’s products or services. b) you are not reaching your goals or objectives according to your schedule c) You are under a great deal of stress due to deadlines, expectations or loss of control of the sales process, and d) you have other issues in your life that are impacting your attitudes.

A prospecting slump is where you lack adequate qualified leads and are spending a great deal of time calling on poor prospects. As a result, your close ratio is a disaster. This could also be caused by your poor prospecting strategies: i.e. you are still (after several years selling your products/services) spending a lot of time cold calling.

A presentation slump can be caused by your lack of up-to-date product knowledge, poor presentation skills, or poor communication skills: i.e. listening, speaking or writing. This can also be caused by your lack of knowledge of the prospect’s needs, use of, or applications of, your products/services. You, therefore, give an organization-driven rather than a customer-driven sales appeal.

A closing slump can be caused by your lack of control of the sales process, poor prospecting, poor sales presentations, or many of the items in the attitude area we have already discussed.

As you can see, there are a number of areas where you can experience a down cycle in your sales approach. The thing to consider is that all of them are related to each other. In other words, if you are experiencing an attitude slump, it will have an impact on your prospecting, closing, etc. If you are in a closing slump, it will impact your attitudes, as well as other areas of the sales process.

The thing to remember is that you can’t pull out of any of these slumps by just focusing on the one area that you feel might be the problem. You have to work on all of them. The way out of a slump is to go back to what works, or has worked for you in the past. It is also an excellent time for reflection and self-evaluation of your progress, success, weaknesses, strengths, etc.

Many salespeople today will waste a great deal of time calling on poor prospects – trying to turn poor prospects into customers, or trying to close prospects that do not want or need what they are selling.

One of the key characteristics in more effective territory management is doing a better job of qualifying prospects prior to giving them your time, energy or corporate resources.

Let’s look at a few ways to better manage your resource of time and territory management.

1. Ask more effective questions earlier in the sales process.
2. Pay attention to answers to determine whether this is a good time to try and sell this prospect.
3. Develop a customer profile to use as a template for your prospecting.
4. Audit your sales call activity by dividing the number of calls you make in a week by the number of miles you drive in that week. This number will give you your call route effectiveness.
5. Spend more prospecting time getting referrals.
6. Develop strategic alliances to help you improve your prospecting activity.
7. Plan your call activities early in the week, month or day.
8. Don’t give poor prospects more time than they deserve.
9. Get up earlier.
10. Go to bed later.
11. Use this extra time for planning, thinking or evaluating your routines.
12. Develop a daily checklist of what you will need to be effective.
13. Keep accurate sales records. The more information you keep, the better able you will be to spot potential trouble areas.
14. Try to get more of your prospects to visit your location, plant or office.
15. Don’t spend time giving presentations to non-decision makers.

Even if you only do half of these, you will find your time will be better spent and you will experience better overall sales results.

One of the biggest mistakes poor salespeople make is THEY TALK TOO MUCH. The second is: THEY GIVE INFORMATION BEFORE THEY GET IT.

When you make these mistakes, you will tend to turn off most potential customers or clients. I remember my first sales position back in the early 60s. I worked for one of the top 5 insurance companies in the world. They fired me after 6 months. When you don’t sell anything for 6 months…….well, I am surprised it took them so long. There were a number of reasons why I failed, and I don’t intend to bore you with all of them – just one, to illustrate the point of this week’s tip. (By the way, the industry at that time had a 90% turnover rate in new agents in their first year, so it wasn’t just me. As a footnote, several years ago I was asked to speak to a group of sales agents from that company. Isn’t life interesting?)

Back to the story. The way they taught me to sell was to memorize the sales presentation that they had developed, and then go out and deliver it 4-5 times a day. Their justification at the time was that selling is a numbers game. (We’ll save that subject for a future tip.) This is what I call a product or organizational-driven sales approach. It doesn’t work. The message you send to a prospect when you go into this feature dump is – all prospects are the same and buy for the same reasons. Not so, and you and they know it.

The key to your success is not in the delivery of a pre-planned message that covers all the features that some genius in your organization has decided are important. The key to your success is to discover what your prospect’s needs, issues, concerns, problems, wants, desires or attitudes are. Then, deliver only that information that they need to make an intelligent buying decision now. Give them the rest of the stuff later – if they want it.

When you talk too much, you will give unnecessary or wrong information. Learn to let the prospect drive the process; not the control of it, but the information portion. Another myth or way of stating this is the outdated sales axiom: Plan your sales calls.

Don’t plan the information you are going to give. If you have been selling your product or service for a year or more, you shouldn’t need to do this. However, plan the information you need to get – the questions you are going to ask.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics

Effectively reading non-verbal messages can dramatically improve your sales relationships, as well as your sales results.

Everyone communicates on two levels. Verbally and non-verbally. Verbal communication, or the spoken words we use, represent a very small portion (less than 10%) of our overall message. People can lie, misrepresent or mislead you with their words. Non-verbal language represents over 50% of our total message.

If there is an inconsistency between the verbal message and the non-verbal message you are getting from a prospect, I would advise paying more attention to the non-verbal. The non-verbal message will always be more a more accurate representation of the person’s feelings, attitudes or beliefs.

There are a number of ways we communicate non-verbally. There are: gestures, facial expressions, eye movements and eye contact, posture and body position, verbal tone, inflection, pauses, pace and volume. The way people dress also sends a non-verbal signal.

An easy way to determine what someone is thinking or feeling is to observe whether their signals are open or closed. Open signals represent openness, acceptance, willingness, enthusiasm, and approval. Closed signals represent the opposite of all of these. Closed signals are crossed legs, arms, hands. A lack of eye contact, rigid posture, leaning away from you, and the hands on top of the head are also examples of closed signals. Open signals are exactly what they imply: open hands, uncrossed legs, eye contact, leaning forward, and so on. There are thousands of ways we communicate non-verbally.

I suggest you spend the next few days observing and trying to interpret people’s non-verbal messages.

The average attention span of the average adult is 12-14 seconds. If your sales presentation lasts more than 1 minute, don’t flatter yourself thinking that most prospects hear or remember what you say.

In a recent sales survey, it was discovered that most salespeople cover 5-7 features during their presentation. When asked what the prospect remembered 24 hours later, they mentioned only one of the features. Guess which one? Not the first one, or the last one, but the one that related to their need, want, problem, desire or concern.

So what is the key to an effective sales presentation? Only cover the features and corresponding benefits of the issues that are of interest to the prospect. People buy for their reasons, not yours. They buy emotionally, and then justify their decision logically. Therefore a powerful presentation does the following:

1. It comes from the prospect’s perspective.
2. It is interactive.
3. It is a conversation with an agenda.
4. It blends a balance of emotional appeal and logical reasons.
5. It is brief.
6. It lets the prospect tell you what he wants and/or needs.
7. It qualifies interest in the features as you move along.
8. It tests the prospect’s interest along the way with trial closing questions.
9. It adjusts to the prospect’s personality style.
10. It is customized and tailored to each prospect.

Most salespeople go into what I call a “feature dump.” One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that THEY TALK TOO MUCH. How about you? Are you giving more information than you are getting?

Most good prospects are ready to buy before they tell you. Just give them a chance, and they will help you sell them.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics. He is the best selling author of over 60 books including; Soft Sell, That’s Life, Peace Of Mind, 91 Challenges Managers Face Today and Your First Year In Sales.

Sooner or later, every salesperson experiences a down period of sales results. These periods, where your continued activity seems to yield less than satisfactory results, are normal and to be expected. None of us can keep up a pace of 200 miles per hour day after day, month after month, year after year. The key is to keep your attitude positive, your focus on what is working, and your activity levels high regardless of the results.

In my best selling book, Soft Sell, I share the idea that there are a variety of sales slumps. In this short tip, I will only discuss four. They are:

1. An attitude slump.
2. A prospecting slump.
3. A presentation slump.
4. A closing slump.

An attitude slump is where you find it difficult to maintain your confidence, poise, commitment, dedication, persistence and motivation. This can be due to a number of causes. Some of them are: a) you have lost belief in your organization’s products or services. b) you are not reaching your goals or objectives according to your schedule c) You are under a great deal of stress due to deadlines, expectations or loss of control of the sales process, and d) you have other issues in your life that are impacting your attitudes.

A prospecting slump is where you lack adequate qualified leads and are spending a great deal of time calling on poor prospects. As a result, your close ratio is a disaster. This could also be caused by your poor prospecting strategies: i.e. you are still (after several years selling your products/services) spending a lot of time cold calling.

A presentation slump can be caused by your lack of up-to-date product knowledge, poor presentation skills, or poor communication skills: i.e. listening, speaking or writing. This can also be caused by your lack of knowledge of the prospect’s needs, use of, or applications of, your products/services. You, therefore, give an organization-driven rather than a customer-driven sales appeal.

A closing slump can be caused by your lack of control of the sales process, poor prospecting, poor sales presentations, or many of the items in the attitude area we have already discussed.

As you can see, there are a number of areas where you can experience a down cycle in your sales approach. The thing to consider is that all of them are related to each other. In other words, if you are experiencing an attitude slump, it will have an impact on your prospecting, closing, etc. If you are in a closing slump, it will impact your attitudes, as well as other areas of the sales process.

The thing to remember is that you can’t pull out of any of these slumps by just focusing on the one area that you feel might be the problem. You have to work on all of them. The way out of a slump is to go back to what works, or has worked for you in the past. It is also an excellent time for reflection and self-evaluation of your progress, success, weaknesses, strengths, etc.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics. He is the best selling author of over 60 books including; Soft Sell, That’s Life, Peace Of Mind, 91 Challenges Managers Face Today and Your First Year In Sales

Many salespeople today will waste a great deal of time calling on poor prospects – trying to turn poor prospects into customers, or trying to close prospects that do not want or need what they are selling.

One of the key characteristics in more effective territory management is doing a better job of qualifying prospects prior to giving them your time, energy or corporate resources.

Let’s look at a few ways to better manage your resource of time and territory management.

1. Ask more effective questions earlier in the sales process.
2. Pay attention to answers to determine whether this is a good time to try and sell this prospect.
3. Develop a customer profile to use as a template for your prospecting.
4. Audit your sales call activity by dividing the number of calls you make in a week by the number of miles you drive in that week. This number will give you your call route effectiveness.
5. Spend more prospecting time getting referrals.
6. Develop strategic alliances to help you improve your prospecting activity.
7. Plan your call activities early in the week, month or day.
8. Don’t give poor prospects more time than they deserve.
9. Get up earlier.
10. Go to bed later.
11. Use this extra time for planning, thinking or evaluating your routines.
12. Develop a daily checklist of what you will need to be effective.
13. Keep accurate sales records. The more information you keep, the better able you will be to spot potential trouble areas.
14. Try to get more of your prospects to visit your location, plant or office.
15. Don’t spend time giving presentations to non-decision makers.

Even if you only do half of these, you will find your time will be better spent and you will experience better overall sales results.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics. He is the best selling author of over 60 books including; Soft Sell, That’s Life, Peace Of Mind, 91 Challenges Managers Face Today and Your First Year In Sales

One of the biggest mistakes poor salespeople make is THEY TALK TOO MUCH. The second is: THEY GIVE INFORMATION BEFORE THEY GET IT.

When you make these mistakes, you will tend to turn off most potential customers or clients. I remember my first sales position back in the early 60s. I worked for one of the top 5 insurance companies in the world. They fired me after 6 months. When you don’t sell anything for 6 months…….well, I am surprised it took them so long. There were a number of reasons why I failed, and I don’t intend to bore you with all of them – just one, to illustrate the point of this week’s tip. (By the way, the industry at that time had a 90% turnover rate in new agents in their first year, so it wasn’t just me. As a footnote, several years ago I was asked to speak to a group of sales agents from that company. Isn’t life interesting?)

Back to the story. The way they taught me to sell was to memorize the sales presentation that they had developed, and then go out and deliver it 4-5 times a day. Their justification at the time was that selling is a numbers game. (We’ll save that subject for a future tip.) This is what I call a product or organizational-driven sales approach. It doesn’t work. The message you send to a prospect when you go into this feature dump is – all prospects are the same and buy for the same reasons. Not so, and you and they know it.

The key to your success is not in the delivery of a pre-planned message that covers all the features that some genius in your organization has decided are important. The key to your success is to discover what your prospect’s needs, issues, concerns, problems, wants, desires or attitudes are. Then, deliver only that information that they need to make an intelligent buying decision now. Give them the rest of the stuff later – if they want it.

When you talk too much, you will give unnecessary or wrong information. Learn to let the prospect drive the process; not the control of it, but the information portion. Another myth or way of stating this is the outdated sales axiom: Plan your sales calls.

Don’t plan the information you are going to give. If you have been selling your product or service for a year or more, you shouldn’t need to do this. However, plan the information you need to get – the questions you are going to ask.

No matter how well you’re doing in your sales career, I guarantee that a life coach can help you rise to an even greater level of success – a life coach could probably even double your income this year alone. That may sound like a bold statement, but I’ve seen results exactly that dramatic time and time again. So, if you’ve never heard of a life coach, or are familiar with the concept but aren’t really sure how they can help you grow as a sales professional, let me fill you in.

A life coach specializes in inspiring you to go beyond the ordinary, to raise your standards and definition of success to a level that you’re truly capable of reaching. Most people will never achieve what they’re truly capable of, simply because they haven’t formed the right partnership to make it happen. A life coach is exactly that – a true partner in your success.

Here are three more concrete reasons why all sales professionals should consider teaming up with a life coach:

* A life coach not only celebrates your victories, but helps you learn from your setbacks. Let’s face it, in sales we have to get used to rejection. But how you use and learn from that rejection is a major determining factor in how successful you can be. A talented life coach helps put perspective on your successes and failures, so you can benefit from both.

* A life coach does not judge you. I’m not saying that all you’ll ever hear from a life coach is a rosy picture of where you’re headed. That wouldn’t be fair and it’s not the way I handle my clients. But what a life coach should do is listen to what you’re saying without sitting in judgment, and without over-analyzing you.

* A life coach gets to know your values, passion and life-purpose …and holds you to them. It’s easy to get sidetracked, to lose sight of what’s truly important for your life and career. A life coach’s job is to help you maintain your focus so that you don’t get sidetracked. Simply keeping you working towards your ultimate goal is one of the most powerful services a life coach can provide. Take advantage of it.

Question: What is the number one need for success in business today?

Answer: To persuade others of your value and the value of your ideas.

So What Is Influencing?

Influencing is getting your own way, especially unobtrusively.

Most managers do it, most of the time.

• You can influence others simply be being you (notice how easily children are influenced by the behaviour of those around them)
• You can influence covertly, behind the scenes
• You can use more open strategies and tactics

Great influencers manage to get other people to go along with their ideas whilst maintaining the relationship. If people feel manipulated, relationships will be damaged. It is important to understand the different strategies available to you and to plan your approach.

Mastering The Art:

Increasingly today’s managers are measured by their ability to influence others in the workplace. Being able to get people to do what you want has a direct effect on:

• The well-being of your staff
• The prosperity of your company
• And, ultimately, your own destiny

You are probably already successful at influencing others – some of the time. How can you become consistently successful? If you can identify your strengths and weaknesses and make a few changes, nothing can hold you back.

Typical Areas Of Open Influence:

A lot of the time, especially in business, influencing is necessary and we accept it as part of human communication. It operates openly and usually follows a recognised process. Open influence can be seen in:

- Meetings

- Presentations

- Sales conversations

- Debates and discussions

- Change management

- Reports

- Proposals

- Negotiations

- Performance management

- Process management

Typical Areas Of Hidden Influence:

Influence can also operate in a less open and direct manner. Your behaviour will be noticed by others, even though you are not necessarily trying to influence them. Your words will always be interpreted, however subtle or oblique. In short – whether we mean to influence or not – we are constantly beaming out influential messages to the world.

Hidden influence, which is often delicate, slow and on-going, works well in the following areas:

- Changing an image or behaviour

- Altering attitude

- Networking

- Communicating non-verbally

- Developing and maintaining rapport

- Counselling others

- Acting as a mentor

- Maintaining customer relations

- Using metaphor and analogy

- Nurturing relationships

What Makes An Effective Influencer?

Winning influencers share attitudes and behaviours that ensure consistent success. Studies have shown that they:

- Indicate the benefits of their ideas

- Neutralise resistance, preferably in advance

- Find alternative ways to influence others

- Listen attentively to what others say

- Uncover needs and wants

- Empathise continuously

- Notice how others respond

- Create and maintain rapport throughout

- Eliminate weak statements from their language

- Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change" - Charles Darwin

Whatever got you where you are today will not be sufficient to keep you there. A rapidly changing environment is the regular background against which organisations must develop.

Change is continuous and will become more rapid as we move forward over time. Senior management must be capable of reacting to those changes and be prepared to take advantage of them and yet stay within the overall framework and agreed strategy.

The role of strategy is fundamental if the people within an organisation are to be enabled to make the level of contribution of which they are capable. Strategy, based on a good grasp of the core competencies of a business, is an essential precursor to achieving optimal shareholder value.

Dependence on salespeople is key to delivering the latent capability of a business. Our salespeople are the greatest source of competitive advantage we have and that is precisely why we should continue to invest in them and fully develop them. This is particularly true now that in most market sectors competitive advantage is continually being eroded – i.e. International barriers are coming down, selling time is becoming limited, competitors are getting smarter, fewer and fewer names are appearing on companies’ databases, and product uniqueness is rare. Conversely, undeveloped personnel can bring down a company through inadequate performance, leaving the competition to harvest the marketplace.

If your organisation wants to permanently increase it’s sales results then it needs to approach sales differently to create “the difference that makes the difference” in order to positively impact bottom line performance.

In Summary: Organisations and salespeople who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales to a whole new level are the ones most likely to succeed. Trying to operate a sales organisation without total commitment is like trying to drive a car without fuel. But every organisation has the potential to harness the power of their salespeople just as surely as oxygen pumps life into the human body.

"Option Overload" is a serious problem that can negatively affect your businesses' bottom line. That's why you must understand and avoid it.

So just what is option overload? It is the availability of so many choices that a potential customer is unable to efficiently process all the information and make the purchasing decision in a timely manner. They become the proverbial "deer caught in the headlights."

Some business owners and sales people think that providing a lot of information and a lot of choices is always a good thing. Actually, the opposite is often true.

In an option overload situation, what is the easiest action for a potential customer to take? If someone walks into one of those large electronic retailers with the intention of buying a new LCD TV and finds that there are 25 different models with an assortment of different options, what is the likely result? In a word, confusion.

Once a potential customer becomes confused, what is their likely course of action? No action. The easiest and safest thing for a confused potential buyer to do is nothing.

They will become concerned that they are incapable of making a good buying decision because there are too many choices that they weren't prepared to evaluate. So they will need more time to do research and think about what options are really important to them. That means they will be walking out without buying a TV.

More than likely, we've all experienced option overload many times. I can remember looking at a 10-page menu in a restaurant and trying to decide what I wanted. There were just too many choices!

Evidently, they were trying to be all things to all people, but their extensive menu created a less than ideal dining experience for me. When I visit a restaurant, I don't want to have to have to think too hard about which of their 132 items I want to eat. You get the idea.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't provide choices for your customers. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I am saying is that you need to examine whether or not you are offering so many options that you are confusing your customers. You need to determine if you are making them feel uncomfortable about making a timely purchasing decision.

To build a highly successful business, you must focus on always providing an easy shopping experience. You must focus on always making it easy for someone to decide to do business with you. Give it some thought..

Sales manager is your JOB TITLE. It isn't your JOB DESCRIPTION. Effective management requires both great leadership skills and sales ability. Both require different strengths. The top salesperson talents that earned you the promotion don’t always translate into being a great leader.

How did you get where you are today You demonstrated the ability to sell. You were effective. Most likely it wasn't because your company sent you to manager training school. They saw something in you that that showed leadership ability. You have a great track record. In your role the tough part is hiring and training your people to be effective Your sales team is your lifeblood. The results are direct reflection of you. You want people just like you. That's the toughest part of your job.

DON’T EXPECT EVERYONE TO HAVE YOUR WORK ETHIC All people are not created equally. Most don’t have your talent and desire.

FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE Be upfront with your people. If you expect something make certain they know what it is. Put it in writing. Set expectations and then let them know how they are doing.

BE OBSERVANT Diagnose before you try to cure. Take time to see what is working and what is not before you decide to make changes.

BE FRIENDLY, DON’T BECOME FRIENDS There is a reason the military doesn’t let officers fraternize with enlisted personnel. When its time to make a decision someone has to be the leader.

DELEGATE TO THE RIGHT PLAYERS You have lots of talented people around you. No one of us can do it all. Learn to utilize their abilities in helping you build a frame of great teamwork.

SELF IMPROVEMENT for YOU and YOUR PEOPLE Offer more than you expect. Lead by example so your people will see what it takes to grow and develop in their career. Do not stop learning; being a manager is not the exercise of some dormant ability. Self improvement is a continual process.