Conventional sales management training wisdom is so widely accepted because it’s easy.

Right or wrong, following a rule is much easier than having to think. Besides, if you blow it, you can always whine that you followed the rule! Now who’s going to fault you for that?

First Break All The Rules

Look, you’re a sales manager. You deal with the day to day headaches of finding, motivating, and keeping talented sales people. The variables of personalities, responding to your competition, anticipating the economy, and even dealing with the weather, all affect your sales team and are far too complex to boil your decision making down to a simple set of rules.

So what do world-class managers do? What if we could actually tap into the wisdom of the world’s very best managers? That’s exactly what The Gallup Group did when they interviewed 80,000 managers.

Can you guess what they found? The world’s very best managers, don’t play by the same set of rules as everyone else. Before they do anything else, The world’s best managers, “First break all the rules of conventional wisdom”.

They don’t believe that a person can overcome anything that he sets his mind to. They don’t try to help a person overcome his weaknesses. They consistently disregard the golden rule. And yes, they even play favorites.

These world class managers know they have only three primary functions:

Recruit Talent

The world’s best managers are first and foremost always looking for talent. Sure skills and experience are important, but talent is 100 times more important. Talent is anything that you are in the habit of successful doing. The key word is “habit”.

Help People Use Their Talent

World class managers believe: “You cannot put in what God left out. All you can do is draw out what God put in. That’s hard enough.” In other words, they put an employee into a role or they redefine a role so that the employee will use his talents EVERY day.

Retain People With Talent

It has been reported over and over again that people choose to work for a company, but they stay or leave because of the manager. World class managers take the time and energy to get to know and truly care about their employees. They learn their employees’ likes, dislikes, hobbies, the name of their spouse, their children’s names, favorite sports, hobbies, strengths, and weaknesses.

TAKE ACTION

1. Read the book “First Break All The Rules” by Marcus Buckingham. Go right now. Don’t walk. Run! You’ll be glad you did.
2. Comment on this blog post at www.HelpMySalesTeamSucks.com and tell us your thoughts, your issues, your challenges, and your questions.
3. Watch this post’s video or listen to the mp3 or check us out on iTunes.

Imagine moving into a new town.  It’s the day before the basketball regional playoffs.  The head coach comes down with pneumonia.  The dean heard that you know something about basketball, so he asks you to be coach.  Imagine further that you don’t know any of the players’ strengths.  Could you win the big game?  Probably not.

Skills and knowledge are important, but knowing one’s strengths are paramount to success.  Yet, most of us float through life like a cork on the ocean, without a clue as to our strengths.  But what if you did now your true strengths?  What if you could play to those strengths EVERY day?  Do you think you would be more successful, with less effort and have more fun?

That’s exactly what The Gallup Group asked when interviewing 50,000 people.  Here’s what they found.  On a scale from -10 to +10, if you worked day and night for the rest of your life on a weakness, the best you’ll ever do is increase your weakness by 2 points.  BUT, if you work on a strength, the effort and energy to get to a 10 is minimal.

So, if playing to your strengths is key, then how do we find your strength?  Perhaps highlighting what I did will help you to more quickly find your strengths.  I first purchased the book “It’s All About You”.  I watched the video, which was AWESOME!  I then read the book.

The author suggested that I log all of my activities for a week, noting how I felt before during and after each activity.  Did I look forward to doing these activities?  Did I enjoy doing them?  Was I excited afterwards?  Or did I loath the whole thing?  I went one step further and rated each activity from -10 to +10.  At the end of the week my strengths jumped off of the page.

Next, to confirm my strengths, I purchased the book “Strengths Finder 2.0”.  At the back of the book is a URL, ID, and password.  I went to their website and took the 117 question strengths test.  The website then produced a 20 page report detailing my top five strengths.

Over the next six months I restructured my work to play to my strengths every day.  The results were nothing less than amazing!  I became more productive, sold more, and had a ton more fun.

As a side note, I also had a game plan for hiring my next team.  Everyone that I now hire must take this same Strengths Finder questionnaire.   Armed with each salesman’s strengths, I now know how to find, motivate, and keep good talent.

TAKE ACTION TIME
•    Get the book “It’s All About You”.  Toss the book and watch the 30’ video.
•    Buy a new book “Strengths Finder 2.0”. Toss the book and take the on-line questionnaire.
•    Go to: www.HelpMySalesTeamSucks.com and comment on this post, telling us about your thoughts, your issues, your challenges, and your questions.
•    Watch this post’s video, listen to the mp3, or check us out on iTunes.

The Devil Is In The Data

In 2009 I was turning around a Telecom company in the northwest.  The company had been losing money steadly for several years. The CEO, an old acquaintance of mine, pleaded with me to just stop the hemorrhaging.

In one day of analyzing the data, I found some startling, but in retrospect not surprising things.  Keep in mind that I talked to no one.  These findings came straight from the existing company data.

·        Of the company’s 4,400 customers, over 82% of the company’s revenue came from the top 100 customers.

·        The company’s most profitable 10 customers accounted for nearly 47% of the company’s profit.

·        The data clearly showed, to hit their sales numbers, the top two salesmen were discounting prices on everything to the point of losing money on nearly every sale!  These salesmen were screwing the company and laughing about it.  It took me 5 minutes to fix the problem by adding two people to Washington State’s unemployment line.

·        There were no customer conversation notes logged into the Customer Support System  for the previous 3 years, except where the customer called complaining about something!   I was not surprised to find that no one and I mean no one was talking to the existing customers.  By the way, it is my experience that most company’s fall into this same problem.

·        The company’s most profitable products accounted for less than 5% of sales.

·        Nearly 100% of all leads came from cold calling.

So, how did I come to these conclusions?   The simple answer is, I just asked the right questions.  Having a database to mine is also helpful.

Data Mining

Even if you don’t have a database, you can also review every invoice for the previous 3, 6, or 12 months.  If you’ll do that in a 24-48 hour period, you’re going to have a pretty good idea what’s going on.

Below is a list of questions that I use.  You can use these or come up with your own.  I keep a note pad handy and start keeping a tick sheet on certain themes.

One word of caution; do not; I repeat, do not draw conclusions relying on your gut, UNTIL you’ve analyzed the data.  When you’re done with the data, add things up and see what you’ve got.  Then and only then will your gut feel be valuable.

Again, let the DATA answer the questions.  Later, if the data can’t answer the question, we’ll use other methods, but your gut feel is your LAST resort.

Who are my best customers?

• • Review the last 500 invoices.  If you’re really serious, review every invoice over the last 12 months.
  • What are the price, cost and profit for each customer?
  • What percentage of total profits comes from my best (80/20) customers?   Notice I didn’t ask about sales.  Because, I don’t give a damn about sales.  I care about profit per customer, not sales per customer.
  • Who are my least profitable customers and why?
  • What are My Best Products?
    • What are the price, cost, and profit for each product?