Proper care and feeding of your sales force

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I've heard a version of this statement from many managers. These same managers are disappointed in their team's results. There's an Egyptian saying: "Giving friendship to a man who is looking for love is like giving a loaf of bread to a man who is dying of thirst." Giving merely "tools" to your team is the same thing.

Salespeople need tools, yes, but what they need more than tools is attention. Your sales team cannot pay attention to itself. That's your job. Telling them what to do and walking away is not management and will not deliver the kind of results you want.

If you want extraordinary results from your team, you will have to give them extraordinary attention (and caring).

Respect or Cogs?

Some managers have the attitude (sometimes even voiced aloud): "You're lucky to have a job." If you say this to any good salesperson, you are saying "#x@Vo you" in their head and they will start to look somewhere else immediately, if not sooner. They definitely will underperform and passively or actively resist all company (and specifically your) initiatives.

"They want us to be smart enough to find new business, negotiate with crafty customers, solve claims without giving away the farm or losing the customer, and make a profit, but they don't want us to be smart enough to know when they are trying to slip one by us." This is a quote from a disgruntled salesperson who was getting jerked around on her commissions.

Salespeople are not factory workers. They are profitmaking partners in your business. If you treat them like cogs in your wheel, you will self-select for low-performing cogs in the wheel because all self-loving salespeople (who are always the best) will leave your organization.

Treat your sales team the way you want them to treat their customers. If you want them to give their customers their all, you will have to give them your all.

Spouses & Children. Do you know anything about your team members' families? What kind of support do they get at home? Show a genuine interest. If you have a good relationship with your team member's family, you will have more (positive) influence on that salesperson.

Making your team's families feel like "part of it" will also create more loyalty. Company bowling nights, picnics, holiday parties are all easy and effective ways to bring your team together-but you must be present and active at these events. You are not an "event planner." You are a leader who makes individuals feel your presence.

Lunch. There are approximately 22 working days in each month. That's 22 lunches you can have with individual salespeople. These are not "business" lunches. This is not a review of their progress at work. Talk about everything but work-make a point of it. And talk about what your salesperson wants to talk about-just like we would with a customer. Weird, huh?

Contests. Salespeople love to compete. Go as heavy on contests as you can. Salesman of the morning, day, month, year, department. Top new salesman. Make sales teams for contests. Make teams matching your top guy with your bottom guy and on down the line to create camaraderie.

Love & Favoritism. UCLA's John Wooden struggled for years with the fact that he liked some players more than others. He didn't want to play favorites, but knew in his heart how he felt. His initial philosophy was, "I may not like them all the same, but I treat them all the same." He was still uneasy. Years later, he hit on a better philosophy: "l don't like them all the same, but I love " them all the same."

Great managers have this attitude. Who they like has nothing to do with it. They give attention, caring and love to all team members and get world-class results in return.

James Olsen Reality Sales Training (503\ 544-3572

By fay Tompt