Success in sales today is based on the strength of your sales coaching and leadership. So how much actual sales leadership training have you had? Are you even aware of all the skills critical to today’s successful leadership? Join Jim as he shares why most people became sales managers, and how strengthening your sales skills can make you a stronger coach and leader of your team.
Interested in becoming a stronger coach and leader of your sales team? Hi, I'm Jim Pancero, helping you become a stronger leader of your team. And to do that, a big part of that today is based on your effectiveness as the leader of your sales team, going from being a transactional manager to much more of a selling process coach and leader. Have some tools that might help you in this evaluation, if you're interested. The first is we need to go through and talk about what are the major changes that sales leaders need to make today.
First of all, we need to make sure you're proactive initiating. We can't just be doing the way we used to do it of, my door is always open, call me when you need me kind of reactive support. Because by the time the sales rep called you was usually too late and they were in deep trouble. We want to be more proactive. We want to be more initiating discussions to make sure we find out where sales people are and help them before they get in a jam in front of the customer. The second thing we need to do is to make sure that as a coach and leader we're questioning our people, not lecturing them.
Too many managers say, "I'll tell you what you need to do and do it this way and damn it, get it done." That's not working anymore. People aren't interested in following those kind of behaviors. We need to make sure that you basically help your people through your questioning, discover what you already knew. That's the best, most effective way for coaching and learning so that they retain the information they learn. What can you do to be asking more questions and giving less statements and lectures to your people? And the third thing is we need to make sure that you keep your focus as a coach and leader on the tactics and strategy of selling.
Now they need to be effective on a sales call, they need to know their products, they need to have a good attitude, those are all foundations of selling. But a competitive edge and increased sales come from being more tactical thinking and planning, more moves ahead and more strategic with stronger message and positioning to deliver a customer up front, so the customer does want to buy from you. And the final thing is we need to shift this idea of being a selling process coach, getting involved in the selling process earlier. If you're interested in increasing the success and evaluation of your sales leadership skills, I have a tool for you that I will list a link to in the bottom on this LinkedIn video, that will give you a 20-question sales leadership evaluation tool.
It's a PDF file. It's a subjective test on a one to five, five being high, one being low. But it measures you on the 20 major areas that are critical to the success of a sales leader. Hopefully you can check this out. If you're on LinkedIn, you'll see the link below right underneath as the first posting for this video. And if you're watching this on YouTube or another channel of some type, if you email me at jim@pancero.com, P-A-N-C-E-R-O, jim@pancero.com. Be very happy to email you a free copy.
The idea is we want to help you become a stronger coach and leader. And to do that, we need to increase your awareness of all the areas of sales leadership that are critical into today's new selling environment. Would love to know how you're doing with this. Would love to be of any assistance. Thanks for checking out my podcast. I'm posting two new podcasts each week, all aimed at helping you and your team increase your selling competitive advantage.