Are you a sales manager with reps who aren’t listening to your selling suggestions?
You were promoted because you were a great successful sales rep, right?
Of course you must know the right and best way to sell.
Then how come your reps aren’t listening to you telling them how to sell?
Most likely it’s because you’re doing another sales manager fail!
The #1 reason sales managers fail is the lack of skills to transfer great sales ability to their team.
See, most managers go about it all wrong. They ‘tell’ their reps what they should be doing along with how to do it.
I bet when they sold they didn’t ‘tell’ their customers and prospects anything. They used questions to discover, uncover and lead the customer in to buying. It was collaborative and the customer had ownership throughout the process.
Managers get a bit of amnesia and ‘forget’ what got them to be great. They’re knighted sales manager so they must tell.
Forget that. If you are a sales manager stop right now.
Remind yourself of this: Your sales reps are your customers.
So instead of ‘telling’ begin with questions:
- What are the objectives for this meeting and how do you plan to accomplish them?
- What do you think of asking this question?
- How do you think about this approach?
- Your colleague (insert name) presented this way and his client responded well. Does that appeal to you?
- What went well on this sales call? What could have been done differently for a better outcome?
- How do you think we should approach the customer?
- What options do we have for our discovery questions?
- What’s the plan to launch the conversation?
It’s tough not to tell, so resist that urge and collaborate with each rep to develop their talents and greater success.
Alice Kemper, sales training expert and founder of Sales Training Werks mobilizes sales reps to crush their monthly quota. Check out the 6 Killer Hacks to Perfect Sales Training.
