"A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."
Description taken from The Wisdom of Teams (Harvard Business School Press, 1993).
For a sales team to remain consciously competent at optimum performance levels, they require frequent injections of stimulation, motivational guidance, prompting and directing, otherwise they can easily lapse into becoming unconsciously competent or worse, unconsciously incompetent.
The primary objective of an effective Sales Leader has to be to achieve consistently superior results through the performance of every sales person.
When thinking about your own sales force:
• Do you understand their motivators - what is driving them?
• Do you have visibility of their numbers - year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
• Activity levels - are they working hard and smart enough?
• Engagement - are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
• Messaging - are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
• Qualification - are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
• Closing - are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?
A successful sales team is one that is set up correctly, responds to the responsibility it has for the task, seeks constant improvement and sees its Sales Leader as a fundamental support to its success. A sales team in this situation will do well and is more likely to go on doing well than a sales team who are just told what to do.
The Sales Leader's role is one of catalyst - constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed because it is always configured for success.
Today's News: I am delighted to announce the launch of Phase One of the new Resource Center, over at Top Sales Experts, which includes "The Best Sales Blogs In The World" - including this one! More than thirty of the world's top sales gurus are taking part in this project. Do go over and have a look
We are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of Phase Two on January 13th next year.
Tomorrow: On The JF Guest Author Spot - Colleen Francis - be sure to join us.
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