Dave Mattson

You and your team worked hard to land a new account and the prospect went with someone else. What now? If you’re at a loss for what to do next, below are five actionable items that you can implement with your team.

Rule #5: Eliminate miscommunication. What was said? What was heard? Check before you respond. You know, every person has three recorders that were taping since they were born. We have a Parent, an Adult and a Child. Three roles that we still have today if you think about it. But these tape recorders were starting and stopping at different times. And it affects how you interact with your team and how your team interacts with their sales force, even today.

Rule #4: Become a servant leader. Put the needs of your team first. In today's world, often times we've got to make sure that with all the things going on we're ultimately judged based on is our team producing? You're the leader. Senior Execs aren't looking around saying; "Hey, person number one, person number three." No. They look at you and say; "Is your team producing?"

Sales enablement is the idea – and follow me here – that all employees who interact with clients should have the tools and are able to do so easily, consistently, and effectively.  To empower your employees to do this, there are three major areas of focus to consider: Tracking and Analysis, Technique/Training, Technology and Tools. If you can incorporate a system that excels at bringing your employees through all three of these phases, you will be well on your way to enabling a successful team.

In 1963, psychologist Bruce Tuckman termed the four primary stages of team development as; forming, storming, norming, and performing. Tuckman deemed that these phases must be traversed naturally for a team to grow, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. While a lot has changed in the world of business and team building over the past 50 years, Tuckman’s model for group development has continued to ring true. To illustrate and modernize the motivation behind each phase, let’s examine both inspiring and unimpressive examples of each as we work our way through Tuckman’s ideology.

If you were to Google ‘servant leadership,’ you would come across a list of traits that included some or all of the following; listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, building community, and nurturing. While each of these components are valuable, the sheer number of them convolutes a fairly straight forward ideology. 

2017 was going to be different. My sales team and I had lofty expectations and challenging goals, but we knew we would attain them. The year started off well and we saw positive results right out of the gate. Then, we lost a client, we had an issue with our network, and when the warm weather came through, we were completely knocked out of our groove. Sound familiar? 

Whether it is time for a touch-point call or you’re visiting a new prospect for the first time, incorporating one or more of these phrases into your approach could be a deal killer. From giving your prospect an easy way to put things off to using too much jargon or lingo, it’s time to strike these words and phrases from your selling vocabulary.

While a sales conference can reignite your fire and provide an abundance of new insights and tools, it can also be a chaotic experience. The better prepared you are to hunt for useful insights, information and connections, the more you’ll come away with. Some of the most common frustrations surrounding conferences include coping with speakers and panels who don’t fully cover a topic, finding time to network and even gaining insight from talks that don’t seem immediately relevant.

It’s not uncommon for a new hire to start out strong.  But after the initial excitement and enthusiasm for the new job fades, the behavior, performance, and “numbers” follow suit.