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Rule #11: Mange behavior, not results.
Create a cookbook or a recipe for success. You know, many sales leaders and sales managers, they manage numbers, not behavior. Think about that for a second. How many of us are knee deep into spreadsheets every single day? We can tell you who's on track, who's not, we make sure that we tell everyone on our team what their quota is. They push back on quota's like every other sales person does. There's no way I can hit that number. The other thing that's missing is they don't know how to get that number. They don't know what to do in order to hit this $10 million quota. They have no idea. It's frightening for them.
We tend to spend a lot of time managing the end result. Here's a rule that I want you to think about; people can't manage anything they can't control. Think about that for a second. People can't manage anything they can't control. As a sales person, you can't control yes's and no's, you can't control what the competitions, going to do, you can't control what the markets are going to do, you can't control interest rates. Out of your control. What you can control is your behavior.
Here are some things that you need to do as a sales leader. Number one. Convert your quota into a behavioral plan; what we call a recipe for success or a cookbook. That is all the things that they should do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that they can control in order to hit that number, to be successful. What that does, it takes this ambiguous, hard to get quota, and turns it into something that I can do every single day. I am accountable. I have this culture of accountability, responsibility. I can control my destiny. Most people know the what, it's the quota, they don't know the how. That's what the cookbook is.
In addition to creating the road map, it's good for your psyche. Why? Because once sales people understand what it takes every day; and I did that today. Let's say that I sent out ten introductory letters on LinkedIn. I did two of this and three of that. I didn't make a sale, but I did my daily behaviors, that mathematically as they re-engineered or reverse engineered my sales process, I'll hit my number. If I did that today, I get to celebrate that. I say, "I did my behavior," and that's great because you know what? Sales, we lose more than we win. I mean our self-esteem is getting pounded daily, so a cookbook is great for the road map and it's great for the psyche.
The bottom line is, create a cookbook for both your sales people and you, as a sales leader and watch your numbers jump through the roof.
THE SANDLER RULES FOR SALES LEADERS details a sales management process that works. It offers 49 timeless, proven principles for effective sales leadership, based on the Sandler Selling System. The book is the sequel to the Wall Street Journal bestseller THE SANDLER RULES, also authored by David Mattson.
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David is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers, The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them and Sandler Success Principles: 11 Insights that will change the way you think and sell. He regularly authors articles for business publications and continues to be involved in the ongoing creation and development of new Sandler training products and programs.
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