Effective Leadership

Many business leaders make costly errors as they put together their plan for the year to come – errors that make it harder than it should be for their teams to implement the plan and attain the goals it identifies. Here are five of the most expensive mistakes we see. Avoid all five, and you will write a better business plan!

Here are three proven, painless strategies for starting and completing the right plan for the coming year – a plan that will help you make the best possible decisions over the next twelve months and keep your business humming.

If you are a leader in your organization, it’s a pretty good bet that you count on the members of, say, your accounting team to use the same terms and the same methodologies when they are collaborating to complete their work. For instance: You assume that when one person on the accounting team refers to the “cost of goods sold,” they mean the same thing as everyone else on the accounting team.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

Sales managers, would you rather have a team of multitalented salespeople…or a multitalented team of salespeople? No, that’s not a trick question. But, the answer may be a bit tricky.

When leaders hear the word “diversity,” they often think about gender, or race, or geography. Those are all important issues to consider, of course. But there’s an under-examined aspect of diversity that too many leaders overlook: behavioral styles. This aspect of diversity is the great unexplored topic the contemporary workplace. We find that managers who address this issue of behavioral diversity, and train and reinforce accordingly, benefit from a team with varying perspectives. That means better problem-solving, better communication, and better outcomes.

#1 “Most of my team’s most important prospects for new business are on vacation during the summer months.”