Website design By BotEap.comHere we are, once again at the beginning of a new year. As you look ahead, what are your goals? What are the goals of your team and what worries you the most? As a sales manager or vice president of sales, I’m sure you could create a long list of to-dos that, if executed right, will bring you great success in 2016.

Website design By BotEap.comBut what is really different in 2016 than last year or the year before? I imagine that some of the problems that existed in 2015 also existed in 2014 and 2013. Most problems don’t go away just because we want them to go away.

Website design By BotEap.comTake my health for example. Last year, a doctor told me that I had a health condition that changed my life. I knew that I needed to be more conscious of my diet and exercise; my wife, Linda, had been telling me that for 30 years. However, this is a difficult task for me, a man who loves to cook and eat. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, exercised fairly regularly, and other than the occasional cigarette, thought I was living a healthy lifestyle.

Website design By BotEap.comBut, apparently, he needed to do more. I bought a FitBit, one of those watches that tracks your steps (10,000 a day is recommended, which translates to 4-5 miles depending on your stride length), and set up the online support program that allowed me to enter my intake of food and water.

Website design By BotEap.comI immediately started monitoring my watch to see how many steps I still needed to get there before the day was over. Where, once, I would go to the gym and do a heavy workout, my lack of consistent behavior had allowed me to gain weight. After a long day at work, who wants to work out for an hour? So I changed my thinking and my goals and started walking around the neighborhood to complete the goal of 10,000 steps per day. Now, I supplement my fitness program with exercises at the gym.

Website design By BotEap.comSurprise! Now that I’m tracking my daily habits, I realize how unhealthy they were in the past. In the space of a couple of months, I lost 20 pounds and didn’t gain a pound over the holidays, which was no small feat for me. Needless to say, I feel better, look better, and healthier than I was before monitoring the things I can control.

Website design By BotEap.comHere are my suggestions for New Year’s Resolutions that, if implemented correctly, will eliminate many or most of your sales problems.

1. FOCUS ON THOSE THINGS YOU MAY AFFECT. Recognize that while you can’t control the economy or the world of sales, you can control how you approach it. Recognize that you must have salespeople who know how to prospect and communicate to find business.
2. MANAGE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR PEOPLE. Inspect what you expect. You’ll be surprised to find that just inspecting the right metrics will improve sales (or your health). A weekly meeting to go over the numbers will call attention to underperformers. Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the board. Peer pressure is a valuable tool for getting results. Use it to take advantage of sales.
3. DELETE THE EXCUSES. Arrest doing sorry for your sellers and stop agree them from their vendors. Introduce a sense of urgency into your sales culture. Too often, we accept unnecessarily long sales cycles. Teach your people to work with prospects through the pipeline efficiently. Help them learn how to weed out funnel clogs so they can focus on finding the prospects that will buy.
4. TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE. Focus your training and training to improve skills and change behaviors. Have your salespeople role play. “Have them ‘practice perfect performance’ so that when they’re under pressure, they can focus and sell.
5. APPLY THE 80/20 RULE TO YOURSELF. If you do 20 tasks week after week, there are probably 4-6 tasks that really matter. Those 4-6 tasks generate 80% of your results. Find out which 4-6 tasks are your Go-Tos. Spend 80% of your time on these to-dos.
6. APR – ALWAYS BE RECRUITING. About 20% of your sales team is not performing adequately. This 20% will never work properly. fire them. To do this, you must be able to replace them. Recruiting is one of the 4-6 tasks that really matter. Spend time finding people who will sell.

Website design By BotEap.comSummary:

Website design By BotEap.comSuccess in sales is not that different from success in fitness and health. There will always be problems that exist beyond our control: we can’t control our genetics that predispose us to certain conditions, but we can control our habits like sleep, diet, and exercise.

Website design By BotEap.comBy selling, we cannot control the economy or the consumer. But we can control our behaviors, such as prospecting and the number of calls, the number of appointments, etc. – that contributes to our personal and business savings. We can control how we interact with customers by constantly learning to approach and stay in touch.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen managing a sales team, your job is to control those behaviors that contribute to the sales of the company. So while you can’t monitor John or when John makes prospecting calls, you can monitor John’s inspection behavior and ultimately decide if he’s productive enough to be on your sales team.