The sooner you understand this component of training inside salespeople the faster and greater your success will be.

So what is reality?

Reality is the concept that what the salesperson understands from the training is the same thing the training actually taught.

Most inside sales managers, whether formally trained in coaching or not have many occasions where it becomes necessary to participate in either or both of these functions.

The smart inside sales manager will develop both of these skills and assure his future and a top one percent performing manager. With the gift of being able to train and coach effectively, it becomes easy to look like a superstar as you can generate great team performance.

If you’ve ever had occasion observe an error when listening to one of your salespeople, your first instinct is to try and help.

You approach the salesperson after the call and start to explain what you observed so you can offer a more effective an alternative behavior.

And this is when you hit the wall. Frequently, whether spoken or not, the salesperson recollection of what happened is not as you describe.

It’s not only ego that causes the disconnect problem, but different viewpoints as well. It is very much like the scene of an auto accident where each witness gives the officer a different story.

Perceptions and viewpoints are very dependent on the lenses through which the events are perceived. Your salesperson’s viewpoint is deeply colored by their original intention. They believe what they intended is what they did, even though it is not often true.

In for your training of inside sales people to produce results, you will first have to bridge the perception gaps so that both you and your salesperson have the same reality as to what happened in the call.

Without agreement on the same reality, you will never make real progress coaching or training your team; because they will not see your advice as relevant (You misunderstood or didn’t hear correctly.) and thus won’t act upon it.

This is why all coaching and training of inside salespeople should be done via tapes of live calls. Only by playing back the actual call can both parties have the same reality on what happened.

Then, your advice will not only make sense, it will be used.

You can have this same reality break in the “sales process” as well as with the soft skills. If the error you observe is that of breaking the sales process, you will once again be challenged if you don’t have something that represents reality as the center point of your corrections.

That center point is a well documented sales process against which you can show the salesperson the contrast between their actions and the established best practice.

Reality is the key to successfully training inside salespeople.

***

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Anytime you get a “renegade” in your group you risk real disruption and potentially serious effects on over all performance.

Renegades are bad enough, but when they are superstars you get other residual consequences.

Average team members will often feel some discomfort and destine for top performers (Jealosy). They my fee bitter because they’re getting beat up and the top performer isn’t (Just because that’s right, doesn’t mean it makes others feel good.).

And, they often feel like the top performer is getting special treatment. They may even feel that the special treatment is half the reason that person does so well and they can’t (It may not be true, but perception is everything.).

The top performer who isn’t a group player can, in my opinion, be far more disruptive to moral and performance of the rest of the group than an average performing team member who won’t play by the rules.

How to handle this situation.

You obviously don’t want to loose excellent performers and they likely aren’t looking forward to leaving such success.

Step One: Put the chips on the table

The first step to a solution is for you to get it out on the table that this person is not being a team player. They need to clearly understand that you are not comfortable with someone who disrupts the rest of the team with their actions.

Step Two: Make it known they are wanted

Second, you need to make it clear that you don’t want to loose them and that you actually need them to step up to the plate with regard to the group’s performance.

Step Three: Get them to realize it’s in their interest

Third, you need to get the renegade superstar to realize that is as much in there interest as anyone else’s that they become a team player.

Here are some of the things you can discuss with them to this end.

1. Do they feel this will be their last job?
   1. If not would they benefit from great recommendations from you and or top management? (Recommendations no one will be willing to give if they leave as a disruptive influence.)
   2. By being a team player and helping the team they now gain another skill and or reference for their work – “leadership” and maybe even some credit for the improved results of others
2. Do they want internal opportunities such as promotions, replacing you if you left, or other better assignments within the company? (These won’t be offered to a “renegade.”

The goal here is to let the renegade superstar see there is actually a huge long-term benefit to change their near term attitudes and activities.

Step 4: Give them a chance to be a leader

Next, you may find it valuable to challenge them to become a leader. This is not only good experience, but a fantastic career skill to have in the future.

By figuring out ways for them to be a leader in the group you give them something that will make them feel important. And it will be incompatible with their renegade behaviors.

This handling will usually bring people around. But you have to be willing to sacrifice such a person if they are truly disruptive. And they have to know you are willing to do it.

The renegade’s great performance will never compensate from the losses generated by a decrease in the moral of others on the team. And once moral start being effected it will begin to feed on itself and grow worse.

A final note

Do yourself a favor. Make sure you have team spirit from day one. Then when you get, or hopefully grow, a superstar they’ll be a team player.

Superstars can make a huge difference in others learning how to be successful as they have great influence.

This sales management tip is not a complicated solution, but a very workable common sense one that works. It works because it is based on showing someone what is in THEIR best interest rather than telling them they are wrong.

Inside Sales Management

Management is the “perspiration” of running the day to day-to-day activities of the group. Making sure that people are doing their jobs, that the support systems and structures are working and being used properly,

If we use an old steam engine train as an example it would be driving the train, monitoring the instruments, feeding the engine, and running the passenger services.

Inside Sales Leadership

Leadership on the other hand is the inspiration of cultivating the internal motivation of the team members and then empowering them to reach the vision you’ve set forth.

In the steam engine example it would be setting the train’s destination and inspiring the crew to want to give the customers the very best experience possible and to run the train in the very best and most efficient way.

The Advantages of Leadership Over Management

While management is always going to be necessary, leadership will make that part of your job so much easier.

An inside salesperson would typically know what to do and to at least some level of competence doing it. And it is in these two areas that you’re management efforts where management efforts are usually applied.

How enthusiastically and energetically your inside salespeople attack their job however is a function of their own motivation. And that motivation affects their attitudes, morale, and thus most of their activities and success.

If you learn how to take a “leadership” role and do it effectively, what happens is that your salespeople become very motivated to do their jobs. Many of the typical things you would do as a manager literally go away as the team members start to actively seek the accomplishment of the goal independent of any pushing by you.

This of course requires that you provide a vision and the empowerment they need to achieve the goal, or leadership.

It also generates salespeople who work aggressively and with little or no supervision. It creates salespeople who thirst for knowledge of how to do even better than they’re doing (active learners).

All of which culminates in average people producing remarkable results.

Let me close this post with a very brief example.

A Brief Example

I lead a group of 3 salespeople that was part of a sales organization composing of 5 regional teams each including a manager and 3 salespeople.

Through the use of leadership skills I was able to get that team to perform about 30% better than any of the other 4 teams. They made 30% more calls (and sales) everyday than the rest of their peers. I never had to watch them or beat on them to make sure they were working or push them to do the job at 110%. They did this automatically.

But the most amazing part of the story is that they did all of this in 25% less work time than the other salespeople. Instead of working 8-9 hours per day, these folks went home after 6 hours of work and still creamed the results of every other team.

The Result

The result of my leadership activities made most of my management activities go away. I had zero personnel issues and I spend most of my time working with the team to make the better at selling and more efficient at their daily tasks.

And when I had something to say, they wanted to listen and would employ my ideas immediately as they truly believed from their results that I could help them improve further and make them more money.

This was the result of great leadership. I invite you to learn more about leadership by watching the “Three Keys to Great Leadership” training module under the “Sales Management Training” tab.

http://telesalesuniversity.com/sales-management-training/3-keys-to-great-leadership/

It is critical that you constantly control where the call is going and the subjects being discussed. This doesn’t mean ramming the prospect or client through your agenda. It means using good communication and questioning skills to nudge and guide him along.

In any sales process there is specific information you need in order to make a good offer. If you don’t use good control you may not get all the data or the  quality of data you need. Winning the sale is at least partially determined by how good an offer you can make and the data you base the offer on is key.

Success in control is predicated on a clear understanding of the sales-cycle. If you don’t know and understand your sales-cycle, you won’t know where or why to apply control.

It’s like trying to drive to Dallas when you’ve never heard of Dallas. You don’t know what roads and turns to make.

In order to lead the prospect down the road to the purchase, you must know the direction the road goes and the associated twists and turns that are necessary to negotiate the road.

I can’t tell you exactly how to control your call. But if you have a well documented and thought out sales process all the answers should be their. That process should lay out the sequence and requirements in a way that lets you know where to go.

If you would like another powerful way to assure control see our Next Step training module — it’s free.

Please leave a comment below…

The Next Step

In  celebration of the reopening of this site I am giving away for a limited time a very powerful sales training module called “The Next Step.”

You should see a 5% increase in results if you use the strategies and tactics in this module religiously.

And for managers there is an accompanying trainer’s video  to show you exactly how to present the materials live to your team.

The Next Step module deals with sales call and sales process control. It teaches you how to properly conclude every sales call with a client or prospect in a way that will maximize your results in the next call.

Grab it now while it’s free and get a free membership to the site as a bonus.

Telephone Sales Training | Sales Training Courses

The secret to running any top performing group is regular and consistent telephone sales training. Constantly putting sales people through various sales training courses or workshops will keep them sharp and using selling best practices in their calls.

This site is dedicated to providing the highest quality telephone sales training courses. Additionally, there are sales management, leadership, and training the trainer courses to empower management to empower their teams.

Telephone Sales Training should be distinguished form “sales training.” Though some of the material on this site is classic “sales training,” most of the content is focused on providing the skills critical to selling on the telephone or on using classic theory in the telephone sale.

This site is a membership site. Almost all the content requires you to register for access and most of it requires a paid membership. See Memberships

This site is going to contain the following types of content:

• Sales and Management Tips — published on the blog
• Reports and Whitepapers — on management, selling and related areas
• Skills Modules — Short training modules on sales and management subjects that can be used to improve personal or team success.
• Workshops — More extensive but similar in subject matter to the modules.
• Courses — These will be multi hour and longer skills courses on all of the above subjects
• Tools — These will include evaluation tools, quizzes, and other aids to management, selling, and training