Ask the Sales Doctor - Total Selling Systems

Warren Wechsler's
Ask the Sales Doctor

How do I get my sales team to take me seriously?

Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Some restrictions apply to the use and distribution of this information. For more valuable materials, visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com. All materials and content © Warren Wechsler, 2001 – All rights reserved.

Steve Anderson from Birmingham, Alabama writes:

I'm a sales manager who was trained like you, a good salesman promoted from within to sales manager with 'go-get-em' as my training. I am having a hard time getting my sales people to take me seriously. I have asked them to give me call reports, and I get almost none back. I ask them to bring me on sales calls, and I sit in my office. I'm trying to stay on their wavelength, hanging out with them after work and socializing. What am I doing wrong?

Warren answers:

Oh my. Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve! You asked me, "What am I doing wrong?" In a word, everything. [chuckles] I'm not laughing at you, Steve; I'm laughing with you. You are not doing anything right, and unfortunately you were trained in the "go-get-em" model. It happens to a lot of salespeople. They're good salespeople, and all of a sudden they find themselves being asked to step up and be sales managers.

Here's what I see in this short paragraph that Smitty just read. You're trying to be liked by your salespeople, Steve, and my strong opinion is forget it. Don't try and be liked; be respected. So let them socialize; let them go to the bars or restaurants. Heck! Give them the money to go out and spend, but don't go with them, because salespeople need to talk about something. They need to moan, complain, whine. And what they need to moan and complain and whine about is their sales manager. So let them go out and do that. You're restricting their ability to just let their hair down by being in their midst.

Now, you were also saying you were one of these people that were promoted from within, which is one of the most difficult ways to become a sales manager. And that is why you are having trouble getting call reports, and you want to go out on sales calls and they don't want to bring you. So here's what you need to do about that.

Number one: schedule one-on-one time with each person. So if you have eight salespeople, then you've got four half days. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; morning, afternoon, morning, afternoon. And just say: "Salesperson One, I'm with you on Tuesday morning. Salesperson Three, I'm with you Wednesday afternoon." And don't wait for them to include you. You go out and get on their calendars.

And then come up with some type of reward for them making good appointments. You might say to them, "Look, if you get a new appointment with a new potential client when I work with you that afternoon, I'm going to give you a gift certificate for $25 or $50, or here's movie tickets, or what-have-you." So use bribery to get them to get you in front of some potential new accounts. Or if you say we get an appointment where I can go out and help you land the business, then there's hundred-dollar bill waiting for you at the office. So you make it fun, and you make it a reward for them.

Ok, now what about this call report thing? I have a question. Did you put in your call reports when you were a salesperson? Or all of a sudden, now that you're the manager, are you trying to basically become a different person, and they have no respect for you? All of a sudden, we didn't do call reports, and now Steve's on the big salary, he wants call reports. Well, I don't know how it is, but what I would say is, you bring them in once a week and have a meeting with each one individually, and you tell them, "Look, if you want your expenses to be reimbursed, your expenses to be paid on time, we need your call reports on time." So if you're looking for weekly call reports, and you pay expenses back weekly, you say, "Look, we're trying to be timely with you and pay your expenses on time. The only thing I ask you back is that you put in your call reports on time. And if you go a couple of weeks, I don't get call reports, you're going to find out that after two weeks of no call reports, you get no expense reimbursement. I'll tell you what, within two weeks, you'll be getting those reports every week on time.

And finally, Steve, change the way you communicate. I would set a few clear expectations. And let people know, either in a group setting, or in a one-on-one setting, exactly what it is you're looking for. And then you have to be clear with that group about the positive consequences of compliance and the negative consequences of non-compliance. And then you have to inspect what you expect. Set really short deadlines, one week at a time. "You need to do this. You need to get back to me in a week." And praise the champions in public. At sales' meetings tell them what a great job they did; and slam the non-compliers in private. If you apply these things, Steve, you're on your way to being a much better sales manager than you are today.

And that's my idea for you so you won't have to be the "go-get-em" sales manager.

This was a partial transcript from Warren Wechsler's weekly radio show. Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com Also, listen to Warren's weekly radio broadcast Wednesday's at 4:05 - 5:00 pm Central time, on KMCD-AM 1570AM. Shows are broadcast live on the internet at http://www.warpradio.com/asx/KMCD-AM.asx