[Kevin Price]: Welcome back to the “Price of Business.” I am your host Kevin Price. Talking to you about you and your business. I’ve been getting some great feedback there. I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the comments I’ve gotten at the Price of Business fan page. Want to make sure you’re a part of that. Also, there’s mention there at Price of Business fan page about recent guests we had on talking about the whole Roth IRA. We’re giving away free copies of a book on the positives and negatives of a conversion. So, you might want to check that out. Just got to Facebook.com, put in Price of Business and viola. We’ll be under the page section. Alright. Walter Rogers. Talk about someone, talk about a fan…I’m a fan of Walter Rogers and the great work of Baker Communications. Good to talk to you my friend.
[Walter Rogers]: Hey, thanks for having me back Kevin. How are you?
[KP]: I’m doing great as always. Always glad to have you. Oh wait, man I gotta tell you…I really am impressed and I admire the high quality of content that you are providing there at Houstonbusinessdaily.com. Very rarely does more than a day go by without me mentioning another article done by our friends over there. You’re really doing a phenomenal job of translating what is the expectations regarding a customer relations management program. That’s been kind of our ongoing theme, if you will.
[WR]: Yeah, we’ve spent the last 12 or 13 weeks covering a variety of very important elements associated with customer relationship management system deployment, you know, the various failure points, what works, what doesn’t, success stories, we’ve had some great guests on the show and it’s been an absolute blast. If nothing [else] came clear from all of those shows was the importance of the sales manager in any kind of sales transformation change. So, for the next 12 shows we’re going to really talk about 12 characteristics and habits that we have found that truly exceptional sales managers exhibit.
[WR]: So, we’ll shift our attention away from CRM and onto sales management.
[KP]: Awesome. By the way, if you go to Houstonbusinessdaily.com you’ll Walter Roger’s photo with his name there, click it. That is the article that you just posted. You’ve got a great habit of posting those articles on the day you’re on the air. 12 habits. Do you have a guest today or is it just you and me?
[WR]: We are lining up our guests for the next 12 weeks.
[KP]: Well, let’s kind of like paint the landscape. Now obviously we’re not going to get real thorough for a couple of reasons. One of the biggest ones: We want them to go to Houstonbusinessdaily.com and look at that and furthermore, with the time we have allocated we’ve got a lot to cover when we cover 12 habits. I tell you, I’m a big fan of lists and so I’m really excited about this. So, can we jump right in with the 12?
[WR]: Yeah, you bet. You bet. You’re right. Today Kevin we’re not going to really get into any depth in any one of them. Each one of these topics will have its own theme over the next 12 weeks.
[KP]: Too many sales teams are over-managed and under-lead. I really love that and in fact that kind of problem is in almost every type of executive situation, even in governing, you know, political governing. You know there’s too much bureaucracy, not enough inspiration. Not enough people who are in leadership positions actually facing the same challenges as those that are following them.
[WR]: Yeah and you know these managers are in an unfortunate trap because they’re under a tremendous amount of pressure right now from two different constituencies, three really. Obviously, the sales manager is reporting to the director of sales, the VP of sales, some sales leader. So, they’re getting a lot of downward pressure to meet their numbers. Then they have pressure upward from their sales teams who are often time struggling with the best way in which they go to market, the best way in which they can communicate and connect with their customers, the best way for them to, you know, work within the procedures and policies that a company has, Of course, the third constituency is the customer itself. That’s putting a lot of pressure on sales managers and the sales teams in the form of better price, better terms, better communication and all of that. The sales managers really become the epicenter of all of this conflict, you know, which is just merging in upon him and her.
[KP]: And I’m going to bounce around a little bit in order to cover some of these that are catching my eye. That’s one of the advantages of being a host. I can kind of drive it a little bit. I do like the next one. Number two: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.” I love that.
[WR]: Well, how often are strategies created in a back office somewhere or in an ivory tower, you know, with all the best intentions? Then when they’re actually rolled down to those who are supposed to execute these strategies…A lot of times the sales culture looks at these strategies, because these strategies really aren’t based on the reality of what sales teams are facing every day. They just disregard these strategies or they implement them in a half hearted way. Really understanding the way in which a culture can accept any type of corporate strategy is so important on the front end if you expect any kind of execution. So, it really just goes right back down to the sales manager because that sales manager sets the pace for the culture.
[KP]: Yeah, I like this. “Key Performance Indicators: The Glue of Your Communications Strategy.”
[WR]: So, you know, sales reps like to know what they’re supposed to do. They certainly like to know what they’re going to be measured on and how that measurement is going to influence their performance reviews, their compensation, all of the things that help them grown and advance in their career. But a lot of managers don’t have a really clear handle on key performance indicators that they need to drive down to their teams. They typically have key performance indicators that their managers have handed to them, but those aren’t necessarily the same KPIs that you translate down to your sales teams. Those KPIs actually become the glue for you communication strategy because if you have an open communication around what’s expected with the sales team, and you apply those in a consistent manner then all of a sudden you’re going to find that the performance of that team will begin to improve.
[KP]: Yeah, no question about it. Again, talking to Walter Rogers. He’s with Baker Communications. “Manage the Forward Pipeline: The Difference Between Pipeline and Forecasting.” I like that too.
[WR]: So, going back to the original example, or what we talked about earlier, which is these targets are being set by sales leadership and pressed down. Every single week or every other week or every month, these sales managers have to go through a process of forecasting up what they’re expecting to close. Well when you go through a forecasting exercise, you’re not really looking at what’s going to happen two quarters away. You’re really just focusing on what you can forecast that will actually close, which means you’re actually spending your time and energy on late stage deals, not early stage deals. A lot of managers get caught in the trap of only managing the forecast instead of managing the pipeline. Now, the reason you want to manage the pipeline is because that forward pipeline will ultimately impact you forecast quarters down the road. But if you don’t ever focus on those early stage deals then you’re going to always be reacting to what’s the latest deal that’s going to close in the forecast.
[KP]: I think this one really resonates with almost anyone, both the manager and the employee who works underneath that manager. “Process: Don’t Over Engineer It, but Don’t Ignore It.”
[WR]: The importance of having process gives you reliable, predictable behavior inside of a sales team. When you’re talking about deals, if you’ve got a sales process in place you have a common terminology in place that you can use to refer to opportunities, whether they’re qualified, or they’re in planning stages, or the propose stages, etc. You need to have that. You’ve got to have a common terminology that defines your various stages inside the opportunity cycle. I have seen processes Kevin, where they just go berserk. They have these 7 stages and underneath each stage there’ll be 20 steps and each piece of the 20 steps might have 3 tasks. All of sudden everybody gets bogged down in have I completed step 32-C vs am I really advancing this deal. So, you’ve got to have a process, but you can’t over engineer it to the point where you’re literally freezing your sales organization around minutiae.
[KP]: Yeah, and you don’t want, you know, you don’t want your sales team to feel like they hostages of the process, but empowered by the process.
[WR]: Yeah the process is supposed to be an enabler, not a blocker. That’s exactly right Kevin.
[KP]: Yeah, absolutely. It’s supposed to create more fluidity, not staunch the flow of things. Really important. “Coaching: In the Day – In the Moment.”
[WR]: Number one skill that most sales managers need to develop is their coaching skills. Most of them have, again, been under the pressure to manage the numbers. They’ve become spreadsheet jockeys instead of enablers of true sales performance. Coaching happens as you see the opportunity to coach. Sales managers need to actually give their sales people feedback as they’re observing them do something well and things that perhaps they need to improve. That observation can come in the form of sitting next to that sales professional while they’re on a sales call, listening to a phone call that they’re making, or if they’re using any kind of recording technology to capture the way in which these calls are going, going through those recordings, and sitting down side by side with that sales rep to coach for improvement and not beat them up on performance.
[KP]: Mm-hmm. Again, we’re talking to Walter Rogers. We’re talking about this important process of, really, taking your business to the next level by, you know, having a…I guess you could say…What are the habits? What are the characteristics that differentiate successful sales managers from, unfortunately, the many out there who are barely prodding along? So it’s really important. I think that one of the things that to me are so obvious, but are underemphasized, and this will be the last one we’ll mention here today, and that’s why you need to go, because there’s several that we missed, including one that I really like: “Herding Cats.” I love that kind of stuff. That’s a problem, a challenge we all face. I’ve got eight kids. You can imagine what that’s like. “Celebrate: Winning is Fun. Celebrate it!” That is the last of the 12, but that’s a crucial one isn’t it?
[WR]: It really is and it’s something that you do really well on this show Kevin, is celebrate. We focus so much on what can we fix, and how can we fix it, and giving people opportunities to fix things. But you know, celebrating wins are what builds momentum. It’s not just big wins, it’s little wins, and there’re all sorts of wins. There’re customer wins. There’re hiring new employee wins. There’re taking a competitor’s business away wins. All of those are crucial and you want to build the momentum inside of your sales team by taking the time to celebrate those.
[WR]: You celebrate those in lots of ways. One on One, with the team, you know, with your extended organization—
[KP]: You bet, you bet. I am Kevin Price. Stay tuned for more right here on CNN650.
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