9 elements of sales management

The Nine Critical Elements of Top-Performing Sales Managers By Ralph Burns

The Nine Critical Elements of

Top-Performing Sales Managers

…and How to Make Absolutely Sure

You’re One Of Them!

By Ralph Burns IMPORTANT: As an added bonus for downloading this report, you also received additional free sales management training at our sales manager “training blog” we have created exclusively for ambitious sales managers like you… To access your bonus material, go to: http://www.salesmanagementmastery.com


Introduction

Just a few months ago, I surveyed THOUSANDS of sales managers about what they most wanted to learn when it comes to managing salespeople. I then spent countless hours sifting through all the questions (responding to most of them) to look for common themes and issues. What I found shocked me. Not only did I personally learn a lot, but it also became apparent that even though we all may have our own individual issues in our own companies and industries, there are a number of very COMMON similarities between sales managers from all around the globe. One thing that everyone wants is better sales results from their sales teams. After all, that is your job isn’t it? You are paid to get superior (or at least quota/goal/target – delivering) sales results from your sales team – for what it gets you and for what it gets your salespeople. So if that is the goal (SUPERIOR sales results), then here’s the good news:

There are MANY ways to achieve that goal. Based upon the survey, I can say this; most of you are definitely on the right track. This coupled with the fact that you realize that you are not perfect (who is?) and you all truly want to improve so that you can achieve even greater things than you have already done is fantastic. This is definitely very good news. The even better news is that all you really need to do is first recognize where you may be able to improve your approach and then slightly modify what you do on a daily basis.

Here’s The Challenge, However The tricky part is that all of the questions you asked cannot be fully answered in isolation of one another. For example, one of the most requested questions was how to motivate salespeople. As all of us sales managers know, motivating your sales team


effectively is a hugely important task so you can truly unleash the full potential of each member of your sales team. This question came up over and over and over again. This is a bit of a trick question however, because without the “right” salesperson on board to motivate, all the motivation in the world is never going to truly “motivate” them to sales stardom. Not only that, but in order to motivate correctly and effectively, you need to establish a number of critical elements ahead of time so that the motivation provided by you not only sticks, but it is 100% relevant to each salesperson. So here’s my dilemma…..do I give you the answer to each question IN ISOLATION knowing full well that it will only give you moderately successful outcome or do I answer each question IN RELATION TO how it fits in to an overall program so that you can all take the next step towards top sales management This is the reason why I decided to put together this Special Report – so that you can get the first taste of how all the critical NINE elements of how top sales manager produce incredibly consistent top sales results and how the nine most important elements come together as one singular, cohesive program – with each element INTERDEPEDENT with the other. Please remember that this report was put together based on ACTUAL feedback from THOUSANDS of sales managers just like you …its not some pre-programmed corporate auto response pumped out by some anonymous supercomputer. Rather, it addresses YOUR issues that you and the thousands of your sales manager peers have identified as important to both learn more about as well as master. So here we go…

Element #1 – You Gotta Tune Into the Right Frequency It’s a tad clichéd, but I dare say its one of the most critical elements to successful sales management - and that is to make sure you are tuned into the right radio frequency with your salespeople. There’s only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: W-I-F-M. (You might say W-I-I-F-M, but let’s not get too technical here…).


This is the “What’s-In-It-For-Me” radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you’re not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio…or worse yet, turn off the radio completely! Here’s the dilemma - you’re getting it from all sides; your boss is telling you daily that he’s “$6 million in the hole”, your Sales VP is calling you and emailing you as to “why your team’s closed accounts in their pipeline last month was so weak” (because he has numbers to hit too, y’know) and you know exactly how much in sales YOU need to get to at least quota so you can bring home some kind of a commission check this month because your spouse needs money to pay for that brand new dishwasher… Your salespeople don’t care about any of that. People are selfish by design, they think primarily about themselves first. In fact, in a study done AT&T, the number one word used in telephone conversations (I’m not sure if they were eavesdropping here or what) which beat the number two word by a ten-to-one margin is the word “I”.

People care about themselves first.

And sales people care about themselves first, second and third. Your needs and those of your bosses don’t even crack the top three. So when you get on the phone with them bitching to them about their sales numbers, what do you tell them? Do you tell them about how your VP wants this, your Director want that and you want the other? They will tune you out because they just don’t care at all about any of that… All they care about is how THEY are going to hit THEIR sales number and how THEY are gonna pay for THEIR dishwasher that THEIR spouse keeps bugging THEM about… And the sooner you understand this and start using techniques and language that IS ON THEIR RADIO FREQUENCY; you will never get them to perform to their fullest capabilities. But as soon as you do talk to them in a language that they easily understand, and do it all the time (not some of the time), but ALL of the time, they will “pre-program” you on all their favorites and preset buttons on every radio they own.


Element #2 - When Your Salespeople Trust You, Then and Only Then Are They TRULY Motivated to Produce Great Sales Results

In any relationship you may have, whether it is a personal, business or a family relationship, when do you feel most comfortable sharing personal information with them - when you trust them or when you don’t trust them?

Of course, when you TRUST them.

And when you are candid, open, consistent and predictable, there will be trust...it's a logical consequence of honesty and truth telling.

When it comes to producing great sales results from your sales reps, they have to trust you. They need to trust you.

When you establish trust, then and only then, can you MOTIVATE them to produce for you.

When your salespeople trust you, this gives them peace of mind. And peace of mind is incredibly motivating.

And when your salespeople have peace of mind, then and only then, they become willing to make the extra effort and place themselves on the line for both themselves and you.

No sales person can produce peak performance if they don't do those things on a regular basis.

First establishing, then reinforcing that trust every day is the FIRST ways you can motivate them to peak performance.

There are many ways to do it, but the best way is for you to “do what you say and say what you do”. This is being congruent.

People cannot stand and mistrust people who are disingenuous (there are those big words again). They want to deal with people who back up what they say.

When you as a sales manager do this, what you get is a sales consultant who always feels supported and comfortable in putting forth maximum effort.

The key is this...always treat your sales consultants as the END unto themselves. Great sales managers never treat their reps as a means to which they can achieve their own ends. If your sales execs feel that you have their back and they feel they can trust you, you have laid the ground work for them to produce superior sales performance.


Soft? A bit touchy-feely? Yeah, maybe a little bit.

But hugely effective in getting you what you want.

Without this critical element, none of the others work at all.

Element #3 – You Must Have the “Perfection Mindset” How can you get what you’re shooting for if you have no idea WHAT you’re shooting for? If you want to hit the bull’s eye, shouldn’t be aiming slightly above the bull’s eye…just so you make sure that the pull of gravity doesn’t mess up your aim? It seems kind of logical to me…but how many sales managers actually do this? The good news is not many…if any at all, and that’s very good for you. And here’s the reason why: since the rest of the sales management world is aiming for goals BELOW yours, then you will win…every time. All you’ll need to do is make sure you execute. Most, if not every other sales manager and salesperson out there is shooting for one thing and one thing only (it comes in many forms):

Quota / Goal / Plan / “The Number” / Budget / Target Whatever you call it, it is really one thing: MEDIOCRITY. When your sales rep hits quota, then they’ll get a “meets expectations” on their annual appraisal…that’s really great! (I’m uttering this whilst soaked in sarcasm by the way…). If they attain goal, they keep their jobs and they stay off your (you know what) list, but they’re not really achieving greatness…and neither are you. This is all “traditional” sales management thinking, and more pointedly, that is setting the bar WAY too low. Way too low for you…because you want so much more, so much better performance out of your salespeople. And, they deserve a boss that expects so much more from them. So, I’ll give you real secret about expectations: Shoot for PERFECTION If you shoot for perfection, you’ll most likely fall short…but you will get EXCELLENCE.


And “excellence” is far better than “mediocrity”, isn’t it? Most salespeople will never set goals that far exceed their capabilities. Most people are programmed to just think of their past performance and think that whatever they do, they are bound to come up with the same results they have gotten before. This is conventional thinking at its finest… The point is this, if you help them set their own expectations of themselves even higher than they set for themselves, then you and they are on the way to achieving sales superstardom.

And 99.9% of all average sales managers haven’t a clue about this. But now you do. This is good for you though, because those very same managers are the ones you are competing against every day as your product competition as well as your in-house rivals…but you’ll have the inside scoop to beat them all.

Element #4 – “Motivating” REALLY WELL Isn’t Done How You Think It Is

This is, without question, the most asked about question in all our online surveys. In fact, almost every question had some element of this question either plainly asked or subtly hidden below the surface of the question. Here’s the tricky thing: motivating salespeople effectively does not amount to any ONE thing, rather it’s a bunch of things all done together…and when done precisely right, it will result in a motivated salesperson who is willing to “go through walls” for both herself and for you. So how do you do it? So let me ask you: Do you treat each salesperson exactly the same? Because, the “golden rule” says that you should “treat others as you would like to be treated”. “Being fair” is what being a great sales manager all is about, so say the “conventional” methods of sales management. For example, when you were a salesperson, you were primarily motivated by money.


So conventional thinking would dictate that this means that ALL your salespeople are all driven by money too, right? This is precisely the kind of flawed thinking that the average sales manager falls into. But you are striving to be far from average… Instead, the extraordinary sales manager knows that each person is truly different, and if you treat them all the same, then peak performance is impossible to achieve. Think about it. Just because you like something and hold it dear, does that mean others do the same? It’s like the story of the five year old boy, who on his mother’s birthday gives her a red fire truck because that’s what HE would have wanted. Do you “motivate” your sales team around the very same objectives that YOU felt were important when you were a salesperson? THAT is conventional sales management…and “conventional thinking” is what we are trying to avoid. Remember:

Conventional thinking = Conventional (quota-hitting) results

Unconventional thinking = Unconventional (quota SMASHING) results Here’s the thing…people are different (this hopefully isn’t a newsflash for you)…so why “motivate” them all the same? What you really need to do is get to know them and realize how different each one is, then celebrate these differences! Just because you are motivated in a certain way, (and we have to assume that you did it pretty well, because you are the boss now after all), it doesn’t mean that your salespeople are motivated in the exact same ways that you are. Each salesperson has their own individual triggers for success, things that make them uniquely different. And those motivations are far different for each sales rep. So how do you harness each individual’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance? There is not only one way…but I do know that it’s a different motivator or trigger for each one, and you have to find out how to get it from them. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to get.


Also, you really need to be mindful of WHO you are motivating, because that’s as, if not more, important than HOW you are motivating…you see, this “motivating” thing isn’t that easy. It’s actually the hardest thing to do as a sales manager…and it’s even harder to do REALLY well. Here’s a big clue though…EVERYTHING you do as a sales manager, every email, every phone call, every text message, every memo must congruently (another ten-cent word, so sorry) align your message with a undercurrent of motivation. In everything you do, you must be motivating and communicating for a specific reason…and that reason is to unleash superior sales results from your salespeople. That is your ONLY (and most important) goal.

Element #5 – “Leading” Your Team Isn’t “Dictating” To Your Team

Unless you are setting expectations, your sales district is a modified democracy…please notice, I did NOT say anarchy or dictatorship. Unless they are in an absolute meltdown kind of crisis, salespeople don’t generally like to be “led” in the traditional sense; cajoled, prompted, assisted, consulted, collaborated with, aided, yes. But “led”…not really. The reason is the nature of the job of sales itself, is hugely “mavericky” (thanks Governor Palin!). What I mean is that salespeople like to feel that they are independent free spirited paradigm-busting lone wolves who dance to the beat of a different drum…especially the really good ones (please, more clichés!) The real point is that top-performing sales reps feel disrespected when their managers assume that they always have the right to tell them what to think and do. They hate it and they feel that it’s a sign of disrespect and lack of belief (yours) in their inherent abilities (which they feel are vast). This creates issues. There is a great trick however; that you can use to turn these dissenters into followers by simply changing the way you deal with them. It doesn’t take much, all it takes is for you to release a little control and let them feel the exhilaration of being on the business end of policy change.


Believe me, it goes a long way to getting enormous results from the prickliest of all salespeople…and it does wonders for the newbies who don’t know anything yet, as well. If you clue them in on the decision making process, you’ll start to lead more effectively in all aspects of your position. And once you start leading this way, you’ll notice your salespeople are far more engaged and tuned into whatever initiative or blitz you spearhead. It’s really not too hard, but it does require certain phrasing and questioning in order to be really effective. Whatever you do, you don’t want to try this without making sure you are prepared for the eventual outcomes.

Once you give power away…it’s very hard to get it back. The bottom line is this: salespeople love to be included in on the decision making process. They like to be thought of as important instead of just anonymous cogs in the machinery…and who wouldn’t? Respect your salesperson’s opinions and they’ll respect yours. Empower them whenever possible and wherever appropriate. But I caution you…it cannot be done haphazardly, or it could fully undermine your true authority. I do know this…in order to lead effectively, you need to allow others (or at least feel like they do) to lead you. Counterintuitive? Yes. Unconventional? Most definitely. Only for ultra-self-confident sales managers? Oh, gosh yes. But…effective? Hugely.


Element #6 – You Have To either Turn Around Your Dead Weight…or Get Rid of Them

One of the most challenging and emotionally distressing parts of a sales manager’s job is to make every attempt to turnaround their underperforming sales people. The reality is that with every success at undertaking this venture, there are just as many failures…and as an ambitious, top performing sales manager, I have a hunch that failure is not something you particularly enjoy, especially when it’s yours. The beauty (and some would say curse) of the sales profession is that salespeople are only as good as their numbers. And if the numbers are down for consistent periods of time, then it’s up to the sales manager to step in and do everything she can do to turnaround those underperformers and turn their talents into performance. There are multiple techniques and iron-clad scripts that can be used to achieve this…but at the end of the day, if the rep isn’t producing, then you need to move on…without each other (if you know what I’m saying). However, keep in mind, there are certain techniques that have been proven to work to actually turn salespeople around. They only work if you actually have the right person in the role who has maybe just had a “temporary relapse” or who “needs to get back on track”. Because, if you have the wrong person in the wrong role, no amount of “turnaround techniques” will ever work…in that case you’ll need to part ways and start fresh with a new hire. Nonetheless, these techniques are powerful and will help you to get many reps that have had just a temporary downturn to get them on the right track, then on to superior performance in short periods of time. Based on A TON of experience in this area (I wish it wasn’t so much…), there are three iron-clad strategies that can be used to turn any underperformer into a performer. This is a HUGE secret…but here they are:

1. Set the tone 2. Confrontation is your friend 3. Set small goals and achieve them


These are very basic techniques that really work when they are implemented exactly right. Done incorrectly, watch out…you’ll have a mutiny on your hands! Speaking of secrets...let me clue you in on another important idea to keep in mind: “Manage observable behaviors first, and then manage numbers. If the behaviors

are correct, then the numbers will surely follow” Whatever you do, you don’t want to fall into the trap of labeling someone an “underperformer” because they were either brand new or they have some kind of extenuating circumstance in their territory that they have no control over. In that case, you need to reserve judgment. If the case is hopeless however, and you know it is, don’t reserve judgment…instead act swiftly and decisively…these are your numbers too. So don’t procrastinate. If you procrastinate, you do them, you as well as your company a huge disservice.

Element #7 – Just Hire Top Talent – It’s Just That Simple… Or Is It?

Picking the right people is one of the most important jobs you have as a sales manager. There are hundreds of books and seminars on hiring right, all telling you different approaches and methods to uncover what the interview candidate is really all about. The problem is: I have never seen a book on how to hire the most elusive and challenging kind of

interview candidate, namely: the sales person Hiring great salespeople is the trickiest skill you may ever learn as a superior sales manager, because hiring salespeople (for multiple reasons) is so much more challenging than hiring say, an engineer…but at the same time, it’s a whole lot more fun! The great thing is that in order for you to get what you want, which is superior OVERALL sales results from your team, you don’t have to be exactly right on your hiring decisions 100% of the time…it’s just plain impossible to be that good.


The beauty is that you can be right only slightly more then most of the time and still have an EXTREMELY lucrative sales management career. But don’t relax…you do have to be DEAD ON with that greater than 50%, because there is very little room for error. It is yet another cliché, but think of the hiring process as nearly identical to the dating process that led to you choosing your spouse or significant other. If you are a full-fledged member of the institution of marriage, I think you know what I mean. (For those of your not yet “institutionalized” then you’ll have to take my word for it). A sales hiring decision is a decision you should take nearly as seriously as that decision of a spouse was for you. That’s because once you choose to hire an individual, you are now in a full-time marital-like relationship. You’ll see the good and the bad in them; you’ll see them at their best and most likely at their worst and you’ll need to stick with them through thick and thin and “for richer and for poorer” (hopefully more “richer” than “poorer”). The hard part is that unlike dating your spouse, you typically only have two or three “dates” with them before you are forced to “pop the question”… Aren’t you getting tired of all the “marriage” analogies? OK, my point is that the interview process just doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to figure out who they truly are; so you had better make the best use of your time with them. This means not only listening to the answers to the questions you ask them, but to also listening to how they answer those questions. You need to use all and every possible clue available to you, taking into consideration all the subtleties of their personality, both verbal and non-verbal. Also, there are some very specific character attributes or talents that you absolutely MUST adhere to finding and uncovering; otherwise your search will end in disaster. The ones I look for after hundreds of interviews over ten years are called “The Fabulous Five”…

Just start interviewing, see a bunch of candidates and then issue an offer letter…it seems so simple, right?


Wrong, hiring the right sales executive is a complex, involved process in which you need to read every aspect of the candidate in the limited time that you have with them, processing multiple pieces of information all at once…and I’m not just talking about noticing if they are wearing matching socks. It’s a little more involved than that. The point is this: hiring a top salesperson is a HUGE responsibility and you need to take it EXTREMELY seriously, with stepwise approaches and specific talent-related questions that you pull out of each candidate in methodical, non-threatening way. For if you don’t, you’ll find yourself with a team that needs intervention from Element #6.

Element # 8 – They Have To Sell “New School”! Here’s some news for you: “Old School Selling” is dead. Your prospects simply have too many other choices. In fact, most other bids for your service are just a single click away. Your sales people are too savvy as well. They are the product of a “feel good” era of unfettered prosperity (no world wars, famines or Great Depressions in their past). They’ve had it easy! Just go into a prospects office, dump a bunch of information or do up a proposal and voila: sales! Its not so easy now, with the immediate availability of information through the internet and plus the fact that there are tons of products just like yours, with your product or service bordering on a commodity…or worse yet, not even at the top of their minds! Furthermore, prospects are even less tolerant of being “pressured” into making a decision by you. They are equally intolerant of feeling that they may be being manipulated against their will. So the solution isn’t to “just close harder” in order to get the business. Your sales people’s prospects are too smart for this, they know way too much. If they really want to just “get some information” they can look it up on Google and never need to have a sales person come in to meet with them and take up their valuable time! Regardless of your industry, whether it’s selling funeral caskets or hyperbaric chambers, there are decisions being made to purchase products in your industry space every second of every day. And a lot of those decisions end up going to your competition instead of to you.


So in this hyper-competitive, “one-click-away”, commodity-price-driven business world we all live in, what can a top-performing sales manager do about it? The first things you need to do is get you and your salespeople on the same page with you by following the previous seven elements in this report… The second thing you need to do is figure out a strategic sales approach that optimizes your sales outcomes while increasing and enhancing your prospect’s satisfaction with your product. With information just a click away, if you sell something to someone and they are unhappy with it, the speed in which that information gets passed from your unhappy customer to a would-be client is faster than you can say: “Follow me on Twitter”. So in that light, your salespeople’s sales approach needs to change appropriately with the times.

Today, there is a new and higher standard for sales force competency, a sales force must not only sell a competitive advantage but the sales team itself must

BE the competitive advantage.

In order to do this in a sales district in today’s age, your sales executives need to partner with their clients so that they get what they want and your salespeople get what they want. What you need to do is to “get on their side of the desk” and partner with your sales prospects by doing one thing:

Uncover where their areas of pain are…then propose a solution… with your product.

As clichéd as “win-win” is (and boy is it ever), it could not be more true in today’s world…this is all about benefits and providing solutions veiled as products…and not just features and information dumping. Your sales prospects don’t really care about the “X-dial EZ-automate Flugelbinder which comes standard on every MaxJet 5000”… …all they care about is if it: “saves Betty at the front desk five minutes of her time every time the phone rings and she needs to transfer the call to another department. This in turn, will save the company $3.75 on every incoming call, boost office productivity by 15%, keep Bob the Vice President of Synchronicity and Ego Enhancement on schedule and improve Betty’s morale”. That’s what gets people to buy – the “what’s REALLY in it for them” – not the product itself.


Element #9 – Would You Rather Work Harder or Make More Money?

“I’m swamped right now” “I’m way too busy to do that” “I’ll need to call you back, I’m way behind right now”… Does this sound like you? If you’re like me, there is a HUGE tendency for sales managers to get bogged down in far too many administrative duties, conference calls, time-wasting phone calls, useless meetings and mindless corporate initiatives – all repetitive activities that do nothing but waste your time when you should be focused on more meaningful and lucrative tasks. Worst of all (and the biggest time waster) is:

YOU DOING YOUR SALES PEOPLE’S JOB FOR THEM! Here’s the real problem: you’re spending so much time on these wasteful tasks, you aren’t even coming close to spending time working on the things that will get you what your really want, namely increased sales from your salespeople! Think of this: one of your sales reps calls you and you have basically the same conversation with them over and over and over again. They call you to ask you the same questions, and what do you do? You answer those questions. What do you think they’ll do the next time they have the same question? That’s right - they call you again, and again, and again, and so on… Worse yet, when they call, you take the call, answer the question, and then you either don’t know the answer or you need to talk to someone before you answer the question you say: “OK, I’ll have to get back to you on that…” You, (trying to help of course, because you are a very attentive and caring sales manager, after all) now need to make five other calls to three other people and seven emails to five different people to get the answer to the question you were just asked!!! Meanwhile, more emails and messages continue to pile up in your inbox and your voice mailbox that you need to answer…because those are even more


questions that require even more phone calls and emails to even more people and so on and on it goes…. (I think I have to stop and take a break for a minute, because my chest is starting to tighten)…. You get home at night and you are dead tired because you are working so hard, trying so hard to get the results that you so desperately want. You crave success, so you think that the best way to get it is to just work your self to death…this is what you think. Never mind the fact that at the end of every other Friday your paycheck doesn’t get any bigger… So if you actually do the math, you are working sixteen hours a day and NOW getting paid less! Your hourly wage has technically DECREASED. This is not the direction you want to go in, needless to say… Most sales managers are under the mistaken impression you must do the work of their salespeople, work EXTREMELY hard and put in LONG hours in order to get your salespeople to both achieve their potential as well as make lots of money. This is simply NOT TRUE. Here’s the paradox…you actually get more out of your salespeople if you do less!

That’s insane you say. Ok, well let me ask you this: if you’re work sixteen hour-days and keep making less money (or even the same money) and you do it over and over and over again without stopping…who’s the insane one now? The whole idea revolves around eliminating yourself as a “tollbooth through which all decisions must pass”…(if only you could charge a toll of like $500 each time someone passed through that would be sweet!). Keep dreaming…


The odd side-effect of the “removing you as the tollbooth” approach is this:

1. This will actually MOTIVATE your sales reps to do even more. 2. This then leads to a reverse insanity spiral of you doing less work, them

doing more work

3. You BOTH make more money And while they’re doing ALL the work, you’re focusing on “the important stuff” - namely the stuff that will help both you and them to sell more effectively and make more money, while achieving the success you have both been dreaming of. Don’t forget…if you get them what they want, you get what you want. It’s a wonderful relationship that works extremely well. All you need to do is release just a little bit of control and become just slightly aloof. Don’t worry, there are lots of ways to do it…and your reps will never know why they are suddenly producing so much more with such little help and communication from you. And that way, you’ll both be very happy.


You Have a Choice I think by now you’re pretty clear on what it is that you need in order to harness the full potential of your sales team to so that you can produce superior sales management results. As you may have already guessed, if you wanted to find all the answers yourself, that taking the time to find all the answers to the sales management questions you are so interested in getting answered would take an enormous amount of time, not to mention a ton of money... So hypothetically, let’s say you did try to go out and get all the answers yourself. Let’s see exactly what you would have to do:

1. First, you would have to become a top-performing salesperson in a variety of industries for fifteen-plus years, gaining insights and a deep understanding of the sales process in all its forms.

2. Then once you were promoted to sales management, you would have to

hunt for them by skimming through hundreds of leadership and management books, journals and websites – figuring out which ones are worthwhile and which ones are a complete waste of time.

3. You would of course have to pay for hundreds of these books and

journals, read them all, then highlight, jot notes and then memorize the most relevant concepts.

4. Then you would need to attend dozens of paid seminars on leadership

and management, filtering which points are most relevant to you, your style and your sales management position.

5. You would then need to attend dozens of corporate-sponsored trainings

from some of the top training firms in the world – attending interactive “breakout” sessions, taking personality assessments, completing hundreds of management role-plays, doing countless interactive workshops, attend innumerable one-on-one consultations with trainers - learning even more about leadership and management. Not only is this time consuming but it is expensive (I once attended a corporate training that cost the company $75,000 for what amounted to one day of training!)

6. You would next have to interview dozens of management gurus; taking

notes and making mental reminders of their philosophies and then decide which ones resonate most with your style.


7. You would then need to edit and alter all the data you have gathered and then “customize” it for your sales management purposes.

8. You would have to integrate all this information into your daily activities,

start using the tips and information by trial and error over the course of ten-plus years.

9. Over those ten-plus years, you would then need to hire, train, motivate,

lead, fire, evaluate and manage over 60 salespeople - gaining experience, knowledge and know-how that only can be learned from real world work experience.

10. After achieving dozens of top leadership and management awards and

distinctions while witnessing first hand what works and what doesn’t work, then and only then could you approach to reach the level of knowledge that would transform you into a world – class sales manager.

Phew! All that takes so much time…and I’d be willing to bet that’s time that you just don’t have. After all, you have quotas to meet, budgets to do and appraisals to finish…let alone all the emails, voicemails and busywork that turns your “eight hour day” into a day that drags on through the night and into the weekends when you should be spending time playing with your kids, spending time with your friends or just hanging out relaxing with your spouse!

Why I Actually Know What I’m Talking About I hope you have learned a lot from this report. I spent twenty years and thousands of dollars learning this stuff the hard way. You know, if you're a sales manager like me, I think we’re a lot alike. When I was a salesperson I always wanted to lead become a top-performing sales manager and team of sales people by teaching them the things that made me successful, while advancing my own career at the same time. Then, I got my chance! The problem was I had no idea what I was doing. The team I hired was fairly good, but I had no clue how to lead them.


My first few quarters of sales were absolutely dismal. I had thought that just because I was the boss, then they would do what I say...

I also thought that since I was a pretty good salesman, all I needed to do was instruct my sales reps to do things exactly the way that I did them and

sales success would follow! It didn't work. I found that managing salespeople was way harder than I had originally thought. I remember it clearly...about three months into my new position, my reps just started to "tune me out". Whatever I did it didn't seem to matter to them, we were on completely different wavelengths…at what I was doing simply wasn’t working. For the first time in my life, I felt a huge fear of failure, as well as completely over-matched. I didn’t have the time or the energy to do it all, so I just started dictating to them.

Unfortunately, the more I dictated…the less they did...and the worse they performed.

I knew I HAD to do something…and I had to do it fast. Once thing I’ve always been is a studier. I love to learn new things and I’m especially passionate about what makes some people successful and others not. So I started studying what made certain leaders successful and what top mangers did to get the best out of their people. I went to countless leadership seminars and two-day management "boot camps". I was a voracious learner - soaking up everything I could on leadership, the psychology of success and top-tier management. Then I started incorporating the techniques and strategies I had learned into my daily sales management routines. I tried lots of different things; some techniques I kept and others I dumped, for any number of reasons. When I’d learn a new concept from one of the books or seminars, I would immediately start using it…then I made a personal diary of what worked and what didn’t. And I noticed something...alot of the techniques I implemented started to really work! My sales team started to respond to me…and as I grew more and more confident in my abilities, they responded to me in kind. Soon that confidence turned into


some small sales wins, then it turned into some even bigger sales wins, then it grew into some enormous trend-setting wins... So much so that in my first full year as a sales manager after my “transformation”, I got my first #1 national ranking as the top sales manger in my company. It seemed the more I learned from this self-study, the better and stronger of a sales leader I became. So I continued this intense study for over ten full years, all the while continuing to achieve top sales results with various sales teams and multiple companies, including my own. However, a few years ago, I noticed a couple of fellow sales mangers in my company really struggling in the same way that I once had. I observed them making the same simple mistakes that I had once made - but they had no idea where to get the assistance they so desperately needed. It was then that I realized, what if I could write down all that I know about top sales management and pass that information along to other sales managers? I looked around online and I found that there was no one else providing help in the way that I knew sales mangers really needed in order to be successful.

So I decided to create what turned out to be the first online course of its kind in the world, not taught at any school or college – exclusively for sales managers so

that they can achieve total Sales Management Mastery.


Final Words My objective in writing this report was to convince you of two things:

1. That the “9 Critical Components” work and should be a vital part of your daily sales management routine. In fact, start implementing some of these tips today and see the results immediately!

2. When you start implementing these components into your daily routine – you will MAKE MORE MONEY…and you’ll have way more fun too.

If you’ve got value out of this report, and you’re ready to take the next step, I encourage you to take advantage of my “Sales Management Mastery” training blog with access to it below. We have also created an even more in depth members-only site called the “Sales Management Mastery Academy” which is an advanced, multi-media online training program where I teach all aspects of top sales management in even greater detail. Our current members typically see tangible (i.e. “money-making”) sales improvements in their teams after only just ONE MONTH in the program! Stay tuned to your inbox for more details on that incredible training site…and some mouth watering offers for those of you ready to “take the next step” towards total Sales Management Mastery. Until then, access even more free training content right here: http://www.salesmanagementmastery.com/ All the best,

Ralph Burns

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