October 2013 Newsletter

Are Your Sales Managers the Walking Dead?

Have you noticed the Walking Dead prowling around your sales organization lately? These dangerous, overpaid Sales Manager Zombies may have survived some of the toughest sales years in history, but they’re dead meat in today’s New Normal sales landscape. Worse, they’ve infected their teams – treating them like robots, asking for stale performance standards, and disrupting the flow.

This week the Sales 2.0 Conference is happening in San Francisco. It is a clear reminder to all sales professionals that the end-of-the-sales-world as we know it is here. As a top inside sales trainer with more than 20 years invested in building my business, I know that we can no longer survive, let alone thrive, if we insist on the same old rules and habits.

Kill the zombies now! Put a stop to these flesh-eating sales practices and habits that are sucking out the very core of sales success:

1. By now, everyone should understand the value that inside sales brings to an organization. But there are still VP’s out there who map the inside and field with unrealistic ratios, forcing small inside sales teams into service and support roles for tons of outdated field reps.
2. Building inside sales organizations the right way is a complex science that pays attention to the people, process, and technology. But many organizations do not build them from the inside out. Instead they hire talent, load them up with shiny tools, measure them through stale dashboards, and keep raising sales quotas.
3. Managers continue to coach and mentor their teams, but they still expect the same old results. This stale thinking is gnawing at their team’s sales psyche and bleeding their creativity and resourcefulness dry.
4. Field sales partners have no place to hide anymore. Their great looks and shiny grey suits are not getting them any appointments with customers. Let the inside sales teams of the dungeons and show them what we can do!
5. Mini-zombie team members are gathering speed. They come in expecting to have your job in the next few months, they reluctantly make calls, they rarely have human conversations (can you say “arrghhh”?), and they stalk customers without stopping—chasing them on their cell phones, sending them unsolicited meeting requests, and begging them for just a little more time.
6. The customers are finally standing up against these zombies: they realized that they simply don’t need salespeople to survive. So they cancel meetings, refuse PowerPoint death marches, and have mentally shut-down, just like the government.

Be a smart sales manager — resist the sales zombie apocalypse! Your sales survival depends on adopting the latest Sales 2.0 practices — the ones that actually work. Retain your brain, maintain an open and creative mind, and find stability and success amidst the chaos.

Sign up for Upcoming Webinars & Events

1. Metrics that Matter for Inside Sales 2.0 - October 29, 2013, webinar with Zilliant
2. How to Build and Run Inside Sales Teams in the Digital Age - November 5, 2013, webinar with Matt Heinz
3. 10 Reasons Why Inside Sales Will Displace Field Sales Temas by 2015 - November 12, 2013, AA-ISP Dallas Keynote Speech
4. Hiring and Managing a Winning Team of Disruptive Millennials - November 21, 2013, webinar with Citrix Online

Josiane is a regular contributor to the AllBusiness and Salesforce blogs! Sign up to these RSS feeds and get regular updates.

1. AllBusiness Experts - (RSS: Top Stories)
2. Salesforce Sales Blog - (RSS: Sales Blog)

Sales Conferences and Kick-offs are right around the corner, so schedule a few hours for Josiane to come in an shake things up with your team. Her fun, memorable, and engaging Smart Talk is all about picking up speed in today’s 2.0 ecosystem. The rules have changed, have you?

Pleeeeeeeeze! Can you nominate Smart Sales Manager to be considered for the book awards with Top Sales World?

Here's the nomination form - deadline is November 1st.