No matter if you’re a completely new sales manager, a tenured sales manager, a small business owner, a VP of Product sales or even a sales trainer, you may well find that leading salespeople can be one of the more hard sales management training tasks you face.
The explanation for this issue is the fact that salespeople don?t like to be ?led? in the classic sense. Salespeople in general, are a fickle bunch. These people like to think of themselves as fiercely independent spirits who want to do things by themselves. They are usually highly opinionated, and frequently combative.
And as a result, they only ?follow? a sales leader who they feel is competent, have their interests foremost in their minds and more importantly of all a sales manager that they can trust.
The crucial element to effective sales leadership lies in building trust with your front line salespeople.
The unfortunate aspect is the fact that many ?leadership” books don?t actually bother to teach this idea. Virtually all feel it?s a given.
Just how wrong they tend to be.
Because there’s an art as well as a science to leadership and it all starts off with first establishing a firm platform of trust. It’s an incredibly important principle to learn. And it is important to the long term health of the company.
The truth is, consider trust building with your sales team exactly like constructing a house. Trust is the foundation of that house. A person can?t start laying down floors putting up walls til you have that foundation set first, right?
It?s exactly the same thing with leadership and trust. A sales manager cannot steer a sales force to spectacular sales heights, much less merely make sales quotas without first developing that ?trust? foundation. There are actually about three established tactics that will allow you to not merely build trust with your sales force to help you drive your company?s sales revenue:
1. Use the Law of Reciprocity.
The law of reciprocity states when one does something nice for somebody, and then human instinct dictates that the recipient will really feel motivated to do something nice for you in exchange. It?s especially effective because human nature dictates that at the precise instant that you do something nice for someone that person feels obligated to return the favour.
So if you continually do nice things for your sales person, then they feel required to do something nice for you in exchange. That nice thing in return, is usually increased sales. Don?t manipulate this particular concept; merely use it to your benefit. And further, don’t expect the favor being returned as soon as you perform it. Be unobtrusive. But take advantage of the natural laws of human psychology to acquire what you want which is good results for your organization and your sales team.
2. Let The Salesperson Take All The Credit
Men and women always operate far better if they never have to worry about who gets the credit. If perhaps a sales manager is on a sales call with a salesperson who generates a sale and right after the call the sales manager returns to the office and explains to everyone exactly how HE made the sale, how do you think that salesperson feels?
Don?t be worried about who takes the credit. Sales managers are compensated for how effectively their sales people do. A sales manager should never take the credit for the good work of his sales people
Making sure that each and every salesperson gets the proper credit will just assist build even more trustworthiness and will encourage them even more at the same time.
3. Don?t Dictate, Suggest Instead
There will be plenty of times in which you?ll need to tell your sales people, in no uncertain terms, what they need to do in any particular situation.
Having said that, the remainder of the time, stay away from spewing direct orders at all costs.
For example, as a substitute for saying: ?I want you to go to the O’Neill account and provide them with the new prices.?
Modify that somewhat and say: ?You may want to think about bringing the new rates to the O?Neil account.?
The sales person listens to that and says, alright, he?s not dictating to me what to do, instead he?s giving me a recommendation and I?m going to decide if it is right to do. This kind of approach encourages and motivates, and does not control.
Use these kinds of trust building methods to lead and inspire your sales reps and you’ll start seeing exponential increases in your sales leadership.
To find out more about training for sales managers, then click here to get your choice of free sales manager training.