Message to Management: Are You Talking to Your Team?
Stop walking around, and start talking around.
The best business deals happen when we talk to our buyers, ask them the right questions, and help them create the best solutions for their business challenges. We earn clients’ trust and loyalty by making ourselves an invaluable resource. The same is true in sales management.
The very strategies you use for attracting clients are the key to increasing sales effectiveness for your team. Simply put: Conversations count.
When You Talk, They Sell
Whether you are CEO, vice president, or a sales manager, you play a central role in your company’s business-development process and are accountable for increasing sales and revenue. Above all, your job is to get the rocks off the road for your salespeople, so they can do what they were hired to do—Sell!
Whether your team is virtual or shares an office, you must talk to them … regularly.
Empowerment Through Engagement
As Julie Winkle Giulioni explains in her SmartBlog on Leadership, successful leadership is no longer about Management by Walking Around (MBWA). Now it’s Management by Talking Around (MBTA).
She writes:
In the 1980s, MBWA was the rage. It involved the radical notion that leaders could drive better results by stepping out of their offices and engaging with employees and the work flow in a less formal, more impromptu fashion. “Management by walking around” changed the cadence of business — in large part through greater leadership involvement and presence.
Fast forward three decades, and just “being there” has become table stakes. Now leaders must really leverage those moments with others, and the most natural and effective tool for accomplishing this is conversation.
Want to start increasing sales rep productivity? Start having regular conversations with each and every person on your team. Ask them about their challenges and how you can help. After all, the better you do your job, the better they’ll do theirs.
Joanne Black, author of No More Cold Calling
www.NoMoreColdCalling.com
Copyright 2014, author retains ownership. All Rights Reserved.
