Blog - Braveheart Sales Performance

Sales Managers: Stop Fixin’ to Get Ready…Overcome Change Paralysis

Editor’s note: Today’s post is from Karen Brown, a Sales Growth Specialist with Braveheart Sales Performance. Karen will be a regular contributor to the Sales Management Blog. She brings her unique insights from nearly 30 years of business management and sales leadership experience, which she applies to help sales teams achieve their goals and increase their profits.

Change is hard. That is a fact. Some would say it’s a statement of the obvious.

Talking about change is not hard. Creating a vision of change is a very engaging exercise that can consume what would otherwise be time filled with productive activities. It’s easy […]

Will Your Salesperson Build Relationships Or Close Business?

There is a misconception that salespeople are all one breed; that they are all gregarious, outgoing, extroverted individuals. Not true. The truth of the matter is that you have most likely been sold to by this one sort of person – because that is how most companies hire salespeople. They hire the people who like people and build great relationships. But building relationships does not necessarily mean closed business. I can’t tell you how many companies I know who have really nice, friendly, service-oriented salespeople . . . except that they aren’t really salespeople. They are service people.

But service people […]

No Excuse for Allowing Your Sales Team to Make Excuses

Do you ever get frustrated by the reasons why your salespeople can’t or don’t meet their goals? Do you feel like you are nagging them to sell more despite all the reasons why they tell you they can’t?

Here’s some helpful advice:

Quit allowing your salespeople to make any excuses.

Granted, it’s not a revolutionary idea . . . but you have to give yourself permission to actually do it. If you fail to do so, your salespeople won’t grow, change or improve. They will just stay the same. And, consequently, you will be frustrated and sales will suffer. Before you know it, […]

How to Use the Math of Success to Boost Your Team’s Sales Results

A friend and colleague pointed out to me that I frequently refer to the Math of Success in sales when I write, but I don’t have one article dedicated to the topic. Well here you go, an entire article dedicated to the magical Math of Success. You can download a worksheet template to use with your sales team and put this into practice immediately. This is the Sales Manager’s remedy for having to nag salespeople to do more, get more appointments, send more proposals, and close more business.

You have probably heard the phrase “sales is a numbers game.” Well that […]

How Your Sales Team Can Identify Their 4 Buyers on LinkedIn

Editor’s Note: We haven’t often used guest posts on our blog, but this is one I thought our readers would find particularly helpful. This post comes courtesy of Celina Guerrero of SocialtoSales.com. It is a modified version of a post that was originally published on the SocialtoSales Blog. This version is designed specifically to help sales managers guide their sales teams towards more effective social selling methods. Let us know in the comments if you find it helpful!

How Your Sales Team Can Identify Their 4 Buyers on LinkedIn

Gallup recently published an article entitled, B2B Companies: Do You Know Who Your […]

4 Easy Steps to Help Your Salespeople Become Independent Thinkers

I just re-read a very good article by Janice Mars of SalesLatitude and thought it was worth sharing.

The point of the article is that sales managers are inundated with salespeople and their questions and frequently get in a rut. They accept the role of reacting to salespeople and their questions all day long. They become the bottleneck, as Janice states. It is a dysfunctional dynamic.

I submit that there is a more dangerous problem that erupts. The sales manager’s favorite salespeople are the ones that don’t need much interaction ─ because they make it easy on the sales manager.

Beware, sales managers! […]

Top 5 Mistakes Made by CEOs Managing Sales (and How to Fix Them)

I had a meeting yesterday with the CEO of a small business that currently has six people on their sales team. He is stuck in an awkward place because they are now big enough that they need to have a sales team, but they still don’t think they are quite big enough yet to have a dedicated sales manager. This is a tough spot that tons of business owners find themselves in. He needs to build sales to propel the business to the next level (so he can justify hiring a rock star sales manager). But until then, it means […]

How to Use Momentum Effectively in Sales and Sports

If you have read many of my articles you realize that from time to time I like to use sports analogies. I was at yet another college lacrosse game several days ago, and sadly my team lost to end their season. We were tied at the half but then had gone down by three goals in the second half. Our team was struggling a little bit to get something going and seemed riddled with turnovers.

There are some tough players on the team and one particular player just seemed to kick it into high gear and by sheer will scored a […]

Hiring for Sales: Round Pegs Do Not Fit in Square Holes

I was with a group of seven friends from college last weekend to help out a friend in need. We have all been friends for over 30 years and we get together once a year. What has been so fun to realize over the years is that we each have different talents. And we each have different weaknesses. This is not an earth-shattering revelation. But, now we have the maturity to realize that different people’s talents can and should be used appropriately, rather than trying to get everyone to operate the same way. We no longer attempt to put round […]

How to Use LinkedIn and Reachable for Referrals

In my last article I spoke about the importance of asking for referrals and introductions. I described how one can accomplish this either the old-fashioned way, through asking, or by using LinkedIn or Reachable. I have been asked to explore these online applications a little bit further. So here goes.

We will start with the premise that receiving a referral or introduction far exceeds any cold calling one can do in terms of return on investment. Additionally, we will assume that your sales teams are already involved in seeking referrals the old-fashioned way.

Here is a simple primer on using LinkedIn for […]