The last few weeks have been pretty unique – I know I have never experienced anything like what is happening right now in my entire career. Sure, there were the downturns in 2000, 2008, 2011, but those were nothing like what 2020 is bringing us right now. That said, one thing is certain – just like previous downturns, this will end and we will recover.
The world has changed drastically over the past few weeks in many ways. While things are moving slower than usual, it’s a great time to reconnect with customers (virtually, of course), educate yourself, and sharpen the skills you’ll be able to use when the freeze starts to thaw.
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sandberg
The ability to deliver the above is one, if not the, distinguishing characteristic of a great leader. Upon reading it, I began to think of what Sandberg’s definition of leadership meant for sales leaders.
During sales management training, I often tell sales managers they need to approach sales pipeline reviews with their sales reps like prosecutors in the courtroom. What exactly do I mean? To start, I’m not advocating that you look to “convict” your sales reps. Instead, I’m suggesting sales managers take an evidence-based approach to sales pipeline inspection. Doing so will remove the biases from conversations with sales reps, and make sales pipelines more accurate and data driven.
So, where do you find this evidence?
Sales Gauge, a leader in the sales training industry, today announced it has launched a new application for sales executives using Salesforce.com (SFDC). The app, which provides real-time insight into high value deals, is available at no charge on the SFDC AppExchange. In addition to full transparency into their sales pipelines, the new Sales Gauge High Value Trade Table app provides salespeople and managers a common language to discuss sales pipelines and forecasts.
In a previous blog post we discussed the book The Customer Service Revolution by John R. DiJulius and how companies and individuals have a tendency to approach clients with preconceived notions. We have this negative belief that our customers are always trying to put one over on us. It’s the 2% of customers trying to pull a fast one who prompt us to put up our defenses and drive us to believe every customer wants to screw us. But the reality is that most customers want us to be successful and profitable, in turn passing on fair pricing on our products and services. In this way, everyone benefits.
