As a company owner, team leader or sales manager, there are many leadership challenges you will need to overcome to build a successful business. Since these challenges include topics such as budgeting, marketing, human resources, and a variety of other topics, this article will provide strategies to assist you with building a strong sales team.
Leadership Challenge # 1: Keep the Ball Moving.
After holiday parties and New Year’s resolutions begin to fade, your team members start to do the same. Team motivation is one of the important leadership challenges that each leader must manage. As a strong leader, we must be proactive to keep our team motivated and to encourage them to not only meet but to also exceed their sales goals. Remember to frequently remind your team of their strategic plan. Lastly, keep the culture fresh and fun. Humor reduces stress.
Leadership Challenge # 2: Change Team Running Hot and Cold to Warm.
Some team members expend all their energy in bursts, followed by none of their energy in bursts. As a team leader, you can better support your team by creating a higher level of consistency in your team’s daily, weekly and monthly routines. Coach your team to be self-pacers and to recognize and create consistency.
Leadership Challenge # 3 – Analyze Team Traits.
The results you gain through supporting your team (advice, training, and goal setting) highly depends upon the individual’s behavioral style. Does your team member prefer sales strategies to be broken down systematically? Alternatively, would your team member prefer to create steps themselves to accomplish a team goal? Does she thrive by jumping in and figuring it out as she goes? Is this person bogged down by details? Does your team as a whole lean into the strengths of each member?
Leadership Challenge # 4: Bingo! Run Effective Retreats and Strategy Meetings.
One of my clients relayed a story from a corporate strategy retreat in which the attendees heard the same lofty statements over and over again in effort to get the team motivated. However, once attendees went home, nothing changed.
What went wrong?
The team might begin to play what I call, “meeting bingo” based upon what the leadership team says repeatedly at every meeting. This is not very different from the drinking games played at political speeches, where audience members take a shot or sip when a buzzword is repeated. Similarly, what we get with the repetition of empty buzzwords untethered to a measurable action step is a short term shot of feeling good and nothing but a hangover the next day!
There is a big difference between saying “increase sales”, “bring in business”, versus something more measurable and action-oriented such as “meet a quarterly goal of $10,000″ with a monthly plan to break down that goal into manageable bites.
By proactively preparing for and meeting these leadership challenges, you are on your way to building a successful sales team and business growth!
2014 My Sales Tactics copyright original works
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