Sales and Sales Management Blog

October 20, 2008

New Sales Chartacteristics Research Needs Your Help

Filed under: Coaching, career development, sales, sales training, selling — Paul McCord @ 5:20 am
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I received an email over the weekend from Brian Lambert, the Director of Sales Development and Performance at the American Society for Training and Development, seeking salespeople, managers, sales trainers, and academics to help him in his research for his doctoral dissertation.

I hope you’ll consider giving him a few minutes of your time to participate by taking one of the two surveys he is using to gather data.

Brian is researching the characteristics needed to successfully sell in a business-to-business environment and that should be addressed in a comprehensive description that can be used for training and coaching.  To this end, he, in conjunction with his doctoral advisory committee members, has developed two surveys.  One survey will determine the perceptions of sales managers, experienced salespeople, sales professors, and sales trainers regarding the importance of competencies required for success as an entry-level salesperson.  The other survey will examine shared competencies sales practitioners need to be successful in business-to-business sales, and how these competencies align to roles in terms of focus and differentiation.

You can get a complete overview of the Brian’s research goals, his methodology, and also take either of the surveys at http://www.b2bsalescompetency.info/. 

One word of warning-the site does explain the hypotheses he is working with and his methodology, but it is, of course, written in dry academic speak that only an academic can put up with.  If you don’t want to wade through all the pages, just take the surveys and know that you’re participating in a good cause.

October 14, 2008

Guest Article: “Managing the Millennials,” by Gregory Stebbins

Filed under: Coaching, Sales Management, business, management, sales, selling, small business — Paul McCord @ 3:45 am
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Managing the Millennials          
by Gregory Stebbins  

Independent, tech-savvy, social, and optimistic - why are these “kids” so hard to manage?

The New Millennial’s, people born after about 1981, are now entering the work force en masse. Even seasoned sales managers are having challenges helping these people become productive. They have a different approach to life, which greatly impacts their ability to sell effectively. Understanding them and some key events that took place during their youth will help you get a handle on their outlook on life in general and work in particular.

While they were growing up there was a technology explosion. Their every day reality included video on multiple devices, mobile phone, computers, and iPods. They have been bombarded with marketing messages that are constantly changing. School violence and global terrorism (specifically 9-11) have made them wary about the world and helped them develop a global perspective. For the most part, poverty is something that they have seen on television. Watching their parents get downsized in the 80s and 90s has caused them to question loyalty to the company. Reality television, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life and Google have caused them to believe (and experience!) that information is available for the asking so being “transparent” (putting everything out there for all to see) is the way things should be.

While I often hear comments about their lack of work ethic, those are the same comments that were leveled toward Generation X and Baby Boomers when they first entered the work force. Neuro research now tells us that the prefrontal cortex of our brain continues to mature until about the age of twenty-six. So Millennials may continue to be a little irresponsible until they’ve been on the job for a while. It’s neurological, not attitudinal. So make life a little easier on yourself and cut them some slack.

What is different is their work style, motivations and view of the world, especially the corporate world. These individuals do have loyalty, which is focused on their social network and specific managers and members of the team - not on the company.

Generally they have an ability to find information about anything at a rate that far exceeds expectations of management. What they lack is discernment about the accuracy of the information. If it’s on the Net they tend to believe it must be accurate. They can instantly communicate this information to their social network via Blogs, Instant Messaging (IM), personal Web pages and cell phones. Some companies have found out the hard way that their management mistakes are common knowledge within days, if not hours.

Many of these people had parents who hovered over them during every waking hour, giving birth to the term “Helicopter Parents.” With probably hundreds of possible activities, from soccer to music lessons, Millennials have been over-committed and over-scheduled. They also have been smothered in praise with constant reinforcement about how great they are: blue ribbons for the entire team, there are no losers, etc.  They expect recognition for everything, even the most mundane activities. They may not know their own strengths and weaknesses because there have not been many opportunities for self evaluation or honest, constructive criticism.

This creates your greatest management challenge. How do you help them understand that there are indeed losers as well as winners in the sales world? How do you provide constructive criticism without devastating their psyche?

Keep in mind that these people will tend to look at you as a parental substitute. I know that makes most sales managers more than a little uncomfortable. Nonetheless, since their parents didn’t wean them, you get to do that. And, generally, this is going to be a shock to the Millennial. You’ll need to teach them basic decision making by coaching and guiding them step-by-step, before you tell them, “You decide.” Don’t be surprised if they’re calling you constantly asking the simplest questions.

Here’s a four step process that can be helpful in guiding them in decision-making (this process may take two to six months total):

    1.    The first time they approach you, work with them to think through at least three options. Then make the decision for them. Having them consider options is the first step of developing the ability to reason.

    2.    After this, when they want your input, make sure they come in with the three options already thought about. Then help them understand the consequences of each option. Add in other options if they haven’t considered all of the consequences. Then, you make the decision.

    3.    The third stage is that they come in with three options, understand the consequences and a recommendation for the course of action. Either agree with their course of action or make suggestions. Essentially they will be making the recommendation which you are approving.

    4.    The final stage is to cut them loose and have them handle a situation on their own. However, also have them provide a written report (IM or Text message is OK). The report needs to tell you what the situation was, the options they considered and the decision they made. This step won’t last that long as their need for independence will kick in and they’ll just stop coming to you with every little situation.

Keep in mind that these individuals are going to need much more coaching than their predecessors. The good news is they are used to being coached. After all, many of them have been on soccer teams since they were four or five years old.

Like all previous generations they’ll be coming into the work world thinking that they have all the answers and know how to do the job better than you do. Once we turn about 35, we begin to realize that we don’t have all the answers and things may not be as they seem. Developing mastery at work requires us to listen intently, understand the history of each situation and gather the different perspectives of each of the players involved. However, growing up protected and interacting with others largely through technology, has created a generation whose people savvy is very limited. Their ability to read a person in a face-to-face situation (and almost all selling is face-to-face) will tend to limit their success, especially when selling to people of a different generation. Help them understand the nuances of body language, the uniqueness of each person’s office and what the contents of that office reveals about the customer. (Shameless promotion: Our book, PeopleSavvy for Sales Professionals covers these points in detail.)

In your coaching efforts with Millennials, your focus and approach may need to be different from others you have worked with. You’ll need to provide structure and give information in bite-size pieces. Praise for what they do is important to their self-esteem. If they’ve messed up you’ll need to present it as a development opportunity. Course correction instead of scolding or brow-beating is a better approach.

Millennials generally have short attention spans, so keep your coaching sessions short. If you go beyond about 20 minutes you will lose them. Use technology freely before and after the session; they’ll come in to the session better prepared and will actually appreciate the follow up. If you’re not comfortable using IM, it’s time to learn. Their mobile phone is like a third arm and gives you more access to them than you’ve probably ever had with anyone.

Have frequent coaching sessions. Remember they’ve been sitting in front of video games knowing instantly what their score is and how they compare with others. Waiting to give them feedback at their annual performance review won’t work. In fact, without feedback, they will probably be long gone before that performance review happens.

Provide the rationale behind your coaching. This generation is hungry to learn and if they feel they’re learning from you, they will be loyal-to you. If they feel like their skills aren’t being developed, they’ll leave.

In some ways you’ll need to teach them patience. They’re used to instant gratification. On the plus side, their impatience for results can be a bonus in the sales world. On the negative, they can be easily frustrated when they don’t get immediate results.

Work/life balance is important to Millennials. One of the biggest challenges to Baby Boomer managers is that Millennials don’t want the same life style. Many Baby Boomers were brought up in sales to believe that if you were working from 6 AM to 6 PM, you were still only working half days. Millennials want “time and flexibility” often before financial compensation and benefits. No other generation has had “time and flexibility” in their top three drivers.

And finally, transparency or confidentiality is often mismatched between Millennial and manager. It is not unusual that a private discussion between a manager and employee becomes public. You’ll need to teach your Millennials why discretion is important, and it may be difficult for them to understand. If your entire life is on the Web for anyone to see-even pictures in a drunken stupor at a college party-they just won’t understand why someone wants to keep something private or would be embarrassed about it being public. Be patient and explain why it’s to their benefit. In other words, you may need to sell them on the idea.

Smart managers that focus on developing Millennial’s people savvy and who understand flexible work roles and effective virtual teams while leveraging technology will help them become a valuable asset sooner rather than later. Managers who meet the challenges of working with, not against, this generation will reap the rewards that come with shorter ramp times and more rapidly gaining some very valuable sales professionals

 

. Sales Psychology Expert Gregory Stebbins has helped over 20,000 sales professionals become the point of differentiation while their competitors struggle with how to differentiate their product and service. In his book PeopleSavvy for Sales Professionals, he unveils for the first time his simple but groundbreaking plan to win your customers’ trust and business forever. Visit his website at http://www.peoplesavvy.com

August 22, 2008

Line Dancing and Sales Failure

Filed under: Coaching, sales, sales training, selling — Paul McCord @ 9:15 am
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Musically, I live in the distant past. If an archeologist found my iPod they’d be sure I died sometime in the early to mid 70’s. My taste in music hasn’t evolved past The Beatles, the Stones, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, ZZ Top, and Jethro Tull.

But living in Texas, I have been exposed all my life to Country music and especially to one of the most mysterious, unexplainable religious experiences of the Country and Western crowd-the line dance. The line dance is supposed to be a highly choreographed, disciplined, synchronized dance where each move is replicated in perfect harmony be each dancer. When performed well, the line dance is like seeing one person in multiple forms (I told you it was a religious experience) stretched out in several lines moving effortlessly to the music.

That, of course, is what is supposed to happen. It seldom does.

The failure of the line dance to live up to its promise starts at the very beginning-at the moment of conception of the line dancer so to speak. Watching line dancing being taught is the perfect analogy to sales being taught as the exact same process happens in both cases.

Many Country and Western bars have nights when an instructor tries valiantly to teach newbies how to line dance. The process-and the outcome-are always the same. The instructor lines the soon to be dancers up in nice neat lines and walks them through the steps of the dance to be learned. The instructor goes slowly waiting for each student to follow along at their own pace.

After a couple of ‘dry’ runs through the steps without music, the instructor moves the class along, adding music and stepping up the moves into real time. That is where the whole process breaks down.

Each group always has a couple of good dancers who catch on quickly and within a walk-through or two have the dance down pat. Most are struggling to catch on, to make sense of and master the moves. The instructor will go through the dance several times, each time leading the group, showing them by example exactly how do the dance.

But what are most of the students doing during these practice runs? Are they paying careful attention to the instructor and mimicking the correct moves? Not at all. Most are watching the feet of the student next to them, trying to mimic their moves, not the instructor’s. Not surprisingly, most are not learning the dance but are rather learning-and perfecting–the mistakes the person next to them are committing.

Usually at this point the instructor moves into personal coaching mode, taking one, then another of the students and working with each individually to help them unlearn the wrong steps they’ve copied from their neighbor and replace them with the correct steps. Eventually the instructor manages to get most of the students to perform a somewhat reasonable semblance of the dance, although there are always a few who insist on having their own unique religious experience to the music.

The exact process is played out daily in thousands upon thousands of sales offices. Sales team members are given instruction in various aspects of selling with an instructor who is not only willing and able to demonstrate the correct steps, but who tries in the short time they have to work with individuals to help them master the moves. Yet the majority of salespeople instead of paying attention to the instructor are watching the feet of their neighbor, learning and mastering the mistakes they make.

Most of those who learn the line dance eventually–after a good deal of practice in the real world of the dance floor–gain a basic competence in the dance they learned. Strangely the same thing doesn’t happen with salespeople. Unlike the dancers who are constantly surrounded by other dancers who have developed some competence in the dance, many salespeople are left with either only themselves to self-teach the correct moves or are surrounded by others who are struggling to correct the wrong moves they’ve learned.

Selling is a far more difficult skill to learn than a line dance, yet companies are content to have their training department, management team, or an outside trainer float in, present a strategy or two, maybe have time to spend a few minutes working with individual salespeople, and then they’re gone, leaving the team members to figure out on their own what moves they mis-learned and how to correct them.

Rather than teaching their salespeople a new line dance, companies should be investing their time and their money in helping their sales team members perfect the dances they’ve mis-learned through concentrated coaching. If left to learn from one another, they’ll learn and perfect the wrong moves-guaranteed.

August 1, 2008

From Classroom to Paycheck–Making Sales Training Work

Filed under: Coaching, Sales Management, career development, sales, sales training, selling, success — Paul McCord @ 7:23 am
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One of the most common complaints that I and other sales trainers get from both salespeople and companies is that sales training in any form, whether via book, workshop, seminar, or on-line course, has little or no impact for most of the men and women who take the training.  Unfortunately, their complaint is backed up by a number of studies that confirm that training does not change the behavior, attitudes, or results of the vast majority of salespeople.

Where does the fault lie for this miserable return on investment from training?  Does it lie with the sales trainer who performed the training?  Is the problem with the content of the training?  Maybe the issue is with the teaching methods employed?  Perhaps the real problem is with the salespeople themselves?

No doubt blame can be affixed to all of the above.  But there seems to be a more basic issue that is obvious but often overlooked.  Sales training is not simply an intellectual activity; by its very nature it demands behavior change.  To be effective, sales training requires that negative or ineffective behaviors be replaced with positive or effective behaviors.  Sales training has more in common with sports coaching than it does with academic teaching.  It is action oriented.  The lessons must be integrated into one’s behavior, not just filed away in one’s mental filing cabinet.

Changing behavior is different than absorbing information.  The basic problem with sales training is that the delivery format-even in a workshop that entails role play and group interaction-is predominately information oriented.

To be effective, sales training must be converted from information to behavior and that can’t be done in an hour or half-day or even a two or three day training session.  It takes time.  It takes repetition of action.  It takes making and learning from mistakes.  It requires the student be able to analyze performance, isolate mistakes, and institute new behavior that corrects the mistake.

It takes coaching.

There are a few salespeople in each training class that really seem to get the training.  They understand not just the concepts being trained; they understand how to implant those into their daily activity.  They also have the drive to work through the mistakes, the false starts, the missed opportunities, the disappointments they encounter while honing their newly learned skills.  They are the exception.  They are the few who management sees a positive change in and wonder why the others didn’t make the same changes.

Most of us don’t have the ability or the patience to implement the training, work through the issues, and hone the skills while consistently ‘blowing’ the implementation on our own.  We have to have help.  We have to have an outside observer, a sounding board, an encourager, a disciplinarian.  We have to have a coach.

Coaching has been a staple of sports for thousands of years.  Every athlete, from the youngest to the best player in the world, has a coach.  Their coach performs a number of duties but the primary duty is to oversee behavior change.  Teach information, yes.  Discipline, yes.  Encourage, yes.  But all of those are supplements to the primary goal-behavior change.

A few years ago a friend of mine, a minor league baseball player, was trying to improve his prospects of being promoted to the majors.  One area where he thought he could add value to his game was learning to bunt.  Not a power hitter, he needed some additional ways to help his team and bunting could be one.  He read several books and watched videos of a number of the game’s top bunters.  After reading the best books and watching the best bunters could he bunt?  No.  He had the concepts, but he didn’t have the behaviors.  So, he headed to the field with his hitting coach.  Over the course of weeks-and untold hours of work-his bunting skills improved markedly.  But they still weren’t major league quality.  He ended up hiring a bunting coach during the off season that could spot the tiny mistakes and negative behavior in his bunting technique and help him replace those actions with the positive actions that would result in success.  It took him almost a year and a half to become a really good bunter-almost three years to become a top bunter.  Translating what he learned into actions, into behaviors, was a long-term process that required a great deal of practice and coaching–and lots of blown opportunities in games.

Selling is no different.  Knowledge in sales is useless unless you use the knowledge, and that comes in the form of action-whether that action is instituting the referral generation process, dealing with those pesky objections, or closing the sale.  And just as with an athlete, translating the information into action requires coaching.

If you want the sales training you or your teams engage in to ‘work,’ that is to instill positive behavior and eliminate negative behavior, you must have a coach.

Individual salespeople must find their own coach, whether through a formal paid coaching arrangement with a professional trainer/coach, their manager, or another member of their team.

More and more sales trainers are including group or individual coaching in their corporate sales training proposals.  Some trainers are including ‘coaching the coach’ segments into their training proposals where they train the management team to be the team’s coach.  Some companies are simply relying on their management team to coach without formal coaching training for the particular sales training that was just delivered.

Sales training doesn’t work if it is information oriented only.  Sales is a contact sport.  It requires salespeople to learn not just information but to perform certain actions, and those actions don’t come naturally or easily for most of us.

Sales training can have a high degree of success for you or your sales team.  Not on its own, but in conjunction with active coaching.  Whether you’re an individual salesperson or a manager looking to train your team, if you’re not going to back the training up with active coaching, you may as well save your money.  However, if you choose to add coaching to the training mix, you’ll see a significant change in your sales performance-and your paycheck.

April 17, 2008

Update to “Sorry, Folks, It Isn’t the Economy”

Filed under: Coaching, Economy, Personal Marketing, career development, motivation, prospecting, sales, selling, success — Paul McCord @ 9:25 am
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Just a quick update to my post from yesterday. I gave three examples of salespeople who weren’t letting the economy be an excuse for not reaching their numbers. I didn’t identify my three coaching clients by name simply because I had not asked their permission.

Well, one asked me to let folks know who he is–he’s obviously proud of his accomplishments as he well should be. The business banker I mentioned in the first example of one of my coaching clients who is busting numbers is Jacques Jourdan, business banker with Chase Business Banking on Long Island. Jacques is an excellent example of someone who isn’t letting the economy be an excuse for not making his quota. As a matter of fact, as mentioned yesterday, Jacques was the number one business banker in his area last month and is well on his way to doing it again this month.

Again, despite the economy, there a lot of people and companies out there that need, want, and can afford your products and services. You just have to be like Jacques and find ways to get in front of them that they respect and will respond to.

By the way, if you are a business owner, manager or independent professional in the Long Island area and need a business loan, equipment financing, line of credit, checking or savings account, or any other banking product or service, Jacques is a good guy to know–and hay, he just happens to be one of the leading business bankers in your area. You can get in touch with him at jacques.a.jourdan@chase.com.

April 16, 2008

Sorry, Folks, It Isn’t The Economy

Filed under: Coaching, Economy, Personal Marketing, prospecting, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 6:34 am
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I’m hearing from more and more salespeople and managers that life on the street is getting increasingly tougher. That’s true, it is.

I’m hearing from more and more salespeople and managers that finding ways to get in front of quality prospects are also getting tougher. That’s true also.

I’m hearing from more and more salespeople and managers that it just isn’t possible to hit their numbers in this economy where people and companies are facing much higher costs of basic commodities such as fuel, unease about where the economy is headed, and decisions to not let go of dollars right now. That isn’t true; you can make your numbers.

Let me give you examples from three of my coaching clients who are proving that you cannot only make your numbers; you can explode your sales.

One of my coaching clients is a business banker in New York—Long Island to be exact. He and I have been working together for a little over three months. When we started working together at the end of December, he wasn’t meeting quota and he was concerned about being able to do so as the economy got weaker. We changed much in the way he was doing business–added some things here, eliminated some things there. We focused on meeting each segment of his quota and then concentrated on developing his most profitable business segments. The result? In March he was the #1 business banker in his area, more than doubling his previous level of business and almost tripling sales of his most profitable products.

Another coaching client is in the dreaded mortgage industry. When she called me, she was trying to decide whether to get out of the industry or whether I thought she’d be able to scrape together enough business each month to at least stay in the business long enough to weather the current mortgage and real estate crisis in Arizona. She wasn’t a top producer during the great months of the past few years but she had been making a nice 100k income all the same. She decided to try to make it work and we began working together in November. Again, we changed almost everything she was then doing. In March, she had the biggest month of her career, she has already exceeded that in April, and it’s only the 16th.

A third coaching client is a sales manager in the securities industry. Faced with nervous financial advisors who were faced with nervous clients and prospects, he doubted his team would be able to halt the increasing decline in business they had been experiencing over the past months. As a team, his office had always been middle of the pack producers–but had been declining even further each month for a quarter. They were now in the bottom 30% of the company’s offices. His income and almost all of his team member’s incomes had been hit hard. He was getting a tremendous amount of pressure from the regional office—who was getting it from above–to get things turned around. He and I have also been working together since November. Over the past four months, we’ve concentrated on developing his coaching and mentoring skills. He’s been working with his team, coaching them as we go along. He’s had me do 4 sales meetings for him over that period of time. His team is once again meeting their goals and exceeded them last month, as they will this month. He has clawed his way back into the top 40% of his company’s offices and believes he can possible get to the top 25% by the end of the year. He’s still getting pressure from the regional office. Now, instead of pressure to get things on track, he’s getting pressure to continue to produce to make up for losses in other offices. He’s much happier getting that pressure than he was about getting beat-up because he wasn’t producing.

You can make your numbers. The economy isn’t the problem. There are still companies needing banking services, people buying homes, people needing investment and financial advice and products. There are companies needing every product and service out there who have the money, the need, and the willingness to buy.

If you want to make your numbers, you must find ways to identify and connect with quality prospects. They’re there. They need your products and services. The economy is tough, no doubt. The business is still there. It is simply a matter of learning how to find and get the business. Don’t let the excuse that it’s the economy kill your business.

April 10, 2008

Guest Article: “The ABC’s of Coaching Success,” by Kevin Eikenberry

Filed under: Coaching, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 7:00 am
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The ABC’s of Coaching Success

By Kevin Eikenberry

Effective coaching is a big topic.

Here are just a few examples where being a more effective coach can make a difference: at work, for your children’s sports teams, for a friend and in your community. As with anything as important and as pervasive as this topic, there are lots of resources available to you. You can search the internet, buy a book or take a course. There also are coaching certification programs and many other ways to learn the skills of being an effective coach.

It would be presumptuous of me to assume I could cover every topic and explain all the complexities of coaching in one brief article. Rather, my goal is to take you to the starting point of successful coaching.

Just like the alphabet is the building block of all reading and language, I want to share with you the ABC’s of coaching success. These concepts alone can help you be a better coach. And as you understand and master these three specific concepts, all of the other knowledge and skills you add to these building blocks will be more successful as well.

A – Accountability

As a coach you want those you are coaching to be successful. Great coaches care and think about their team’s performances and skills often. And yet, the best coaches know that in the end those performances don’t belong to them, but to the performers themselves.

This may seem like a delicate tightrope, and it can be in one way. As a coach you may feel responsible if someone doesn’t perform well. You may think about what else you could have taught them, another way to have inspired them or any number of other things.

While it is important to think about what else you could have done, in the end, great coaches know the final accountability for performance lies only with the performer.

The good news is that when you keep this accountability clear in your mind, you will be a more effective coach. Your job as a great coach is to promote the confidence, skill and proficiency of the other person. In the end coaching is a selfless act of helping the other person be successful. When you keep the accountabilities clear, those you coach, and by extension you, will be more successful.

B – Belief

When someone believes in you and your abilities, you can tell can’t you? Of course you can. And when people believe in you, you tend to work harder and perform better don’t you? (You know the answer to this too.)

Now, let’s flip the equation around for a second. If you believe in someone’s ability or potential to succeed will you work harder to help them? Will you do just a little bit (or perhaps a whole lot) more than you might otherwise?

Let me give you the bottom line. If you don’t believe people can succeed, don’t coach them. You are doing both them and yourself a disservice if you do. Way before your skills, knowledge and experience, your innate belief in the potential of those you coach is the most important factor in their success.

C - Conversation

To be a good coach you must be able to communicate with the people you coach. This almost goes without saying. Beyond your communication skills though are your need for conversation skills. Good coaches are good communicators. Great coaches create conversations.

Great coaches ask more questions, work to learn more about those they coach and get their ideas, thoughts and opinions. All of these behaviors build a relationship and build greater knowledge and understanding for the coached.

While there will always be situations where a coach might provide direct advice, when you create conversation you create something much more powerful.

The ABC’s of coaching: putting accountability in the right place, having an innate belief in those you coach, and creating conversations to teach and inspire.

I encourage you to apply one or more of these in your next coaching opportunity – whether formal or informal. You will quickly recognize the power in these building blocks.

Potential Pointer: Coaching is a complex task, but when you recognize and capitalize on the basic building blocks – the ABC’s – you will become a more effective coach immediately.

Kevin is Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services.  His website is www.kevineikenberry.com and he may be reached at info@kevineikenberry.com

March 28, 2008

Changing Roles for Sales Management? Audio Interview of Keith Rosen

Filed under: Coaching, management, sales, sales training, selling — Paul McCord @ 8:16 am
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Below you’ll find my interview of Keith Rosen, President of Profit Builders and author of the newly published Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions. Keith discusses the changing role of sales management, why sales managers waste so much time on under performers, and how managers can add real value to the organization.

Keith is the executive sales coach most salespeople and managers go to first. A prominent, engaging speaker and Master Certified Coach, Keith is one of the foremost authorities on assisting people to achieve positive, measurable change. A best selling author, Keith has written a number of books including Time Management for Salespeople and, of course, his latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.

Recognized by Inc Magazine and Fast Company as one of the most respected and influential executive coaches, Keith’s work is regularly featured in Selling Power Live, Sales and Marketing Management, CBSNews, Entrepreneur, and other publications. Visit his websites at Profit Builders and Coaching Salespeople or contact him at 515-771-1444 or via email at info@profitbuilders.com

The total interview is about 50 minutes.

rosen-interview-1.mp3

rosen-interview-2.mp3

rosen-interview-3.mp3

Rosen Interview Part 4


Paul McCord of the Sales and Sales Management Blog can be reached at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com

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