Knowledge Power Management
Professional salespeople need to have three types of knowledge if they want to achieve their full potential, both for their clients and their companies.
Knowledge about the product
People believe in persuasion.
Management of self-knowledge
Salespeople and managers will all agree that product knowledge is crucial for selling. The majority of dollars are spent on training salespeople in go-to product knowledge. While the majority of training dollars and time are spent in this area, it is actually the other two knowledge triangles that make the sale. This is not meant to diminish technical knowledge. It is essential for selling, but it does not make up the entire stool.
Each of these legs will be covered in the following three articles. Let’s start with the most critical, Self-knowledge management. It is commonly described as “attitude!”
Your attitude will make a difference in your sales.
Your attitude is a reflection of your sales!
Negative attitudes are like viruses!
Self-management is more than a positive or negative attitude. Self-management is a psychological term that describes the process of taking responsibility for your actions.
“If you don’t have the iron or the fizz to manage your life, the gods will make up for it by giving you a few grins.” You won’t be surprised at the inappropriate port that you end up in if you don’t manage to steer your ship.
– Tom Robbins
Salespeople must be more productive and effective than ever with ever-increasing pressure from management, increased competition, and a changing marketplace. Salespeople who work smarter and make the most of their time while also being efficient financially and environmentally have a competitive advantage. If selling companies want to outperform their competition, they must either train or hire their salespeople to be more efficient at managing their time and themselves.
Self-Management
Self-management isn’t a new concept. To achieve top performance in any field, one must manage his mind, emotions, and time.
Self-management can be described as a psychological term that describes the process of achieving self-management. Self-management is about moving away from being under the supervision of others and towards self-supervision. Self-management, in other words, is the ability to move away from being controlled and managed by a boss, parent or coach, and instead manage your mind, emotions, and time. While some people are born with excellent self-management skills, others need to learn these skills. Some adults have lived their whole lives being told what to do by their parents, teachers, spouses, employers, or other people. Although these people may want to be self-managed, it is not common for most of them.
Self-management means taking control of your life. Self-management involves a positive mental attitude and positive actions that allow you to live your life as you wish. No matter what our goals are, we all have to solve problems and make decisions. We also need to evaluate our progress, manage our choices, and take control of our lives.
These are the keys to self-management
Self-management requires self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is the ability to recognize and change one’s behavior or learn from it. If one has been acting in a way that is detrimental to one’s goals, it may be possible to immediately recognize the problem and stop it from getting worse.
People who can manage themselves will use self-evaluation as their second skill. This is where the person will reflect on their behavior and how it affects their goals.
Self-reinforcement is a way to reward oneself for reaching the goals set. External rewards can be effective in driving behavior change and reaching goals. However, the self-managed individual will most likely rely on his/her internal reward system. For example, knowing that he/she did well is an excellent indicator of success.
Can you, as a leader of salespeople, see the value of self-management skills and the mindset of an individual who can manage their own affairs? You can’t afford to carry passengers when you have shrinking resources, more extensive territories, and higher expectations. You cannot afford to spend your time trying to change selling behaviors and coaching people. It can feel like “Groundhog Day” or primary school, where you must repeat yourself and insist on compliance. Do you wish your salespeople were the “self-starters” you thought they had hired? Management of a sales team is best done in a spirit of self-management, not in a “Woe I!” environment: victim, victim.
Time Management
The first skill professional salespeople must master is the ability to create a plan that will help them achieve their goals. They must also be able to prioritize and manage their time to reach that plan. Salespeople’s most valuable resource is their time. Salespeople who abuse their time can lose sales and earnings. Your sales team faces many challenges in achieving their sales goals. This includes planning, organizing, prioritizing, and prioritizing sales activities.
Too many salespeople spend their valuable selling time doing non-sales activities. They spend their time in the office “putting out fires” or handling paperwork and other non-core sales activities. They then wonder why their pipelines are so thin at the end of each quarter and why they always miss their sales budgets. Salespeople will waste a lot of time driving back and forth between their territories without a solid sales plan. They will spend their time calling low-value accounts and talking to people unqualified to purchase.
You have no doubt encountered salespeople who consistently miss sales opportunities and their sales quotas. These salespeople are often disorganized in their planning and prioritization, which results in poor sales results. Your salespeople’s impact is reduced by one-third if they only have thirty hours of good selling each week. It’s no surprise that many of them rely on luck to get home at the close of each quarter.
Many salespeople feel overwhelmed, disorganized, and out of control. However, there are many people who have found a better way to manage their time and work. Salespeople who struggle with time management can find help with coaching, time, and effort.
Most salespeople spend their time in frantic activity and accomplish very little because they don’t focus on the right things. All of the highest achievers in sales, as well as in other areas of life, including business, sport, entertainment, and public service, have mastered the ability to focus on the most critical tasks and get them done.
Time management can be both a decision or a discipline. This is a decision made by those without the skills to receive the coaching, mentoring, and training they need to be able to drive. It takes discipline to apply the new skills of pro-activity, focus, and coaching, just like any other skill. Time management is about ensuring you keep the main thing and the main thing only. It’s not about getting distracted by all the other issues that distract you from your goal.
You must be a sales leader and “buddy-up” people who have poor planning and time management skills. You can also ask them to read the top five books on the topic, listen to time management CDs in the car, or attend a seminar about time management. You can also get them to fast-forward their time and make a promise to live by the new time.
This is a great exercise to do with your time-poor people. Assign them the task of searching for “Time Management” on Google. Each week, they will need to select and implement two time-management practices they find. For the next three months, have them do this. In the next ninety-day, they will be able to transform their personal management as well as your entire business.
Selling requires time management and good interpersonal skills. These skills are essential for selling and should not be ignored. As you would expect a traveling salesperson to have a valid driver’s license, you should also expect them to be able to maximize their time. Each salesperson must master the skill of managing one’s own time and self. As with all skills, goal setting, time management, and planning can all be learned. This is possible with dedication, discipline, patience, and training.
Ian Segal is a leading authority and coach in Australia in sales management. He has been involved with the training, coaching, and development of sales managers for more than two decades.
Ian has 25 years of experience in sales and sales management. He also leads an HR and training department. This gives him a strong sense of fiscal reality as well as practicality.
Ian works directly with business owners, novice and experienced, in a variety of industries, selling disciplines. His goal is to improve sales management practices and transform sales results.
Ian is the author of “Bulletproof Your Sales Team: The 5 Keys to Turbo-Boosting Your Sales Team’s Results,” as well as a variety of articles and white papers, including “The fish stinks at the head!” “Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work.”
Ian has an insatiable appetite for learning about selling and people management. He has tirelessly sought answers to the question, “How can some people sell while most people don’t?”
