Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management Quotes

“A sales group with high morale and strong team spirit is a powerful unit, and team mentality is the cornerstone of success for any sales organization.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Are we expanding our sales force appropriately to match needed sales growth and market penetration?   2. Are our reps properly trained, and what is the lag time between training and an effective rep?   3. Is our compensation package and awards program sufficient to attract and retain high performers?   4. Is our field sales forecasting system functioning properly to anticipate negative trends?   5. Can we continue to leverage the sales expense line without damaging sales?   6. Is our expense budget tracking system effective?   7. Are we accurately monitoring sales force morale?   8. Is our pay schedule competitive?”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“1. Are the metrics you use supporting consistent and predictable achievement of your sales plan? Are they predictors of future performance?   2. What data could you use to develop double graph overlays to present the vitality of the sales force?   3. How useful would double graph overlays be for management review sessions?”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“1. You might want to perform an audit of the paperwork your sales team is required to fill out to determine whether it is actually needed to produce sales. If it does not directly contribute to sales, get rid of it. If the paperwork is providing the company with necessary information, analyze how you can go about obtaining that information without burdening the sales team. By removing that burden from the sales team, could you see a pickup in selling time that will translate to an increase in sales?   2. Have you had to reduce territories, products, or rep income? What was the effect on your team?   3. Do you allow your team members the right to fail? What constitutes too much failure for an individual, and where do you draw the line? How do you communicate your policy to maintain a consistent message that is seen as fair and reasonable by your sales team?”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Sales managers cannot expect their salespeople to always win. This doesn’t mean you should accept failure, but sending the message that failure will not be tolerated will destroy team morale.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Time is money to successful salespeople. They want to spend their time selling. Waste their time and you reduce their earning capacity, their morale, and the company’s top and bottom line. Allocating corporate resources to inefficient processes or events will waste sales time, corporate assets, and send the wrong messages to the sales force.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“If you have been hired to clean up a failing company’s sales department, it is very important to quickly identify who the underperformers are. You need solid metrics to determine this, but such metrics often don’t exist in failing companies. You can’t always look at just the sales numbers to determine who needs to leave; while sales departments usually get the blame when companies go under, failure is usually due to poor strategy and management. Therefore, an individual’s sales failure may not be due to a lack of ability, and extreme care must be taken to accurately determine the root cause so that proper action is taken.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“The art of developing a team of high performers is not who you fire; it’s who you hire that counts.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“most terminations are due to poor hiring processes. It is difficult to correct a hire when the person really doesn’t fit the position. Sometimes we think that all a failing person needs is more training, but the majority of failure is not due to a lack of training. If you start with a “meatball” and train it, all you end up with is a trained “meatball.” Motivated people, suited to the task, will self-train if that is what they need to succeed. Training is certainly necessary, but don’t rely on it to correct a poor hire. In the big picture, salespeople fail because they don’t set achievable goals, they can’t handle failure and are frustrated by it, or they forget that their purpose is to serve the customer. These are the traits you want to qualify in the hiring process, in addition to their motivation level. One way to identify whether an applicant has these traits is to look at the person’s record of past performance, his or her track record of success.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“1. How would you rank the velocity of your sales team on a scale of one to ten, one being very slow and ten being very fast? What steps can you take to increase its velocity?   2. If your success requires new customer acquisition, what strategies can you put in place to increase sales efficiency?   3. Do you routinely develop strategies to block your competitors so that you do not have to rely solely on the effort of the sales team?   4. What could you do to increase the efficiency of your sales team? Will that translate into more sales dollars with the same number of reps?”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“High-velocity sales organizations are not born; they are developed. They require the necessary business environment to attract and keep high performers, and they require an efficient sales process, effective strategy, and management that believes in them. High-velocity sales organizations are your most powerful competitive advantage.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Highly effective management will focus on the sales process and eliminate actions that do not directly support it.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Powerful salespeople require a marketplace where they can leverage today’s efforts into tomorrow’s income.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“1. On a one to ten scale, how would you rank the morale of your sales team? What factors did you consider?   2. Have you identified your organization’s group leaders? If not, how will you go about identifying them?   3. Remembering that morale is hard to build and easy to lose, what techniques will you use to build and maintain it?”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“Manage by example; you set the pace for the team. You are in this game to win, and the best chance of winning you have is to always do your very best and set the example of being committed to excellence. If you do, you can expect your team to follow.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“A high-morale sales team will passionately buy in to the company’s direction, programs, and policies. Its members will be confident in their future with the company. There will be an urgency to win every day. Team members will have quick response times, enthusiasm for the team’s mission, and urgency in acquiring knowledge.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“With the proper people, environment, and training, execution can be learned. Morale, on the other hand, cannot. When times get tough, and sooner or later they do with any company, your team’s morale will either pull you up or pull you down. Powerful organizations have sales teams with very high morale.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“While execution is important and should not be undervalued, the lack of morale can ruin a sales organization.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“People are the most critical part of any company. They make it or break it. How they are managed determines corporate performance. People are second in importance to an organization only after the corporation’s core values and culture. Powerful investment groups don’t invest in companies; they invest in people.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization

“salespeople should be telling themselves, “If he wins, the team wins, and I win.” Individual high performance is just as important as a strong team mentality in helping move the team to victory. High performers show others it can be done, and they create a positive environment in the organization.”
― John R. Treace, Nuts and Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization