Sales Manager Survival Guide Quotes

“Ultimately, organizations run through directive approaches fail. They might perform in the very short term, but they can never sustain it. Or they drive people away; they don’t like working where they are treated like idiots.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“Training focuses on simulations. Coaching lives in the real world with real situations.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“There’s one other area you’ve got to protect your people from. When things get tough, the very first finger-pointing is always aimed toward sales. After all, sales is responsible for producing revenue, and if sufficient revenue isn’t being produced, the decline must be a sales problem. Sometimes it is. And if that’s the case, own up to it and fix it—that’s your job. But sometimes it’s not. And most of the time things are rarely so simple. Don’t make excuses, but never let your team take the blame for things they aren’t responsible for, or that are completely out of their control.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“Millennials are no different than any other individual. They want to learn and grow. They want to be challenged and see future opportunity. They want the opportunity to contribute and be recognized for that contribution. They want to be associated with organizations and people doing exciting things. Like anyone else, if they don’t find that in their current job, they will look elsewhere—as they should. But if they are in an organization that enables them to learn, grow, be challenged, contribute, and can see a future for themselves, there is no reason they won’t stay in the organization that provides that workplace environment.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“Being “exciting” means the company is continuously learning, improving, innovating, changing. Being part of this is challenging and exciting to everyone. Companies focused on doing this always create new opportunities for individual as well as organizational growth.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“the ability of the person to figure things out, to learn, to think critically and solve problems is more important.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“The best performers don’t need to rely on job boards to find jobs, so you are unlikely to find the best performers there.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“As you grow in your management responsibilities, one of the biggest areas of focus will be talent. Adopting an approach where you are always recruiting is the most powerful way to build a team of “A” players in the shortest time possible.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“Your personal growth as a leader will be directly tied to your ability to give and receive feedback.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“2. Your sales people should understand what their expected levels of performance are. “We know you are developing and executing great deal strategies when you are doing these types of things….” “You must keep a healthy funnel/pipeline. Healthy funnels have high integrity, should have this volume and should have this flow/velocity…” For example, if they don’t know the sales process, if they don’t know they are expected to use the sales process, then they won’t have any idea what they are doing right or wrong.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“1. What are the expected levels of performance? What are the expected attitudes or behaviors? How will we measure those? How will we know whether people are performing to expectation? What is the best practice? Let’s take a very simple example. How do you know if the salesperson is doing a good job in executing their deal strategy if you have no sales process, or incomplete/bad process metrics? Without these, you and they have no basis for knowing what great execution of a deal strategy is, so you have no basis for assessing an individual performance or coaching them.”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“What are your goals for the call?” “If things go right, what are some stretch goals?” “What is the worst thing that might happen in the call, and what are ways to avoid it?” “What value will the customer will get from this call?” ”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“QUESTIONS FOR CLARIFICATION What do you mean by....? What is your main point? How does ______ relate to ________? Could you put that another way? What do you think is the main issue here? Can you give me an example? Could you explain that further? Why do you say that? Let me see if I understand you; do you mean _____ or _____? What do you think _____ meant by his remark? What do you take him to mean? How would you summarize what ____ said in your own words?   QUESTIONS PROBING PURPOSE What is the purpose of _____? What was your purpose when you said _____?”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines

“Our own filters and biases cloud our abilities to understand and to communicate effectively. It”
― David Brock, Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales' Front Lines