How to unleash excellence from your salespeople

So what exactly is excellence to a salesperson?

That is not an easy question to answer primarily due to that “excellence” will be different for everyone.

Because every salesperson has different potential and differing talents (some better, some worse) and skills to get them there, each salespeople threshold of excellence is wide-ranging (more on this in later posts).

Be completely INFLEXIBLE on WHAT you want. Conversely, be completely flexible on how they’ll get themselves there.

Even though the potential of each salesperson is varied, the level of excellence in sales is very simple, here it is:

1. If a salesperson has never achieved quota, excellence is hitting quota, period.

However, after you hit quota two or three times, the goal of excellence then becomes #2:

2. Any goal that both exceeds quota and is also a stretch for the salesperson, while at the same time realistic.

What is far exceeds? Let your salespeople tell you this one. Your job is to play editor-in-chief when they tell you.

Reel them in if they shoot too high and crank them up if they shoot too low. My experience has been that most salespeople, somewhat eager to “impress the boss”, set their goals way too high.

With unrealistically high goals, these salespeople end up just getting frustrated while simultaneously engendering skepticism and losing interest in your message. They soon become discouraged and disengaged. Safeguard against that by being extremely critical of their direction.

Post a reply to this blog and tell me what you have done to unleash “excellence” from your sales people?

To find out more about sales motivation visit my blog about motivating your sales team at http://www.topsalesmanagerblog.com