In my skills-based training, participants are always in groups role-playing and practicing the skills I taught. In one instance, I was training a group of 30+- advertising sales reps. On day 2 in one of the groups, a terrible thing happened…
Sales manager: Ok, you do it.
The sales rep tries halfway and then got stuck.
Sales manager: How come you can’t do it?
I walk to their table. The sales manager looks at me.
Sales manager: See Hanzo, see my people, see what kind of people I have.
The sales rep starts crying because of the pressure and public humiliation.
Sales manager: Aiyo! Little things also cannot do it, little things also cannot take the pressure, how can you do sales?
There are lots of lessons to learn from this situation. Here are some I think are important to write in this post:
1: The principle of a Sales Ninja leader is “Your team’s result is your result!”. So, if the team is not performing, it’s the leader’s duty to make sure they do. And if they don’t it’s the leader’s responsibility.
This leads to principle 2: “Your job as a sales leader is to get other people to do what you CAN do or what you want them to do.” This means you need to constantly train, coach, mentor, and teach your sales people. It’s easy to put the blame onto the salespeople when it’s not performing, but here’s the thing, have you truly done your job as a sales leader?
3rd lesson: “Always praise publicly and criticize privately”. An old adage but still so relevant. And still not practiced by so many sales managers and leaders. In my understanding of psychology, in the above situation, the manager wanted to feel good herself and in order for her to feel good, she has to make another person feel bad. Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?
A shout to all sales managers and leaders that have not been through my Sales Ninja Shogun training (Shogun = sales leadership & management training). If you want to expect Results from your team, bear in mind the Sales Ninja results formula.
Activity + Skills + Knowledge = Results.
If you want results, make sure you motivate your sales team to do their sales activities, train them in selling and people skills and teach them knowledge of all kinds like product knowledge, market knowledge, competitor knowledge, etc…
Only then can you expect results!
Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster
© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.
Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their salespeople into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation, and leadership training, you can contact us through 3 ways!
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