Hold Yourself Accountable - Your Inside Sales Reps Are Watching!
Over the last few years, contributing to the Sales Prospecting Perspectives blog, I’ve talked about a variety of tips I’ve used to bring out the best results from my team. The benefit has been that it’s forced me to get those tips down on paper. The problem revealed to me is that I’m not following through on these tips as often as I should.
We try our best to eat our own dog food here at AG Salesworks. Most of the deals we bring in are driven through the same call process, philosophy and persistence that we sell to our clients. And since our blogs are intended for everyone in the cold calling trenches, our entire team reads the Sales Prospecting Perspectives blog as well. As a result, our employees know firsthand whether or not we are actually following through on the suggestions we continually provide in these blog posts.
I started going through the blogs I’ve written over the last year and wanted to highlight a few - not to be self serving but to remind myself that I should be doing a better job of following through on them myself. It may be a bit “cheesy” to say but…….If I’m going to talk to the talk, I may as well walk the walk.
In the interest of resolutions and starting anew now that we’re into January, I wanted to highlight a few blogs that I will make a point to consistently work on with my team in 2012.
Here are 5 in no particular order:
Keeping The Appropriate Perspective When You Cold Call: This blog sums up our call philosophy in a nut shell. I’m planning on making the newbies read this before they make their first dial.
5 Keys To A Senior Inside Sales Reps Consistent Success: We tend to focus most of our effort on our newest hires and the senior reps may lose some of your attention. The 5 keys below helped to remind me of what I should be looking for from the vets.
5 Reports You Should Use To Evaluate Your Inside Sales Team For 2011: Your team’s CRM usage can be about as much fun to deal with as scrubbing a list, but it’s a necessary evil. I’m planning on carving out 15 minutes at the end of my day to monitor this.
How To Avoid Being A "Micro/Macro" Manager To Your Sales Reps: I have a tendency to lean more towards being a macro-manager. This blog reminded me that the best managers I’ve worked with generally tend to land in the middle of micro/macro management spectrum
What Traits Should Inside Sales Managers And Employees Share?: This blog reminds me to focus on the core values we should share as a team. Definitely something for me to brush up on for this year.
Let’s face it; if you’re in any kind of leadership role, then your insight should carry some weight. As managers, we’re expected to impart that insight/wisdom to our team. My point is, how regularly are you following through with your team on the suggestions you’ve provided? Are you holding them accountable? Are you holding yourself accountable? I know I need to do a little work on this …how about you?