Have You Protected Your Assets

Having worked closely with sales teams for the past 20 years one area that seems to get missed is keeping your sales force up to date on basic skills and expertise. As the economy changed, the means to market and sales approach has to change to deal with the customers economic condition. The old "hi Charlie, how much can I put you down for" has all but disappeared. For that matter it did a long time ago and top sales people did not know how to adjust.

So you as a manager need to focus on the following:

• identify weak spots - does your sale team and for that matter customer service people know the company's strategy?
• climate - sales people want new ideas and products so keep the pipeline full including software that will make their job easier and more efficient;
• check for complacency - management should keep communication lines full from strategy to daily updates on sales activity. Keep sales teams motivated through impact marketing, coaching, and weed out poor performers if they continue after development investment;
• adjust territories if needed.

A couple of other housekeeping initiatives such as:

• continue to evaluate your resources
• focus on service excellence
• get people out of their comfort zones
• train towards peak performance
• continuous measurement - post results
• keep their eye on the ball
• create a theme

As a manager are you doing these things to keep your sales team at peak levels and if not you will experience the recession and you will lose the dream for your team. What are your thoughts?