Leading a sales team is a balancing act.
Sales leaders often recruit 'good sales people' and let them loose on their customers, without really considering all the other elements required that creates an environment where people can excel.
The Wheel of Managing Sales identifies all those elements that the sales leader needs to fine tune to suit the unique environment of delivering sales and customer value, in your context. We need to look at the selling and customer engagement function as a system, that produces the sales outcomes for the business. When viewed as a system, we can see that all the elements of the Wheel need to be in balance to achieve the best results.
Mark uses the Wheel of Leading Sales Teams to put a framework around this important function. The process is only sequential on the first implementation, following that the functions coexist in an ongoing system.
Your customer strategy is at the centre and articulates the types of customer groups you want to grow. The sales tactics then support the customer strategy and so on around all the functions. This approach is based on systems thinking, and each of these functions need to be in balance across the wheel. The problems sales leaders see are often reflected across the wheel. For example, if you have the team organised as Account Managers and they are regularly visiting existing customers, but your remuneration model is one that is better suited to roles that need to find customers, then you will see problems in the motivation and productivity areas. Managers often then try to fix these perceived problems with motivation and productivity solutions, but unless they address the root cause problem, they will make the problem much worse.
Watch Video Download The Balance of Sales Leadership Whitepaper
Are your customers profitable promoters of what you do..?
Our customers have changed in how they buy and how they provide word of mouth.
We need a method to align the key business activities for customer engagement and a two-way exchange of value.
Profit by Design is a 2-day workshop that looks at how we can build a profitable business in this age and economy. Profit by Design is founded on six key principles and then applies the Architecture for Customer Engagement to achieve higher levels of business profitability and resilience. By creating a customer portfolio of profitable promoters. Profit by Design is offered in a public format and in-house for your business.
Read more about Profit by Design in this blog article:
Profit by design – build your business for the experience economy.
Is your sales function well balanced..?
The Wheel of Leading Sales Teams provides a systems thinking perspective to the sales function. Each element needs to be in balance with the other elements so that the wheel can run smoothly. Often sales teams do not run smoothly, because either the remuneration model doesn't suit the type of selling activity. Or perhaps, the recruitment approach attracts mavericks rather than team players.
This self assessment tool is based on the nine elements of the Wheel of Leading Sales Teams and will give you a quick appraisal of how balanced your sales function is, and where to apply adjustments.
Our customers and economy have changed - have you kept up..? Read how to stay relevant today in these blog articles:
The 2018 Manifesto for Sales
Competition needs to be external, not internal.
Griffith University Business School collaborated with the Small Business Association of Australia to provide a workshop evening. This event was held on the Gold Coast and was attended by more than 50 keen people to hear Mark talk about "Personal Selling and Leading Sales Teams: the world has changed, have sales teams kept up..?". A rhetorical question as most sales teams have not kept up with the way customers have changed.
Griffith University recorded the presentation and the audio is very clear.
This E-book describes how the core functions of managing a sales team are in a symbiotic relationship, as a wheel these functions need to be in balance to realise the greatest alignment of resources and optimal results.
Written by Mark in 2015 for the Griffith University Business School course, Personal Selling and Sales Management (28 pages).
Traditional mindsets of sales mislead us.
This whitepaper describes the four key ways of how customers have changed recently and the eight traditions of sales that mislead people to make poor decisions about their approach to sales. A set of new mental models is provided to allow you to upgrade your approach to sales so that it is relevant for customers in this age.
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