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Ralph Burns Articles

Written by: Ralph Burns

How to Motivate Your Most Difficult Salesperson, Part 1 - Click To Read Article
And those are the most difficult sales people, the ones that are motivated through a variety of different motivations, but the biggest one is the need to be assertive and to have power of their own. And these are typically the type of sales people that are highly opinionated, they are brash at times, they are boorish at times, they are fiercely independent, and they have a strong desire to have their voices heard.

6 Killer Tips To Get Promoted to Sales Management in 2011! - Click To Read Article
For the New Year of 2011, we wanted to give you 6 killer tips on how to get promoted into sales management if you are a sales person right now. If you are a sales manager now, this is something that you may want to advise your ambitious sales people on. One of the roles of a sales manager is to find out what their career goals are.

What Every Sales Manager Ought To Know About Sales Leadership - Click To Read Article
In general, enthusiasm in a sales manager is something that is probably not even talked about a whole lot. It's not something that is typically taught. How do you teach enthusiasm?

5 Proven Sales Rewards for 2011 - Click To Read Article
This is one of the easiest strategies to use to motivate sales people but it is also one of the least effective because sales people are very adept to manipulating sales rewards programs as well as they only give you a short term gain in sales and don’t produce sustained motivation over the long haul.

SMM 1 | The #1 Factor To Achieving Sales Management Success - Click To Read Article
On this episode of sales management mastery we are going to get into a little bit about what we what to accomplish on this show. As well as, introduce one of our core foundational concepts that is absolutely essential to becoming a top sales manager.

The Secret Sauce to Sales Management Success! Part 2 - Click To Read Article
The "secret sauce" to sales management success is getting your sales reps to set their own goals for themselves.

The REAL Secrets to Sales Management Motivation - Click To Read Article
Motivating your sales team is just one aspect of the job of a sales manager, but it is all encompassing in that it also includes all of the other things that you do as a sales manager. Sales managers are not only coaching and leading, but there should also be an undercurrent of motivation in everything and anything that you do. And be acutely aware that every interaction that you have and every message that you send has to have an undercurrent of motivation associated with it in order to keep your sales people at peak performance, especially in today’s economy when sales are tougher to get, it is very important to have a highly motivated sales team to push you towards your goals as a sales manager and towards the goals of the organization.

Two Proven Methods To Supercharge Your Sales Force - Click To Read Article
The sales person who is motivated primarily by praise and encouragement is probably the most prevalent motivational profile that you will have on your sales team.

The Importance of Sales Management Motivation - Click To Read Article
The difference between sales performance above expectation and sales performance below expectation is largely determined by small things that a sales manager can do every day to keep his sales team at the top of their game and highly motivated.

Don’t Make This Sales Management Mistake - Click To Read Article
You need to set the tone and set out a vision of where you want the team to head, over-performance from a sales performance standpoint. As far as leading and motivating, it comes down to individual tactics and techniques that you need to use with each one of your sales people because they are all motivated by different forces.

Don’t Do This as a Sales Manager - Click To Read Article
When you are setting goals, there are a lot of factors to keep in mind that are danger spots and pitfalls of goal setting. As part of the "don't do this as a sales manager" this is one of the important parts to helping you and your sales people set goals, and to make sure that you keep a very tight leash on those goals. Have control over those goals, and oversee the actions that are being taken to achieve those goals is very important.

7 Proven Methods To Motivate The “People” Salesperson - Click To Read Article
We have identified 5 separate sales rep motivational profiles. We have discussed a few in previous shows. As we continue on our motivational, leadership and coaching series on personality types and motivational profiles, today we are going to talk about the sales people that are primarily motivated for this need for companionship, and people, and affiliation.

As A Sales Manager, How Do You Know When You’ve Made A Hiring Error? - Click To Read Article
All this time I’ve been talking about the techniques and the right ways to manage your sales team. But here is the thing: when is enough enough? When do you get to throw in the towel and say, “Sales isn’t your true calling. I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go”?

Sales Management | How To Save A Ton Of Time Hiring A Sales Superstar - Click To Read Article
With the hundreds of sales resumes you will likely screen for the position that you have open, you really need a methodical way to screen a resume and get the sense of what the candidate is all about.

Sales Management | 5 Proven Methods To Screen Out A Bad Sales Hire - Click To Read Article
No sales manager wants to make the torturous mistake of hiring a complete sales dud. Although a few are bound to slip in, in order to prevent this from happening to you, there are a number of ways that you can screen out a great sales rep resume, prior to actually meeting with them face to face.

The Secret Sauce to Sales Management Success Part 1 - Click To Read Article
It's not a secret, but goal setting, and goal setting specifically used in the right way as a sales manager is the absolute secret sauce to you getting the best from your sales people to achieve ultimate sales success to you getting the best from your sales people.

Sales Management | How To Be A Flexible Sales Leader - Click To Read Article
Sales managers are hired to solve problems. They’re also hired to lead, but they end up spending an enormous time solving problems within the sales team. Say a sales person is showing consistently poor performance? Take it to the sales manager. Quarterly sales stink? Let the sales manager handle it. Hiring a new sales person? Let the sales manager take that one.

Why Money Doesn’t Motivate Salespeople - Click To Read Article
Where your sales rep actually falls on this continuum will makeup what we call their “motivational profile”. There are the 7 Forces of basic motivation, and they get this primarily from their genetic makeup. The point of our first two shows was to show you that the motivations of your sales people today really don’t differ a whole lot from how they were motivated as kids.

Masterful Reprimands – The Best Sales Management Training - Click To Read Article
As effective as Masterful Praisings are in reinforcing good behavior, reprimands are as effective at curtailing bad behavior. We call em, you guessed it..."Masterful Reprimands".

The Seven Forces of Sales Motivation, Part 2 - Click To Read Article
On this episode of Sales Management mastery we go into part 2 of our series on the Seven Forces of Sales Motivation. We continue with forces 5 through 7 and further develop our understanding with our psychology of motivating people As a quick review, we went through the first 4 of the 7 forces of sales motivation on last week’s episode.

The Forces of Sales Motivation - Click To Read Article
No one has gotten more press on motivation, over the course of time, than Abraham Maslow. Each person, as we know, is truly motivated by a series of physiological then safety and security and belonging needs which Maslow goes into in his "Needs Hierarchy Theory".

The Lazy Sale’s Manager’s Way To Coach Salespeople - Click To Read Article
A couple years back when I took over a sales team, I was hired as a sales manager, before I left the corporate world to train sales managers fulltime. I was a sales manager for a few Fortune 500 and Nasdeq 100, and some smaller company's as wekll. I did that for many years. but one of the organizations that I started with, going back 8 or 9 years now, it was an organization that I really wanted to be a part of because they had an excellent record and a tremendous amount of opportunity.

How To Motivate Salespeople The Easy Way - Click To Read Article
One of the things that prompted us to talk about this today is that I am just continually amazed at the number of sales managers that have absolutely no clue as to what actually motivates their sales reps. It's really one of the most popular requests that we get at Sales Management Mastery is what motivate salespeople? In fact, in all the all line polls that we have done of sales manager, CEO's, sales trainers, this comes up as the number on demand for anyone engaged in our surveys on line. Which is "how do you motivate salespeople?"

How To Become A “Silent Sales Leader” - Click To Read Article
On this episode of Sales Management Mastery we teach you how to use silent might to empower you sales leadership with 5 powerful techniques

4 Proven Methods to Motivate Salespeople…Gently - Click To Read Article
Great leaders in business, especially those in the sales world, have often regarded people skills as their greatest assets in motivating as well as leading. There are lots of opportunities for sales managers to motivate even during mundane every day activities. They could be anything from, taking corrective action, to criticism, to anything during the normal course of business, there is always the opportunity to motivate. Don't understand the power of some of these very simple techniques. This is the stuff that separates the men from the boys, and the women from the girls when it comes to superior sales management; motivating under ordinary circumstances.

SMM 2 | 3 Proven Sales Management Techniques To Establish Trust With Your Salespeople - Click To Read Article
On this week's episode of Sales Management Mastery we're going to talk about what's in it for you to placing deposits in the trust account, plus three proven methods to establish trust with your salespeople so that you can drive your company's sales revenues.

SMM 3 | The Secret To Fighting Mediocrity In Your Sales Team - Click To Read Article
Let's talk a little bit today about some of the corporate buzz words that you probably hear flying around in corporate America today. Most of the people that listen to the show are sales managers and/or general managers of large and small organizations. The corporate buzz words have been going around for a quite some time.

SMM 4 | A Simple Way To Lead Your Sales Team To Sales Stardom - Click To Read Article
On this episode of Sales Management Mastery we are going to teach you how to lead you sales team to sales stardom using our "lead by being led" sales leadership strategy.

SMM 7 | 7 Quick Ways To Lead a Sales Team To Maximum Sales Impact! - Click To Read Article
On this episode of Sales Management Mastery we're going to give you 7 quick ways to lead a sales team for maximum sales impact.

Three Proven Methods To Turn Around Your Sales Underachievers - Click To Read Article
Something’s got to be done – and fast. These guys are killing your company’s sales performance. When dealing with underperforming sales people, you can’t delay.

The Biggest Mistake Sales Managers Make - Click To Read Article
"I'm swamped right now" "I'm way too busy to do that" "I'll need to call you back, I'm way behind right now"... Does this sound like you? If you're like me, there is a HUGE tendency for sales managers to get bogged down in far too many administrative duties, conference calls, time-wasting phone calls, useless meetings and mindless corporate initiatives - all repetitive activities that do nothing but waste your time - when you should be focused on more meaningful and lucrative tasks.

Don’t Read This…Unless You Want To Have A Really Good Sales Meeting - Click To Read Article
We’ve all sat through God-awful boring sales meetings right? Not exactly a good time, as I’m sure you’d agree… Has the thought ever occurred to you that your sales reps might feel like this almost every time you call a sales meeting? “Positively absurd” you say! Well, if you are one of the few who does have the need to inject a little vigor in your next sales meeting, then read on… Try this to spice things up: next time you call a sales meeting, try a little “lead by being led” reverse psyschology on your sales reps to get them involved in the process of choosing topics. All you do is simply ask your sales reps a week or two before the sales meeting what they most want to hear about is the best way to get them engaged and helps to “spruce things up”. After all, if you ask them what they want to hear about in the meeting you

How to Get Your Sales Team to Reach The Highest Level of Sales Achievement - Click To Read Article
First things first. As an aspiring top sales manager, get your sales group to buy into the fact that achievement is the only permanent value of work and achievement only comes from relentless effort and commitment.

Empower Your Sales People By Providing Them With Positive Behavioral Feedback - Click To Read Article
The sales manager is the sales rep's direct line of communication between himself and his performance. If this line is cut, if the sales manager is somewhat incompetent or won't do his job properly, then the company has a problem. One of the most important factors that could influence a sales rep's growth in his career is the sales manager's ability to do his job well.

Why a Top Sales Manager Must Always "Tune Into the Right Frequency" - Click To Read Article
It's definitely clichéd, but I think this is one of the most critical elements to successful sales management and that is to make sure you are tuned into the right radio frequency with your salespeople. There's only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let's not get too technical here...). This is the "What's-In-It-For-Me" radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you're not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio...or worse yet, turn off the radio completely!

The Importance Of The 80/20 Rule In Becoming A Top-Performing Sales Manager - Click To Read Article
Being a top sales manager means being above average, which translates to getting more done with less effort. That’s what distinguishes a top sales manager from a mediocre one. But how do YOU become a top sales manager?

A Top Sales Manager Adapts To The Situation…And Not The Other Way Around - Click To Read Article
Sales managers are hired to solve problems. They’re also hired to lead, but they end up spending an enormous time solving problems within the sales team. Say a sales person is showing consistently poor performance? Take it to the sales manager. Quarterly sales stink? Let the sales manager handle it. Hiring a new sales person? Let the sales manager take that one.

Maintain Long-Term Success As A Top Sales Manager By Offering Products And Services As Solutions, Not Commodities - Click To Read Article
The job of a top sales manager is a lot like old-school video gaming. The more you succeed, the deeper you get into the game, the harder the challenges get thrown your way. And the same is true for sustaining the revenue growth of a large company. Success breeds imitation.

Build Your Salespeople’s Strengths And Use Them As Launch Pads For Better Sales Success - Click To Read Article
I used to work for a company that tried to change me into someone I just was not. In an interview, the HR manager said, "This company will help you overcome your weaknesses by thrusting you into different kinds of situations. We will help you grow to become a completely different person." Here is the thing. There's nothing wrong with "overcoming your weaknesses". But to turn me into a "completely different person," that's something else. Back then I didn't realize the repercussions of that statement. Now that I've got years of experience as a sales manager, I know better than to try and change my sales reps into something they're not. My sales reps are themselves. They are not their colleagues. They are not their friends. They are not me.

How to become a “roving sales leader” - Click To Read Article
Management By Walking Around (MBWA) took the management world by storm in the 80’s. The author of this ground-breaking management theory was Tom Peters. He was immediately hailed as a “leadership genius” and touted as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. MBWA is really just common sense…

Why a Sales Manager MUST Evoke "The Law of Reciprocity" - Click To Read Article
For our purposes, the Law of Reciprocity states: If you do something nice for someone, human nature dictates that the recipient will feel compelled to do something nice for you in return. It is in essence: "you reap what you sow". This is an irrefutable law and one that you should teach your salespeople. The question of will someone actually act upon it at a given time depends on who asks.

Why A Top Sales Manager Needs To Be On All His Reps’ “Pre-sets” - Click To Read Article
You have to be more popular than Howard Stern. You also have to be cooler than Opie and Anthony too. Why? Because one of the most critical elements to successful sales management is to always make sure you are tuned into the radio frequency of your salespeople. Here's why. There's only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let's not get too technical here...). This is the "What's-In-It-For-Me" radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you're not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio...or worse yet, turn off the radio completely!

Why Sales Managers Need to Make Regular Deposits in "The Trust Account" - Click To Read Article
In your bank account, you have an ATM card that only you have the PIN number to access the account funds. Every week, you make regular deposits and withdrawals into your account. Base salary deposits go in regularly through automatic deposit, while bonuses and commission checks go in periodically with expense checks and other deposits. You make cash withdrawals, debit card purchases, write checks, and make other payments. Unless you enjoy bouncing checks and incurring overdraft fees, you're careful to monitor your balances so you don't bounce checks and rack up those nasty overdraft fees. Even though you may have overdraft protection, you certainly don't want to pay 16.75% interest, so you're careful to make sure your deposits outweigh your withdrawals.

What Seagulls Can Teach You About Top Sales Leadership - Click To Read Article
Ever work for a " Seagull Sales Manager"? You probably have. A "Seagull Sales Manager" is a sales manager who seldom interacts with his people but occasionally swoops down, dumps on everybody, and then quickly flies away. If you haven't guessed already, this is not exactly the kind of leadership we advocate at Sales Management Mastery...

Setting the Bar Higher As a Top Sales Manager - Click To Read Article
I just love the "corporate sales buzzwords" don't you? Some of my personal favorites: "We need to start thinking outside the box" "Let's take a deeper dive on that..." "We need to give it 110 percent!" "Let's create a win-win for the customer" "It's all about change management" "Let's take that offline" "At the end of the day..." "Let's produce some strong organic growth" And my personal favorite: "We need to set the bar high" I once heard an expression that stuck with me on the use of profanity in speech. I may not have it exactly right, but it goes like something like this: "The use of profanity is the work of a feeble mind trying desperately to express itself" I do have to admit, I do swear a bit...but I never (any more) use cliched corporate sales "buzz words" in front of my sales team.

Motivate Your Salespeople Like Richard Branson - Click To Read Article
Richard Branson, the eccentric founder of Virgin Airlines and multiple other businesses is the epitome of "unconventional" businessman. He does things HIS way, he does things the way he feels are right...and with a billion or so in the bank, he's been more right than wrong.

How a Top Sales Manager Gets Their Salespeople to Sell More Stuff! - Click To Read Article
When do you do your best work? When you feel bad or when you feel good? The obvious answer is when you feel good. No one feels like doing much of anything when they feel bad. When people don't feel so good, they end up doing very little....not a good situation for you. So it begs the question: does the salesperson brimming with confidence sell more than the salesperson who lacks confidence? The answer may seem obvious, but why do so few average sales managers spend the majority of their time building their people's confidence up instead of ripping it down? It could be that many sales managers are former sales salespeople themselves and "seagull sales management" (swoop in, dump on the rep, then fly away), is all they know. In this case, unfortunately, ignorance begets more ignorance...

Get Your Sales Reps to Sell Like Corky - Click To Read Article
What is the highest performing stock in terms of total return over the over the course of the past 40 years? It's not Microsoft. No, its not Cisco Systems. It's not GE. It's not even Intel. You ready? Its Walgreen's Drug Stores. Walgreen's? You gotta be kidding me! The drugstore chain? Yep, its true. How they did it is even cooler than that fact that they did it in the first place. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins investigates how they actually did it. And the answer is very simple. All that Cork Walgreen, the founder of Walgreen's did is that he took a long hard look at what his business did really well and then channeled all his energies into that one thing. In essence, he figured out exactly what Walgreen's could be the best in the world at and channeled all of their efforts into achieving that one thing.





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