Leading the Sales Team

Course Overview:

In order to improve bottom-line results, many companies have enhanced their product line, adopted new strategic selling and key account practices, thinned the ranks of sales managers, and expanded territories. However, this often creates more resistance and uncertainty as well as decreases creative leadership and management.

This method is counter to what produces our best efforts - those which are driven by a strong sense of commitment and are attached to strongly held priorities and values. This course focuses on the role of the sales leader/manager in helping establish and strengthen that commitment. Your sales managers will greatly enhance their ability to help their sales teams work through change and deepen the team's commitment to key sales objectives.

Target Audience

• Senior Sales Executives, Mid-level Managers, First-line Sales Managers and Sales Team Leaders

Course Length

• 3 Days

Course Outcomes

After this course, you will see more concerted and focused sales efforts measurably affecting your gross sales line. Your bottom line will also improve because you are delivering more with existing resources. More specifically, your participants will be better able to:

• Use their sales unit's purpose and values to rally members' enthusiasm and determination to achieve outstanding results
• Lead unit members through changes that impact your vision and key goals both within and outside the company
• Create an atmosphere of trust and mutual support throughout the unit
• Align the unit's people, resources, and operating practices in order to enable everyone to improve both individual and unit work performance
• Identify their personal leadership strengths and improvement opportunities as viewed by the people who report directly to them
• Balance the often conflicting demands of achieving day-to-day results while taking actions needed to realize your vision of the unit's long-term future

Course Activities

This course uses a five-element sales leadership model for building key sales leadership and management skills in conjunction with the Leadership Practices Survey, which provides every participant with confidential individual feedback on the impact of their leadership practices for identifying both strengths and improvement opportunities. The course also incorporates a variety of learning activities, including:

• A video illustrates the feelings and responses of staff members to workplace change, to distinguish between leading and managing through change
• Small group exercises on company vision and values
• Model and examples for building compelling company vision and values statements
• A case study on creating shared purpose, building collaborative trust relationships, empowering employees, and aligning for action
• An "All or Nothing" small-group lifeboat exercise, to examine group mission alignment and problem-solving
• An analytical model on the anatomy of a conflict to examine the causes, process, and consequences of conflicts that arise within a work unit
• Individual and group exercises on influencing group action to define and apply the push-pull concept to participant jobs
• Discussion on influencing styles for directing, persuading, inspiring, relating, exploring and observing
• Guidelines for practicing new influencing behaviors
• Structured role-plays for honing "push and pull" strategies
• Personal assessments and action planning for on-the-job steps to improve results