Putting for Par’s
I happen to be in Florida this weekend, taking a few days off to visit relatives, play golf and enjoy the weather. We played 36 holes the past two days, my first real golf of the season so before we came down from Knoxville I went to the driving range at home and hit two buckets of balls to attempt to regain some form of respectability. Prior to my first round I hit another ½ bucket of balls and a few casual strokes on the putting green and boom, then off to the number 1 tee box. Amazingly my first drive was right down fairway, but as I worked through the 18 holes it was rough as I struggled with some good and some bad, a few bogeys and a few double bogeys.
In your role as a sales manager are you taking your personal and professional development as casual as a few practice swings on the driving range? Recently in a six week series of sales management training programs for a major client, several participants didn’t complete a variety of reading assignments because they were too busy “closing out the quarter“. For some reason they could not find 2 hours over six weeks to read 15 pages of content. Successful sales leaders will commit to reading, attending workshops and attending vendor sponsored workshops on sales management topics.
If you consider yourself a professional, every week you spend hours on the driving range enhancing your abilities with each club in your bag, you practice hitting out of the sand and chipping off the green. What are you doing to increase your professional skill levels? There are a variety of resources you can find to improve your sales management expertise.
Several quick idea’s: check out the LinkedIn groups on sales leadership, commit to reading two new books a year, and visit at least two other sales organizations that are similar to yours and benchmark your organizations against theirs. For example: our new book: “Leading High Performance Sales Teams” I review a variety of idea’s to enhance your sales teams abilities , concepts to improve your leadership styles and increase the effectiveness of your management systems. On our website there is a free sales management and sales compensation assessment where you can compare your existing programs, watch several free videos on hiring and training salespeople and read our White Paper on the Job of Sales Management. www.AcumenManagement.com
What is your plan to make more pars’ vs bogeys? I left at least six putts inches short, I am off to the putting green!
Acumen Management Group Ltd. “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead!
