Sales Management Forum

The Sales Management Forum delivers powerful, practical tools and techniques that managers can use to be more effective in their roles. Our curriculum addresses the critical components of being a Corporate Sales Manager - from identifying skill gaps within your teams, to identifying and growing top talent, to driving revenue, to being an effective strategic leader.

Our curriculum is designed to address the tactical components of being an Inside Sales Manager -from identifying skill gaps within your teams, to understanding how to develop and grow talent, to driving revenue, to being an effective strategic leader.

• Ready, Set, Coach

  As time-crunched managers are pulled in multiple directions, one of the first areas where they lose focus is team development and coaching. As a result, managers may avoid coaching or approach it with hesitation. This session examines your coaching persona and helps you set coaching goals that will get the results you want. You'll practice FAST (Frequent, Accurate, Specific and Timely) feedback techniques and learn how direct feedback can influence positive behavior change versus creating fear, confusion and apathy. You will develop your own coaching schedule and learn how to utilize coaching as a vehicle in developing performance assessments.

• Recruiting, Interviewing and Identifying Top Talent for Your Organization

  As the job market heats up and the demand for new hires who can hit the ground running increases, hiring smart is essential. This session examines your interviewing skills and provides you with tactics for finding talent, interviewing effectively, checking references, and retaining talent once they are on board. You'll get tips on how to source candidates, write compelling job descriptions, and communicate with candidates via email during the hiring process. You'll think on your feet with dynamic role-plays and case studies. You will also develop a set of phone and/or first round, second round and face-to-face interview questions that bring out the real candidate.

• Managing Workplace Stress-Building and Sustaining Resilience in Your Team

  As stress increases, productivity decreases. The impact of stress affects your entire team. This session will examine how you cope with stress and what behaviors you are modeling for your team. We'll focus on how to develop a resilient, renewal-based culture, and how to avoid the "burn out" factor inherent in sales. You will learn the leading causes of workplace stress and be armed with survival tactics, techniques and a tool kit to help your team rebound faster.

• Coverage Model-Scaling and Dissecting a Territory

  How do you put in place the right coverage model for your reps and give them the best tools to go after it? Is adding headcount the way to attack and manage a territory, or should you split up zip codes? How do you manage current resources while recalibrating to grow to the next level? Whether you are managing an SMB or Enterprise team, this session will provide you with new, creative, and sound strategies for scaling your organization.

• Stand and Deliver-Effective Management Presentation Skills

  When all eyes are on you, you want to be at your best. In this session, managers will learn the critical steps to presenting ideas and information clearly and powerfully. Training will focus on idea organization: the ability to quickly target what you want to say, how to support it, who your audience should be, and the desired outcome. You will learn techniques for establishing credibility by engaging listeners both verbally and non-verbally. In addition, you'll prepare either an on-line presentation outlining your team's contribution to the organization or convincing presentations on the value of each unique client campaign.

• Motivating with Metrics

  Sales Managers must constantly review metrics and measure performance while simultaneously motivating their sales teams to drive results. How do you motivate your team during a downturn? How do you stay focused during an acquisition or when bringing on a new partner? What do you do when your team has lost momentum because they hit their numbers too early? In this session, we'll provide both a strategic and tactical Motivational Plan that includes contests, spiffs, and metrics that you can use throughout the year.

• Your Leadership Questioning Style

  The inquiry process can be a powerful leadership tool. What questions are you asking your team members-and are you satisfied with the answers? Is your questioning style modeling appropriate sales behavior? Are your questions providing your team with ammunition to neutralize the toughest customer objections? Does your questioning strategy help your team members find the answers themselves or are you rescuing them? This session will examine your questioning style and teach you practical, efficient, and crisp ways to ask compelling questions that drive results. We'll cover questions to ask at team meetings, 1:1 sessions, and walk-bys, and how to avoid asking the Top 10 Dumbest Management Questions.

• Got Talent?-Turning Your Team into Top Performers

  Why do managers invest so much time developing top performers but lose sight of poor performers and underachievers? Managers must learn to effectively prioritize their team development strategy-from new hires to seasoned team members. This session will start by providing you with the criteria to stack rank and outline development goals for your A-B-C performers. You will learn new techniques to identify, invest in, motivate, grow, and replicate talent.

• Holding Effective Sales Meetings

  Does your weekly sales meeting have a positive impact and set a tone for high productivity? This session examines a variety of meetings, from the "all-hands" to the quick 5-minute huddle to the weekly regular meeting. You will renew your insight into the power and influence that strong sales meetings can have as we explore everything from defining a tone to encouraging strong group participation to communicating tough news and rewarding great behavior. We'll provide sample agendas, recommend the best times for meeting and provide tips on how to keep meetings dynamic and invigorating. You will initiate and manage your meetings with a new sense of ambition and significance.

• Emails that Influence

  What tone is most effective when you have one day left in the quarter and the numbers aren't on target? How about when you want to create friendly competition among team members but don't want to discourage the low performers? This session gets "up close and personal" on style, tone, organization and word choice in your email messaging. We'll examine the most common email categories, including Motivational, Hard News, and Recognition emails. You'll receive email portfolios loaded with new ideas, and tips for improving your team's email effectiveness.