YourSalesManagementGuru by Ken Thoreson, Acumen Management Group

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Accountability: Ingredient No. 2 to Great Sales

Last time, I mentioned the three ingredients that sales managers should have in their leadership pantry to maintain sales focus:

  • Discipline: Orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior.
  • Accountability:"Obligated to give a reckoning or explanation for ones actions.
  • Control: A standard of comparison for checking the results of an experiment or process.

We recommend that you actually share these definitions with your sales team and your entire company; this will help you increase everyone's focus on the need to execute brilliantly during challenging times. Accountability means that every department and every person -- sales, marketing, delivery and admin -- must be held accountable for meeting the expectations of their job.

(Hint: The expectations or standards must first be set).

By explaining the definitions first to your teams, you can fight the reaction of "this is micro-management." It is not; it is simply good management. Next, we discuss the concept of how "control" makes it all work.

If you haven't RSS'ed this blog, be sure to do it -- the link is here. And don't forget to check out my Web site for more selling resources!

Posted by Ken Thoreson on March 10, 2009


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