New Speaker Added for Sales Management Boot Camp 2013

 G

 With the summa' rapidly winding down now, I'm in my 
 normal panic of scrunching time to fit everything in
 between now and September 3rd.  Just wondering, but is
 it possible that the whole Einstein equation thing of time
 and relativity could be just slightly off for the last two
 weeks of August.  Don't know, just thinking, but it 
 might bear looking into.  Smart guy.  I always like the
 manner in which he took complex ideas and explained
 them in simple terms that even I can understand:

"When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein

After lots of "summer field research" on the beach, somehow, I'll figure out how to compress time during the next couple of weeks (never really needed much sleep anyhow) to enable me to get back into the groove, start showing up again at the office in Boston, realize that no one really missed me, and accelerate at the pace our customers want to accelerate at.  Time management get's a bit more complicated since I need to be somewhat coherent on the 4th for my new 35 students at Tufts and 80 at MIT on the 10th.  But somehow, it all gets done. Always does since, I regard this time between now and the end of the year as "The 4 Month Quarter".  This is the time of year when everything needs to come together perfectly:

• Sales quota performance
• 2014 business plans and 2015-16 strategic plans
• 2014 Sales & Marketing plans
• 2014 budgets
• ...and everything else that can be squeezed into the next 120 days.
  
  

120 Days

As any experienced salesperson or manager focused on their quota and bonus knows, we don't really have 120 days until the end of the year.  Subtract...

• Weekends= 35 days
• Holidays = 8 days (the actual day and the tangent days around it)
• The result = 77 available selling days

Figure out your own math, but you're going to come out somewhere between 75-80 days.  With that as a baseline, then all you need to do is to figure out is how you're going to enable yourself and your team to Effectively & Efficiently use that time to market and to sell. 

A couple of ideas to think about...

1. Your Personal Time Management

As a skill, how would you rank your own personal time management?  Very high?  Skip to the next bullet.  So, so?  Consider taking a half day time management seminar on a weekend.  There are lots of good programs from companies (who want to sell you stuff) such as Day Timer or Franklin Covey, and it just may be that a few hours spent at one of their retail locations on a Saturday tunes up and refreshes your basic skills. 

I'd add to this idea to think about investing weekend time in a couple of hours class at your local Microsoft or Apple store.  I just did this for Excel, and it's made a big difference.  It's a never-too-old-to-learn thing.  Maybe it's not Excel or PowerPoint, but perpahs a short session on app integration would make your life more organized, more manageable and end up saving you time during the week.

2. Sharpen Your Tools

I spent time this summa' cleaning out the garage.  Good for the soul and my head, plus I found myself buying new tools to replace those that I knew were somewhere, but not where I needed them.  Although Home Depot, my #2 Most Favorite Retailer, was increasingly happy, I wasn't which led me to taking everything out of the garage, installing a new workbench with a pegboard backwall (inexpensive) and new (expensive) hooks.  I also discovered through this process that there were 10ish tools that I used all the time and another 30 plus that hadn't been touched for years.  As a result, the garage (at least for a while) is neat and tidy, the tools that I need all the time in a place I can quickly get to them while others are hanging on the new pegboard, but removed from the day to day clutter. 

For those of us in Sales, this is the perfect time of year to do a tools inventory, place in easy-to-find locations those tools that we constantly use, sharpen those that need it, re-oil those that are bit rusty and generally take an assessment of what we need for the next 77 days.  The equation that you want to do here is one of balancing Effort against Impact. 

• How much Effort would it take in 30 days to sharpen any of these tools?
• What's the Impact that sharpening will make by the end of the year? 

Highest Ratio of Impact / Effort Ideas:

• What skills and/or product training do I or my team need right now?
• Do we all use the same Value Proposition?  Let's do some role playing!
• What social marketing skills should we (Sales) be using right now?
  
  

Pick just three things where you can gain short term enablement clout for you and your team during the month of September and hone those specific tools whether they're training or product skills.  This activity is guaranteed to evidence a high ROI when it comes down to measuring your own performance against your Q4 quota or year-end bonus.  Whatever ideas you chose, just focus on answering these simple questions...relative (the Einstein thing again) to 75 days.  

• "How do I actually enable my team? 
• What can I do to build their (and my own) efficiency?
• What can I do to build their (and my own) effectivity?

 If you're at all concerned about your own Efficiency
 and Effectivity, and, more importantly, as a
 manager, you're wondering what to do about it, join
 us at our upcoming October Sales Management Boot
 Camp, where you'll have the opportunity of becoming
 deeply engrained in the strategies and hands-on, real-
 time implementation tactics of optimizing and enabling your sales team.

• 22 managers currently signed up; only space for 8 more
• You will leave knowing how to...
  -reduce your sales cycles
  -hone powerful Value Propositions
  -create highly process and tools-enabled salespeople
  -significantly increase your revenues and margins
  -...and lots more learned from your peers 

Good Selling! 

Jack,
Head Coach

The 2013 Sales Management Boot Camp-Click to the left

Take a look at our new Video-Presenters & Attendees

- It's selling out quickly!
- Free "Whiteboarding Session"
- Learn about Sales Enablement

During our upcoming 2013 Sales Management Boot Camp, we'll talk a lot about the best sales planning practices of...
-Sales Enablement
-Creating Value Propositions
-Hiring & Retaining the very best salespeople...plus many more topics

Late Sunday afternoon, October 6th through Tuesday afternoon, October 8th at the MIT Endicott House.   Six years, 350+ highly satisfied graduates!