Give Your Salespeople A Break!

A friend told me to start watching “Billions” so I watched the pilot this morning on the treadmill. There’s a line where a character says, “It’s like Warren Buffet says: Put a cop on anyone’s tail for 500 miles and they’ll get a ticket.” It reminded me that sometimes we need to give our salespeople a break! Another lifetime ago, I worked in an environment where managers proactively tried to target folks because results were slipping. Listen to anyone long enough on sales calls, and they will make a misstep from the process. I was pressured to write up, discipline or fire folks while running the top team in the business. When you’re up, ride the wave; tweak, run some maintenance, look for ways to improve the hustle stats and metrics where you’re weak. When you’re down, manage to process. Don’t lead with fear. As a leader, you will get the best results imaginable just by earning the trust of the people who work for you. It can take years to build but reacting to a slump by targeting your team can destroy it. Counsel them and don’t lose sight of your mission: understand your team’s motivations, sell them on why the process works better than their “comfortable way of failing/mediocrity” and give them the space they need to evolve their own craft to perfection.

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About cvheady007

I am a Christian, Husband, Dad, workaholic and author. Biography Carson Vincent Heady was born in Cape Girardeau, MO, graduated from Southeast Missouri State University and moved to St. Louis in 2001. He has served in sales and leadership across Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Carson is best-selling author of the Birth of a Salesman series, the first book of which was published by World Audience Inc. in 2010. He released The Salesman Against the World in 2014, A Salesman Forever in 2016 and Salesman on Fire in 2020. He is also featured in Scott Ingram’s B2B Sales Mentors: 20 Stories from 20 Top 1% Sales Professionals. Carson is a 7-time CEO/President’s Club winner across 5 roles at AT&T and Microsoft and National Verizon Rockstar winner. He has been recognized as a top social seller at Microsoft and is consistently ranked in the top 25 sales gurus in the world on Rise Global. He is included among the Top 50 sales authors on LinkedIn. With over 330K social followers, Carson has also been interviewed on over 30 sales and leadership podcasts, by such luminaries as Jeffrey & Jennifer Gitomer, Jeb Blount, Brandon Bornancin, Sam Dunning, Larry Levine, Darrell Amy, Scott Ingram, Thierry van Herwijnen, Jim Brown, Sam Jacobs, Luigi Prestinenzi, Donald Kelly, Marylou Tyler, George Leith, Pat Helmer, Eric Nelson, Ron Tunick, Jeff Arthur, Mary Ann Samedi, Jean Oursler, Andre Harrell, Marlene Chism, Bill Crespo, Matt Tanguay, Josh Wheeler and Chad Bostick. He has also co-hosted the Smart Biz Show on EG Marketing Radio. His articles have appeared in several noteworthy publications such as SalesGravy, Smash! Sales, Salesopedia and the Baylor Sports Department S3 Report. Carson lives in St. Louis, MO, with his wife Amy and daughters Madison, Sidonia and Charlotte.
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