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If you’re not satisfied with your sales status looks to the coach of your team - your sales managers. Here’s a way to check how good they are.

First, does your sales manager know where his/her sales will come from by account, by product / service for 2008? Or is it about, “Here is my number, let’s go out there and sell, sell, sell.” Ask each one to explain where the sales for 2008 will come from.

Second, does your sales manager know how to motivate each of his/her people? Yes, the key is money, but money goes to the family. Money is about survival but, what really gets the sales person going? See if your sales manager can answer this question about his people.

Third, does your sales manager coach and mentor. Coaching is telling his people what to do, i.e. get to the ultimate decision maker. Mentoring is showing them how to do it, i.e. show how to use your main contact to network you to the ultimate decision maker.

This requires discussing sales call plans and pursuit strategies. Then making calls together - not for the sales manager to sell, but to observe, give feedback and lay-out a behavior modification plan. How often does your manager do this with each sales person?

Fourth, does your sales manager turn-over and recruit effectively and timely? In other words does he purge the bottom 10% each year and constantly seek new recruits. Most managers are reactive. When someone leaves, they then seek a replacement. Unfortunately, because of 1-3 above, the better people (maybe not the best) leave and then the manager starts recruiting. This leaves you with the poorer performers and the new hire becomes whatever was available.

Like a college football coach, your sales manager must be good at recruiting good talent and then showing this raw talent what to do and how to do it. Don’t ever get sucked into the “experienced sales person”. Experience only means someone has been doing it before. It says nothing about how good one is, especially selling your products and services. That’s where the coaching and mentoring becomes critical. As in football and all sports, coaching and practice is critical and ongoing.

The relationship between motivation and performance is often mentioned, but not many organizations, efforts to study in detail, and ends up in the cul-de-sac, instead of the decision, on the basis of the findings and instigators.

Manager believe that the motivation of students is just psyching employee to give excellent performance. It is not greater than the old method of continuous monitoring, after a time that is no longer a worker is very pleased with the prep talk about the carrot dangling for histrionics or strengthen incentives, such as the organization makes the World to their future career.

The tools for measuring the relationship is also rudimentary, most organizations believe their strategies motivation to work when there are fewer dis-satisfaction of employees and a high turnover rate.

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