Ken Thoreson

 In many of my sales leadership workshops and in my writings I have often spoken on the need to hire creative salespeople and the need for sales management to offer creative solutions to the many problems you face.  The good news is “creativity” can be learned and enhanced in everyone!  I believe it is also critical in building a sales culture of high performance and coaching sales strategies.

I recently read a book titled: Perfect Phrases for Creativity and Innovation by Karen Eriksen, published by McGraw Hill.  I picked up the book because in my keynote program; Gourmet Living I normally cover the aspect of adding creativity to your life to enhance both personal and professional success. In reading this book it quickly added ideas and insights that can be easily implemented immediately.  This is a sample of the first four chapters:

• Creativity Begins with Me
• Motivating Teams to Be Highly Creative
•  A Structure for...

This past week during a consulting session with a client, with both the President and their sales manager we discussed several points that I thought would be good items to bring up in this week’s blog.  April 1^st is right around the corner and I want all of you reading this not be this year’s fool.

The first point, which is not an unusual topic, was to ensure both the president and sales management were in agreement as to weekly priorities. Often I find the sales manger focused on important activities during a their hectic weekly schedule; putting out fires, solving administration issues, coaching/mentoring, recruiting, oh and  trying to ensure sales are being achieved. Mean while the president is frustrated that other key objectives are not being completed.  While time management is a major topic for sales leaders, what I almost always recommend is that on Friday afternoons the President and Sales Manager’s meet to agree as to the priorities for the coming week...

First of all, the title of this blog is impossible and second of all, it wouldn’t be right.

No matter what size of sales organization you manage the sales leader that assumes they are responsible for everything or solving every problem generally fails to achieve the ultimate objective.  With the majority of new sales managers we find them wanting to make the sales team feel they are delivering value and helping the salespeople on the various tasks, problems and complaints they bring and therefore they tend to attempt become the main cog in the sales organizations.  Nothing can be further from the primary goal.

First, the sales manager must recognize that it is their job to make the salespeople independent of them, not dependent on them.  When I find that the sales manager is the first and last person to leave the office, I know this could be an issue.

Second, when I review the “to-do list” for the sales manager and find topics that don’t belong there; I am...

While in the process of writing a future magazine column on the future of sales and social media I interviewed three people and posed several questions in order to get their view points.  I thought for this week’s blog I would also introduce you to my current thinking and I would really enjoy hearing your thoughts on the direction of sales and the use of social media.

In the traditional sense of a new product introduction, social media is moving through various stages. It is my opinion  we have obviously crossed the chasm from Stage 1 into full blown Stage 2 product acceptance and in most cases salespeople and sales leadership have accepted and become comfortable in using forms of social media for their personal lives as well as in a limited business environments.  It is also my belief that if you aren’t actively using a variety of social media applications in your sales process/organization it is critical you begin to learn to use...