Your salespeople are your lifeblood. You may not like it, but that’s the way it is, and they are also a breed unto themselves. They don’t function like the rest of us, and aren’t we glad about that! They have to be tough, negotiating, conciliatory, patient, driven, results-oriented, and bloody minded. If they were not so, they wouldn’t get the results we need.

But are you getting the best out of them? We tend to respond to our sales staff in one of two ways. We either pummel them with our goals and expectations without listening to their input, or we ignore them because we’re scared of them. Either way our business is what suffers as a result. And either way it’s not the team we want or need.

Being immersed in all things business for many years, I have had the opportunity of getting to know salespeople very well, and these are some of my observations: They are, more often than not, motivated by cash and recognition rather than altruistic "family" values. They want cash, cash, cash, and it’s their egoistic emphasis is "me, me, me". They are more mercenary than missionary and don’t really care about the philosophies or underlying motives that drive a business.

They know why they’re there, and they just get on with bringing in results. They thrive best when they have a solid product to sell, well-defined pricing, a clear quota to aim for, and recognizable, clear-cut competitors. If they think you don’t understand them, they will devise their own methods and approaches that usually end up servicing their needs above yours.

None of these observations render salespeople bad or immoral or whatever – they simply define them as results-oriented and task driven, which are good things. In this module we evaluate the best ways in which you can elicit the most-profitable results from these amazing people. Understand them. Have them eating out of your business palm, and you’ll have a wonderfully successful business that has no bounds.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.