Selling the Sellers
Successful business initiatives are seldom a result of democracy. New initiatives require the passionate leadership and commitment of focused management and their teams to be successful.
Many sales managers confuse achieving staff buy-in for strategic new initiatives with winning their staff’s popular vote.
It’s a universal truth that management must get staff buy-in on all new initiatives if they are to be successful. To achieve that buy-in, the best managers SELL their staffs, clearly outlining what’s in it for them to tackle a new project.
Some sales managers have made the mistake of putting a new initiative to a popular vote rather than selling that initiative to their staff.
New projects generally equate to extra effort, uncertainty, breaking out of comfort zones, and frankly, can reveal the real achievers on your staff versus those big billers who might be winning by default.
In the face of those fears, a ‘vote’ will generally be negative.
Your internal customers, your account executives, are your most important and high-leverage asset. It is imperative you invest as much of your time and skill as you can muster to sell your people on the merits of buying into your new revenue projects. If you can’t develop a minimum of 10 solid benefits from your staff’s perspective, maybe the project is not worthy of pursuing.
Over-the-top revenues do require over-the-top efforts, efforts which require focus, passion, confidence and more.
Democratic sales departments don’t work. If they did, we wouldn’t need sales managers, the company could just get the staff to vote on various new projects.
Every package, promotion, concept and initiative needs to be sold to your team.
Management’s mandate is to sell and lead new initiatives because your station can’t keep doing the same thing over and over if they want improved results.