Most sales leaders I know didn’t go into sales leadership because they demonstrated a specific skill or because they expressed an interest.  Very simply put they were good salespeople so someone promoted them to a leadership position without giving them the necessary tools, professional development opportunities and/or management training to be successful in the short term. Here are the 5 keys to sales leadership based upon my 40+ years in sales and sales leadership as well as best practices of other, successful sales leaders:

1. Recruit, hire, train and retain the best talent available
   • Don’t settle for the best of the worst
   • Always have an active hiring pipeline in place
2. Be clear and consistent in your communication
   • 90% of management problems are people problems
   • 90% of people problems are communication problems
3. Set clear goals/expectations
   • Inspect what you expect
4. Know your numbers
   • Sales metrics, sales management KPIs, success formulas, etc.
5. Assess the readiness level of team members
   • Dehire people who aren’t performing

Let’s take a deeper dive on key #1; recruit, hire, train and retain the best talent available:

• Ask behavioral interview questions during the interview process
  • How did you prepare for this interview?
  • Describe your job search process?
  • If I were to offer you the job today what would you do hit the ground running?
  • How do you qualify/disqualify opportunities?
• Behavioral interviewing helps eliminate misunderstandings during the interview and reduces the candidate’s ability to mislead.
  • The fact remains that a candidate’s past and present behavior is the best predictor of how he or she will behave in the future.
  • Behavioral traits don’t appear on a resume… you can only learn them from interviewing the candidate.
• Establish a 30 to 45-day on boarding process to shorten the salesperson’s ramp time to productivity
• Set clear goals/activity levels
  • Meets minimum, on target and overachievement
• Know what motivates your salespeople so you’re able to create the right environment for the individual salesperson as well as the entire sales team
• Celebrate successes early and often!