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How To Evaluate…And Improve Your Sales Leadership Skills Print
Written by Jim Pancero   

Article #4 in our 9 Article Series


Welcome to our fourth article in the series “You Can Always Sell More: How To Improve Any Sales Force!”

In this fourth article in our series we will now discuss how improving a sales force requires you to first evaluate, and then strengthen the skills and focus of your sales leadership team. Are you and your sales management team prepared and have you earned the right to coach and lead a sales team?

Want a detailed evaluation of your personal sales leadership skills?

We have talked about the definition of a sales manger…to help each of your people achieve more than they would have achieved if just left alone. Completing your personal “Sales Leadership Evaluation” is the first step to strengthening your ability to lead your sales team to stronger performance and profitability levels.

Utilizing Your Free Sales Leadership Evaluation To Evaluate, Prioritize And Develop Your Sales Leadership Abilities

The goal of the “Sales Leadership Evaluation” outlined in this article and available free online at GreatSalesSkills.com is to help you increase your awareness of your strongest sales leadership skills as well as the skills that, if improved, could most help you increase your ability to lead a sales team.

Our goal is to help you identify both where your leadership skills are today as well as what you can do to strengthen these skills in the future. You will evaluate your sales leadership skills in the following four areas:

    - Your role as an administrator, problem solver and disciplinarian
    - Your ability to build and retain a sales team
    - Your ability to lead
    - Your ability to be a coach and strategist of your selling process

Participation in this evaluation is meant to help you identify potential opportunities for improvement and increased success leading your team. It is not intended to determine fault or to focus on any leadership flaws you might have. This is a subjective evaluation. There are no right or wrong answers. You are evaluating either your own, or someone else’s sales leadership skills based on how well you feel they are accomplishing each skill area today.

Going to GreatSalesSkills.com allows you to complete both an interactive 20-question sales leadership and 20-question sales evaluation. The sales evaluation will be used and discussed in a future article. Both of these evaluations are free and include a detailed multiple page customized report offering feedback and improvement suggestions.

But completing this twenty question evaluation is only “Step One” of the “ISO 9000” quality process…to quantify where you are. Now that you know where you are, the next question is…do you want to get better?

How to best Evaluate Your current sales leadership abilities

There are a number of ways to complete the Sales Leadership Evaluation process. Your first option is to conduct a detailed evaluation of your own leadership skills by personally answering the questions.

A second option is to use this evaluation to receive feedback and suggestions from your sales team and a third option is for you to ask your boss to complete an evaluation on your skills, then meet with them to compare answers to see if you both are in agreement about which are your strongest skill areas and which areas you both feel could be improved.

How to Prioritize the leadership skills that can provide you with the strongest improvement opportunities

This sales leadership evaluation has been developed as a comprehensive analysis tool to help identify the areas most critical to a sales leader’s success. All sales leadership skills are not created equal. After completing your detailed leadership evaluation your next step is to prioritize your answers. You want to select the specific areas, if improved, that can generate the most profound leadership skill improvements and benefits to your team.

You will receive stronger long-term, sustainable improvement if you only select two or three areas to work on first. Once you feel you are achieving some level of improvement you can then add additional learning opportunities.

How to Develop your personalized sales leadership skill improvement plan

Once you have selected the skill areas you most want to improve you next need to develop your personal leadership skill building plan. What books will you read? Audio or video programs? Any leadership training classes being sponsored by your association, industry or area universities?

You will receive the greatest long term payback if you complete your evaluation and leadership improvement planning prior to working with your sales team on their selling skills. Before you strengthen a team you need to first strengthen the leadership.

In our next article in this series we will discuss how you can next begin evaluating the members of your sales team and start designing an improvement plan to help them achieve more than they would be able to do on their own.

Want even more ideas? Then read my book “You Can Always Sell More - How To Improve Any Sales Force.” This 300+ page book outlines the entire process described in these articles. Call 800-526-0074 or go to GreatSalesSkills.com

I congratulate you on working your team through these articles as you strengthen the skills and competitive advantage of your sales team. May you enjoy the process.

Reprint with permission “You Can Always Sell More – How To Improve Any Sales Force” ISBN #0-471-73915-4 John Wiley & Sons.

Copyright 2008 Jim Pancero, Inc.



Jim Pancero
About the author:

Jim Pancero has been directly involved in "business-to-business" selling for over 35 years. Six of those years were spent successfully selling the largest computer systems for the Data Processing Division of the IBM Corporation. During Jim's prestigious IBM career he earned several awards including the coveted "Golden Circle" designation annually awarded to the top 5% of their international sales force.

In 1982, Jim founded his advanced sales training and consulting company. Since then, Jim has conducted over 2,500 presentations or consulting days for 500 companies providing a career average of five events per client. Over 90% of Jim's clients utilize his services more than once. www.pancero.com

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