The Management Challenge: "I was a successful sales rep before I became a manager, so I know how to sell to our clients. It's clear to me what my reps do well and where they could improve - and I tell them. However, there's a point where a rep is like a kid who is "Mom Deaf" - they tune me out.”

A Suggestion: In his book, Lead to Succeed, Rick Pitino talks about this problem, "I can't be the only voice they ever hear. Eventually, people will simply get tired of listening to you and your voice will become little more than some whine they always hear in their sleep, some noise to be tuned out."

One suggestion for overcoming this problem is to foster and harness the power of your Eagles. Eagles are top reps, those who consistently outperform the rest. Your reps look to managers for guidance. But after a while they tune you out because they hear from you too much. They even listen to sales trainers - sometimes. But they look most to the Eagles. They emulate what their most successful peers do. Here are some ideas on how to foster Eagles to lead the rest of your reps to higher levels of success.

a) Tell top reps they are in a leadership role, whether they want to be or not. Ask them to work with you to optimize the benefit they can have on the team.

b) Be willing to pay more for Eagles. You can't afford all Eagles - but are few are very valuable.

c) Give Eagles an expanded role, as a teacher or mentor.

d) Appeal to their sense of pride, and ask them to take on some of the toughest challenges on the team - like developing and trying a new call approach or taking the lead on selling a new offering.

e) Ask them to help build things you want them to support. For example, I always ask to interview top reps prior to a program, to customize it. Since they help build the program, it’s their baby and they are supportive during the training. If they buy-in, the rest of the team is more likely to buy-in, too.

Eagles become another voice, other than your own. As a matter of fact - they are whether you like it or not. Giving these top reps this recognition and some new challenge also helps keep them on your team longer. If you aren't proactively using this leverage point in your organization - consider it!