Ed Schultek

Most negotiating problems are selling problems - weaknesses in the sales process that become evident when you go to final negotiation. Great negotiators focus on being great sellers first, reducing the amount of negotiating to a minimum. The key is to make sure you don’t just treat the symptoms, but that you go to the source.

Everyone wants to be working at their full potential, but if you’re not keeping a close eye on your sales team for possible weaknesses then you could be missing out on many opportunities.

The last couple of months we have been examining the top 13 characteristics that the most successful companies adopt. (Read part 1 here and read part 2 here). We finish off this series with the last 5 characteristics of winning corporate cultures.

We are more than 30 days into the New Year. How are you tracking with the implementation and commitment of your goals? Last month we outlined the first 4 of 13 characteristics of what it takes to get to the next level. Following are 4 more characteristics that winning corporate cultures should have in order to achieve excellence.

Typically companies jump into a new year with plans and initiatives that they are ready to commit to and implement. We are often asked what it takes to get to the next level. Outlined below are 4 of the top 13 characteristics that winning corporate cultures should have in order to achieve excellence.

Have you ever really thought about how much time a sales rep puts into an activity for the sole purpose of completing the activity? With each activity, does the sales person stop and consider what the goals are, whether the activity supports the goals and/or what the measurable outcome should be?

When a business owner comes to me with a seemingly intractable problem, I know with near certainty before the conversation begins that the issue at hand boils down to a break down in relations: with customers, clients, or staff.

Lots of older managers use the "Millennial" label as an excuse not to engage, not to be accountable, not to learn about a given salesperson. Sometimes, it’s almost like we throw up our hands when we run into a problem and simply say, “Oh, well, I don’t know what to do, and how could I? This person is a Millennial.” That’s unacceptable. It’s a cop-out. This is more than a generation gap; it’s a major management blind spot.

You already know that a "gut feeling" is not enough when it comes to making a hire. Now it's time to take action on what you know. You need a clear, quantifiable hiring process, and everyone who hires employees needs to understand it and be able to follow it. Creating and refining this process is one of the core responsibilities of a leader.

Why is it that every function in an organization has a common process but the one that generates the revenue?  If you want to change the kind of year you are going to have in 2018, give the sales team an effective common process.