There are two ways to describe what a sales manager does. One is to look at the outcomes they are responsible for creating. Another is to look at the individual tasks that deliver those outcomes. There are several things that make it difficult for sales managers to reach their goals, and much of their work aims to overcome these challenges.

We work for decades, yet for most of us, there are a handful of moments in time that define the course of our leadership career. Unfortunately, these moments — opportunities or crises — don’t come with a caption suggesting, “Hey, pay attention and embrace this mess because it’s going to turn out to be important to you.” For individuals who choose to lead, it pays to see the signposts. Here are three significant moments in the career of everyone who leads that merit your complete engagement.

Selling is a craft. It’s a performance. It’s also a bit of a mystery. Why is it that two salespeople who work for the same manager have different results? Both salespeople sell the same thing, to similar clients, at the same price. If one salesperson complains about an underhanded competitor, another salesperson has little trouble dispatching that same competitor. Let’s agree to call this “the variability of individual results.”

One of the most significant themes in my practice is the leader whose team of direct reports are experiencing difficulties working together. Most of my clients are CEOs, and they face this challenge with their company’s senior leadership team, but it’s a dilemma that can occur at every level of an organization. And while the leader isn’t solely responsible for their team’s culture, they typically have the greatest ability to influence it–for better and for worse.

The squeaky wheels in your organization may also be important sources of innovation. Some of the links between creativity and risk are pretty self-evident. Creativity is all about trying something new, exploring the unknown, and accepting uncertainty and the possibility of failure. In the corporate setting, we understand intuitively that creativity fuels strategy, innovation, and growth. In a world where machines are taking over predictable, tedious tasks,

Invest One Hour a Month to Help Your Team Perform Even Better Every truly high-performing team has one thing in common: They spend time in candid conversation talking about what’s working and consistently look for ways to improve. They look at the work they’re doing and ask “how can we” do this EVEN BETTER? And they enjoy and celebrate their success.

To achieve top sales performance, you don’t need a sales team dominated by business degrees from Harvard or resumes full of eye-popping company logos. Those attributes are all well and good, but they’re not requirements for top performance. Instead, look to your sales managers. Are they prepared to provide the leadership and coaching their sales teams need to maximize selling potential?

How confident are you that your sales team can meet your KPIs this quarter? If you’re like the 70% majority of sales managers, there’s some doubt in your mind. Meeting key objectives and sales targets seems more unattainable by the day, but it doesn’t have to be. To meet objectives consistently, keep your salesforce satisfied and striving, and give senior leadership reports that have them singing your praises, you need one crucial thing: A sales leadership framework.

In many industries — particularly “white collar” ones — the era of “bosses” is in decline. There is a rise in the need for leaders, guides, coaches, mentors, role-models, creators and builders, but less of a clamoring for bosses, managers, controllers, monitors, evaluators and paper pushers. This shift has been driven by changing demographics, the spread of technology, the rise of unbundled and distributed work, new behavior expectations and a re-definition of what “work” is — including the rise of fractionalized

Sales trainer Amy Franko shares highlights from a webinar she presented recently for SMM Connect on the most important metrics for sales managers to monitor. Before we dive into that, I speak with Amy about her shift from B2B sales in the tech world to starting her own sales consultancy. She talks about how she goes to market and how companies can be smarter buyers of sales training.

As leaders, a key element of our job is to maximize the performance of each person on our team. We do this through hiring the right people, training, giving them tools/processes/programs/systems to help them perform, providing the right support, eliminating barriers to their performance, and constantly coaching/developing them. We set performance goals, we measure their attainment against that performance.

You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Hi, I’m Kevin Eikenberry, answering the questions that new leaders ask us. Actually, it’s our goal to help all leaders be more productive, successful, and confident. Today, I am answering a question about how much leaders talk. Are you ready? Let’s get started. Lots of leaders have asked me this question: Kevin. Am I talking too much?

Approach everyone you give feedback to as if they are an iceberg, as there is more below the surface when you deliver structured feedback. Feedback is structured information one person offers to another to impact a choice or behavior. The most effective way to give feedback is to offer someone a choice and present yourself as a neutral party.

Leading isn’t easy, and leading sales is one of the more difficult roles in business. Unlike some other leadership roles, there seem to be more variables in sales. Some of them include the sales effectiveness of the sales force, the economic environment, the nature of competition, and the variability that comes from trying to help people change their business results. This list of qualities is necessary for success, although there are others.

As leaders, we most often look to blogs, books or boardroom meetings for guidance, and yet sometimes it’s everyday life that hands us the best leadership insights. Recently life gifted me just such a lesson: the importance of asking, “How is this different?” While preparing for work in another part of the world, I took part in a security briefing.