Top LinkedIn Posts from May

As we finish off May, I thought I’d leave you with 4 of my LinkedIn posts that garnered the most attention this past month:

(5/2/23)

Such a big part of the complex sale is removing obstacles.

The best sales managers work to remove obstacles that prevent or slow-down the sales productivity of their team.

Enterprise salespeople and relationship managers work to remove obstacles that impede client success.

And the more complex the problem the client is trying to solve, the more obstacles there typically are.

One of the things that create more FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in a client or prospect’s mind is an inability to remove obstacles.

So, from a strategy perspective, we should be analyzing obstacles in previous sales campaigns.

Which ones did we cause? How can we prevent them? How do we better respond to the ones we can’t really prevent?

And from a competitive strategy perspective, are there any obstacles we can create for our opponent to have to deal with?

(5/17/23)

Sales executives and relationship managers do NOT have to be subject matter experts in order to be excellent.

Functional expertise will suffice as long as you have these two skills:

(1.) The ability to find out what stakeholders (clients & teammates) REALLY WANT.

(2.) The ability to INFLUENCE those stakeholders (external & internal).

Building knowledge is great, but it’s secondary to these two.

Better to focus there.

(5/19/23)

Sales managers: a very tough question for you.

Do your salespeople and/or relationship managers still TRUST you?

If transparency, honesty, consistency and keeping commitments BUILD trust, then ambiguity, half-truths, unpredictability, and not fulfilling unwritten promises ERODE it.

When times are tough, we can get tempted to take short cuts and compromise.

If you’ve slipped, it’s not too late to recover.

Acknowledge and apologize.

If it’s out of character for you, your reps WILL forgive you.

(5/22/23)

Brooks Koepka won the PGA yesterday, his 5^th

There are only 20 golfers in the history of the game who have won that many.

While plenty of golfers today have power, ball-striking ability, and putting touch, very few have that AND the “mental toughness & emotional stability” (as described by Sports Illustrated magazine’s Michael Rosenberg) that Koepka has.

While he’s not my favorite golfer, I am incredibly impressed with how he handles pressure.

He doesn’t flinch.

A great lesson for us all.

When you bring that to the job as well as your other skills, what a formidable opponent you become.

Until next time…

Bob

P.S. Over the years, I’ve helped a number of friends’ children land good jobs out of college based on a step-by-step system I developed. I even wrote a book about it called “The Strategic College Graduate: 7 Steps to Getting the Job You Really Want” and put it on Amazon. I’ve decided to update and enhance the system and turn it into a course. If you know a recent college grad looking or someone trying to land a better job, have them send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll add them to the update list. It should be ready to launch by July 1.