Getting salespeople to practice what has been preached:

The biggest gap in business is the gap between knowing and doing. In most cases, people do not suffer for lack of knowledge. It's not a knowing issue, it's a doing issue. Life rewards action. If you don't change anything, then nothing is going to change. I tell the sales managers and the salespeople in my training sessions, "Today is a catalyst. It's really what you do after you leave here that's going to make a difference."

I spend a lot of my time at workshops encouraging participants, cajoling them, harassing them to put an action plan together. It's very important that they have a handful of things that they are committed to do when they leave and to do them quickly because the longer you think about it, the longer you stare at it, the harder it's going to be. It's like Zig Ziglar said, "Mr., if you have to swallow a frog, you don't want to stare at that sucker too long because the longer you look at it the uglier it gets!"

Understanding your role as a sales manager, as well as your limitations:

You can't put in what was left out. You can draw out what was left in. I didn't understand this my first year as a manager. I used to try to teach people to be driven. You can't do that. That's an inside job. Salespeople have to bring that to the table. They've got to give the universe something to work with.

The biggest challenge is getting salespeople to do something differently. Most of them still don't move nearly as far or as fast as they should. Despite laying it on the table - almost taunting them to go back and do something - they still don't do it. Too many salespeople - and some sales managers - are looking for lightning bolts, an easy and painless way to get better.

Creating valuable meetings:

Too many times managers don't really have training meetings; they have education meetings where people are not involved. A real training meeting always finds a way to get people involved. An education meeting is more or less spray-and-pray: We're going to spray information out there for 45 to 60 minutes and pray that something sticks. The ones who do it right create involvement and create marching orders.

The magic of mentoring:

As you add value to others, it comes back to you multiplied. But you must add value first. That's why you're called the leader - Leaders go first.

As you build a team, you should do so with the goal to continually make them less dependent on you. Your ego may be fattened by people's reliance on you, but the esteem of your followers is diminished. The truest measure of your leadership is how well your people perform in your absence, not how they perform while you breathe down their necks.