I saw the movie 300 awhile back and just couldn't get it out of my mind. My wife thought I had gotten testosterone poisoning. For about a week, I couldn't talk about anything without using military references. I started to Google ancient battles and read the history books in my library. By the time my next web meeting with my group came around, I was fired up to use my military metaphors.

During the seminar on sales management strategies for a favorite client of mine I got several clips from the DVD and when I needed emphasis on a point, I let it rip. "THIS IS SPARTA!

It took only about three minutes before I got the whole thing out of my system. I got a question that didn't fit my forum from a great lady who had worked for the firm and was having trouble with closing. Her voice was very gentle and came across as my homeroom teacher did when I was in grade school.

She asked "How could I make more money if I couldn't bring more sales to a close? I asked her what was the hardest part of the process for her and she said "coming up with the words to get them to commit to the sale." I then asked her what was the most fun and rewarding part of the process for her; she immediately said, getting on the phone and qualifying leads.

I quickly set up a survey and posted it to the group of eight sales persons. This was the result:

Question - What was the best part of the sales process for you? Phone prospecting - 1 Face-to-face cold calling - 1 Appointment setting - 2 Demonstration - 2 Follow up - 0 Closing the sale - 2 After sale service - 0 Customer service - 0 Of the eight salespersons, one chose phone prospecting, one chose Face-to-face cold calling, one chose appointment setting, two chose demonstration, and two chose closing the sale. I then asked the group to take another survey to pick the hardest part of the sales process for them. It broke down as follows:

Question - What was the hardest part of the sales process for your? Phone prospecting - 4 Face-to-face cold calling - 1 Appointment setting - 1 Demonstration - 0 Follow up - 0 Closing the sale - 2 After sale service - 0 Customer service - 0 I asked the team if they felt comfortable enough with their colleagues to try an experiment for three weeks if they would all make more money at the end of the test period. The answer was a resounding sure, we'll give it a shot. So I gave each of them a specific job to do.

In the old days, an army was broken up into long and short range troops. Each group had a specialty and was used for specific tasks. If the battle called for softening up the enemy from a distance, archers would be used. If the army had mobile infantry or riders, they might be used to engage the enemy in waves before the main force came in to finish off the battle. I broke down each sales person into their specialty. We took the prospecting list and deployed the long range tactical division. I had my two appointment setters and the phone prospecting expert working the phones. She trained and coached the appointment setters to master the phone.

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