Most organizations use some form of sales to drive their product or services. In many of these businesses sales team leader is one who does coaching or mentoring. The majority of these sales leaders are in a position of leadership because they were good at selling. Unfortunately, there is not a direct correlation between being a good salesman and being a good coach or leader. Many leaders have some natural tendencies: they train others how they were trained, they try to motivate other according to how they are motivated, and they tend to miss-focus their energies.

Even best intentioned sales leaders often display a subtle tendency to focus on two groups of people: employees who are top performers and those who are under performing. The average performers are usually left to fend for themselves. If sales leaders are aware of this natural tendency, they can usually self-correct it. With some additional coaching, it is easier to help average performer become a top performer than it is to transform under performer. When you have developed a comprehensive training program you can strategize about where your investment of time will result in best ROI.

An effective mentor or coach can help decrease learning curves. Many businesses have a learning curve in which people at front of curve significantly under perform people at top of curve. For example, if you realize that it takes a new sales associate 12 to 18 months to start really performing, how much would it be worth to your company to dedicate a leader to spending one-on-one time coaching with new sales associates if that coaching could decrease their time to optimal performance from 12-18 months to 6-8 months?

Promote Leadership Development. Once you have refined your program by working with a couple of leaders it's time to start promoting program. •Start by making it known during interview process with potential employees. Many small company's use their leadership development program to draw in high-potential applicants that otherwise would go to larger organizations. •Sell your leadership training program to applicants by telling them (and showing them) how invested you are in helping them develop as a leader. The kind of people who do well in small to medium-sized businesses are keenly aware of importance of self-development. These people will be impressed that you want to make an investment in them. •Start highlighting successful characteristics to your current employees and draw attention to employees that are doing well. Be careful to point out that your goal is for every employee to be their best. •Work hard not to create an atmosphere of cut-throat competition where one person can win only when another loses. Show every employee how they can succeed. •Use your leaders to coach others and consider bringing in an outside coach to help your leaders coach their employees more effectively. Summary Leadership training is absolutely critical to success of business, especially small to medium sized companies. One of mantras of 1990's human potential movement was "people are our most valuable asset." There was a lot of verbal acknowledgement of this truth, but not a lot of companies acted on it. Smart companies are beginning to recognize that leadership development and people training is a process, not an event and this process has bottom line results.

For companies looking to increase their revenues and cut their costs, leadership development is a must. Over long run companies who develop their leaders and train their people significantly outperform companies who do not.

ACTION STEP: List all of things you want your customer to feel when they think of your company: excitement about future, feeling younger or prettier, more balance, more fun, more time, closer to their friends, better organized, safer, etc. Evaluate how well your current communication creates this feeling and specific areas where you want to improve.

4. Distinguish your benefits from your features and communicate them clearly.

Features are what your product or service does. Benefits are why your client needs your product or service. For example, a famous company advertises "our servers allow your website to be up and running 99.999% of time." That is a feature, but you must also tell your client what benefit of this is to them. Well, if their on-line business sells $200,000 worth of product every day, then being on-line only 98% of time will cost them serious money in lost sales. For every feature you have, you must tell your client what benefit is. Is your product better, faster, cleaner, guaranteed or longer-lasting? Will your service create more clients, decrease turnover, or increase margins? These are all great features, but you must tell your clients how this benefits them specifically.

You must get in front of your potential market and detail your specific benefits. Build value into what you do and how you do it. If you fail to clearly communicate what your benefits are to customers, rest assured-your competition will.

ACTION STEP: Take a piece of paper and draw two columns on it. Label on side "Features" and other "Benefits." List all of features of your service or product and for every feature state what benefit is to your target client. Integrate these statements into all of your communication efforts on a regular basis.

5. Reduce risk of working with you.

Many entrepreneurs have products or services that are similar to what much larger, more established companies have. Why should your potential customer buy your product over big company's product? Are they taking a risk with a company that may not be around 5 or 10 years from now? Will your 10 year guarantee really mean anything in 10 years?

While no one can predict future of your business, smart business owner recognizes need to develop creative ways to reduce risk of their clients in working with them.

ACTION STEPS: List what your company is doing to reduce risk potential customers see in working with a small, entrepreneurial business. Do you offer a written guarantee? Will you stand behind it? Do you offer a trial period? How have you achieved success with other clients? Will you provide them with case studies on previous clients? Do you have a strong reference list?

6. How effective is your cheapest form of advertisement-your business card?

Examine your business card as if you were one of your target customers. Does it tell them succinctly who you are, what you do and how you can help them? If not, perhaps it is time to redesign it.

ACTION STEP: Ask several of your existing clients what they think of your business card. What does it say to them? Is it memorable? How could you improve on it? Thank them for their suggestions and implement them in your redesign.

7. Can people find your product or services on internet?

Near beginning of internet age only Fortune 500 companies had websites. It was seen as a sign of being on "cutting edge." Today that perception has changed. More and more consumers perceive a website as a sign of legitimacy. Many consumers now believe lack of a company website to be a sign of a questionable business. With an increasing number of ways to create a decent website on a small budget ($2000-$5000), lack of money is not an acceptable excuse any more. Not every business will benefit from having a web presence, but most will. The question is not, "how long can I get away with not having a website?" but, "how many potential customers am I loosing without having a website?" A good website can be a great source of passive income.

For those of you who already have a website, how many of you regularly profit from it? How many people are visiting your website every week? What is your conversion rate for these visitors? What percentage of your existing customers found you from your site? How can you better serve your existing clients on your website? What are you doing to increase visibility of your site on search engines?

ACTION STEP: If you do not have a website you should have several REALLY good reasons why not. If you can't come up with several reasons then you should commit to getting one. If you do have a website, ask company who hosts your website to site down with you and explain all statistics about your site (how many unique visitors, how long do they stay, what page do they leave from, how do they find you). After that, sit down with your web designer and talk strategy: how can you increase your search engine rankings, what can you do to covert more customers, does your current site accurately reflect who you are and what your benefits are to your target audience, etc.