Let's pretend that you have a friend named Jeff. Jeff has a ton of sales experience and has proven himself to be a valuable asset to any sales team he joins. But Jeff has a problem. He accepted a new position and reports to a boss who, despite having no sales experience and probably couldn't sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst, demands that the sales team runs his way.

If Jeff reached out to you for advice, what would you tell him?

Here are a few ideas that may help Jeff (or you) work in a sales job for a sales-clueless boss.

Difficulty: Hard

Time Required: 60 Minutes

Here's How:

1. Keep Your Focus
   There are always distractions in every career and sales is certainly no exception. Having a sales supervisor who lacks knowledge of the fundamentals of sales can be a tremendous distraction. More accurately, it can be rationalized into becoming a reason to lose focus.
   
   At the end of the day, only you can decide if you put forth your best effort. Having to overcome challenges, like a clue-less boss, is how you earn your paycheck. Remember that while you may report to someone who doesn't understand sales, it doesn't mean that you can't keep focused to providing sales excellence.
   
2. Get off the Roller-coaster
   If there's one emotion that can drive sales revenues through the floor, it is the emotion of "whims." While that may not be on any psychologists' list of human emotions, emotional whims are liken to a fallen leaf in a wind storm. It has no direction and goes wherever the wind tells it to. Up and down it rises and falls and never gets anywhere.
   
   While a career in sales is often like a roller coaster, your emotional response to your position does not have to follow suit. The more in touch you are with your objectives and goals, the less effected you will be to the "wind" coming from your boss's mouth.
   

1. Become a Teacher of Sales Excellence
   The better you do when it comes to your sales results, the more opportunities others will have to learn from you. While your "sales-challenged" boss may choose not to learn from your success, others in the organization will. And when the quarterly or yearly numbers are tabulated, your success will stand out from the crowd.
   
   You probably won't be able to sit down with your boss and explain to him how sales works. But, you will be able to show him what "good" looks like by your results, customer satisfaction and by how you handle yourself while in his company.
   
2. Control That Which You Can Control
   The leading cause of stress is trying to effect things that you cannot effect. In other words, stress is caused by people trying to fix something that they cannot fix.
   
   An empowering quote states: "It is useless to worry about things that you can control. For since you have control, take action to make things turn out the way you want them to. And it is useless to worry about things that you cannot control. Since you have no control over the outcome, worrying serves no purpose."
   
   For Jeff, he needs to focus on what he has complete control over; Himself.
   
3. Sales has a Built-In Filter
   Those in sales are ultimately judged by the sales results they produce. The same holds true for sales managers. They are judged by how their team performs. Though it can take a long time with some companies for under-performers to be weeded out, it is inevitable.
   
   Jeff needs to position himself by delivering results and making himself indispensable.
   

Tips:

1. When helping out a fellow sales professional who is struggling, be careful to not make your friends challenges, your challenges.