4 Things Sales Managers Must Do Now

Whether you’re a newbie Sales Manager or a seasoned pro, you need to be more than just a cheerleader for your sales team. You need to bring real value to your leadership position that’s focused on more than just the numbers.

Action is essential. It’s imperative that sales managers plan and focus on the sales process to help remove barriers and objections and to ensure that each salesperson can perform up to par. But without executing your plans, they’re just half-formed ideas that sound good, yet don’t achieve the results you want.

The following four suggestions will help you attack your sales process and elevate your team to achieve stellar results:

1. Create a team of individuals.

A cookie cutter sales force won’t work because each person on your team is an individual with a natural style of selling. What works for one guy might be totally awkward for another. When you nurture their natural abilities, you’ll see sales skyrocket.

This doesn’t mean you don’t coach your sales force in the process.What it does mean is that your team should be encouraged to go with their natural style and think for themselves to make the best decisions possible in the moment. The last thing you want is a team of dependents who rely on you for every move they make.

2. Eliminate busy-ness.

While it might look good to the executive level to see salespeople scurrying around because they equate activity with effectiveness, as a Sales Manager, you should help your team eliminate the busy work that isn’t directly related to generating qualified leads, making presentations, or closing a sale. For example, it is estimated that sales reps spend anywhere from 6 hours to almost 9 hours a week searching for information or creating content. That type of work can be off-loaded to an hourly employee whose job it is to supply your team with all the information they need to make a sale.

Your team is most effective when it’s selling. Period.

3. Support your salespeople before your company.

This might sound counter-intuitive because responding to executives’ requests for reports and information is important, but one thing to keep foremost in mind is that you are being measured on how well your team performs. All the reports, information, attendance at meetings, and more reports are secondary to serving your team. When you put your team’s needs first, you focus rightly on what will have the most impact on the numbers in the many reports executives like to see. There is a time and place for gathering this information—it’s after you’ve spent the time to ensure your team has everything it needs to succeed.

4. Commit to continual training.

Your sales force is only as good as the information you feed it, so make sure your training focuses on improving their natural skills and abilities and increasing their product or service knowledge. Help your team live your corporate culture through mindful training that is reputable and has a proven ROI. Better yet, find training that is designed specifically for your company, its mission and vision, and goals. You want the best sales force for your company, not a generic sales force that can function anywhere. Help your salespeople absorb your company’s sales process into their natural style.

A study of sales manager effectiveness by Achieve Global reported more than 22% of those reporting “low” training and coaching support reported a decline in sales revenue of more than 20%.

Be the example you want your sales force to emulate. Take the time to create value in every interaction with your team so that they receive the full effect of your coaching. If you want your team to develop themselves, let them see you developing yourself. Never stop learning and showing them how to succeed.

For proven, company-focused training for management and your sales force that uses real examples from your company’s challenges, contact us today to see how our training programmes are designed around your specific needs and goals.