Why Strong Sales Management is Worth It’s Weight in Gold
This is the first of two posts on the role sales management plays in optimizing their sales organization. You can find article two here.
A sales team will be successful if it has strong managers who can lead, direct, and inspire reps to grow and prosper.
There are various ways to run and manage a sales team regardless of the team’s size. The key is to have clarity, process, and everyone working together towards the same goal.
In many cases, sales leaders and managers were once on the front lines selling. As teams scale for growth, it’s imperative new managers use what they learned while selling but embrace the need to switch gears and focus on helping others prosper. Leverage structure and process to be efficient, but keep focus on helping people be better for themselves—that goes a long way.
Sales leaders define the organization
The success of a sales team hinges on the leader. Empowering reps and inspiring them to achieve and succeed comes when you lead your team in a way that they want to follow and don’t feel obligated to follow.
A great sales leader will:
Create a vision and strategy for where the team will go.
Define the culture.
Recognize key performers often and in all aspects—not just top sellers.
Be data-driven. Being analytical and using information leads to better and more strategic decisions (versus using only your gut instinct).
Teach reps to fish, don't fish for them
Teaching should really start before a demo even begins. Good sales managers help reps create a game plan for any prospect or client meeting so that they can visualize how the meeting will go. And once you’re in it, let your reps lead.
Be there to put emphasis on the good points they make and be careful on how much you inject. Having a rep’s back and building on their story will build their confidence and create trust in you.
But if you have to take over (it happens), make it a learning example and show the rep what good looks like. Keep your rep engaged and ask for their confirmation or acknowledgement of the points you’re making in the demo.
When the meeting is over, get their thoughts on how it went. If they beat you to it, then give positive feedback first (“I like how you set the stage, well done.”) and then share how they can improve. Remember: your whisper is a roar.
Give reps the opportunity to grow and learn
Studies show that sales reps respond best to personal development and positive change, not just numbers and milestones. Challenge your reps to constantly develop their skills and confidence.
Try this one: have a Sr. Sales Rep video record themselves doing a sales pitch. Then, send that recording to your reps to watch and replicate. After you watch the recording, provide some feedback. This enables your reps to prove that they can be just as good on their next call—talk about confidence building. It’s also important to build reps up with positive feedback. It’s all too common (and easy) to be negative and put a damper on morale even if you have the best intentions.
Take a page from the most successful soccer manager in history, Sir Alex Ferguson. He once said that “Well done” was the most important phrase in the English language. Build your reps up, don’t knock them down.
Measure activity weekly, it’s critical
Prospecting is hard, so it’s no surprise that some reps just want to put it off as long as possible or mask their efforts to make them appear greater than they really are. Never assume your sales reps are doing the work or putting the time in. Instead make sure you set a clear directive and check-in on activity metrics every week.
Think once a month is enough? It’s not. How do you know that reps aren’t just waiting until the last week of the month and cranking up their call volume to hit their number? I once had a sales rep make all their calls on the second to last day of the month, all after 6PM! Yup, they pounded the phone just to hit their number, but not really to get people on the phone. Cold calls should be about opportunity creation and not just about hitting quota.
It’s also worthwhile to look at calendars every now and then to see how sales reps are planning ahead. What do you see? All too often sales managers work hard reviewing opportunities and pipelines, but don’t check-in to see how a rep is using their time. Doing this even once will tell you a lot about your reps.
Make sure 1:1 meetings always have takeaways
Every opportunity that you have to connect with a rep should be focused on helping them get better. It’s easy to turn a weekly 1:1 into a conversation about what’s going wrong or all about numbers. While you should review key metrics (calls, connections, meetings, pipeline), make sure to add something new to their arsenal or offer them a pep talk to boost their confidence.
Ask them about their biggest challenges and offer advice.
Or, get their pulse on the latest happenings in the industry.
Keep it simple and focused so they leave the meeting with a key takeaway. Do this for every formal (weekly) meeting. Part of your role is to manage process, but it’s also about developing people.
How does your sales management team measure up?
No matter the size of your team or the processes you may or may not have in place, take the time to reflect on the way your team is running. Do you feel like you have everything dialed in? Are there tweaks you could make to boost your people and process? Successful sales organizations always find a way a win—it may not be easy but they know that it takes scalable processes, execution, and a little creative freedom to get to where they want to be.