Sales Management Leadership
In today’s competitive environment, sales management or better yet, sales leadership is key to sales management success. The added pressure of a weakened economy challenges even the best sales teams to maintain their direction, passion, and productivity. For those teams that weren’t delivering their best before the downturn, the challenges are even greater. Sales management success in today’s marketplace calls for exceptional leadership from those responsible for building and maintaining a high-performance sales team.
Many sales managers confuse leadership with being the boss. They assume their title is enough to make them a leader. That’s not the case. In my opinion, the core idea of leadership is to serve. What a concept: you become a leader to serve others. Leaders are there to serve the needs of the people they lead. As a sales manager, if your salespeople can’t see how your leadership helps them, why would they follow you?
Put it all together, and you will see that success, in sales management, is best achieved when you understand that your success is based on your ability to achieve results through others. Use your leadership abilities to provide your sales team with the tools, support, and guidance they need to achieve their individual goals.
How can you determine if a sales team lacks leadership? The first sign of poor leadership is the lack of a sales plan. How can someone lead if they don’t have a plan? What is the vision for achieving company goals?
The second sign is the lack of defined expectations for the sales team and each of its members. A good leader provide each of their salesperson with a clear understanding of what is expected. I have seen salespeople producing at 75% of their assigned quota and they were happy with it. Why? Because no one said anything. No real leadership to help them get better.
The third sign is inadequate coaching skills. Coaching involves one-on-one interaction with each salesperson. This allows the sales manager to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. You have plenty of opportunities for this during regularly scheduled meetings.
Spending time in the field with your salespeople will allow you to observe them in action. This allows you to identify areas that need improvement , than design a program to help them turn their weaknesses into strengths.
The final sign, of a lack of sales leadership, is high sales turnover. If you see a lot of people leaving the team, it can’t be because they were all bad salespeople. As they say, a fish stinks from the head. High turnover means it’s time to examine the sales environment.
So what steps can you take to build your sales management leadership skills and develop that winning sales team?
- Have a game plan for the sales team: Know where to concentrate sales efforts, to get the best return. This would include having each salesperson develop a territory planer. Once they have it, work with them to updated the plan least quarterly. Make sure each salesperson knows exactly what you expect from them, and what they can expect from you.
- Each salesperson should have an individual quota: Have one-on-one sessions with each salesperson and chart what they will need to do to exceed the quota. Here is an example: Bob has a quota of $100,000.00 per month. Work with him to determine his average sale. Once you know the average sales price, take a look at his closing ratio to determine how many proposals or presentations he gives to make one sale. And lastly look at the number of prospects they need to make the required number of presentations. This is an oversimplification, but I’m sure you get the picture.
- Get out of the office: Not to make sales on your own, but to work with each of your salespeople. You want ot get a feel for their territory, their customers, and their individual strengths and weaknesses. Look for ways you can help them improve. If you find that they need more product knowledge, arrange for them to get more product training. If they need better presentation skills, schedule time to work with them on their presentation. Look for ways to make them better and they will follow you forever.
- Hire the right salespeople: There are no Hall of Fame coaches that didn’t have Hall of Fame players. Before you hire any more salespeople, write out a full job description. After the job description is completed, write out (in as much detail as possible) the duties the salesperson must perform. After you complete the job description and the duties, meet with other managers in your organization and get their input and see if they have any suggestions. As you go through the interview process, enlist a couple manager form other departments to take part in the interview process. First, it gives the candidate the feeling that the organization is truly supportive of the sales department. Second, it allows your managers to become invested in the process, and better prepared to help support the sales effort. Lastly, design a 90-day on boarding program for the new salesperson, where they spend time in other departments and with other members of the sales team to fully acclimate to the organization and its people, goals, and objectives.
I have one book on leadership I highly recommend. It’s Harvard Business Reviews “10 Must Reads on Leadership.” The editors of HBR went through 100’s of articles on leadership and selected what they felt were the most important ones to help you better develop your leadership skills. You can follow my affiliate link by clicking here, to purchase the book on Amazon. The book retails for $24.95, but by using this link, you can get it for $16.47, saving you $8.48.
As a leader, what you must bring to the table are qualities that make people what to work with and for you. Provide them with the belief that they will be better off working with you and your organization than they could with anyone else, and your sales management success is just around the corner.
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Related podcast:
SMW 001 An Introduction to the Sales Management Workshop