According to Pipedrive, sales management is the process of developing a sales force, coordinating sales operations, and implementing sales techniques that allow a business to consistently hit, and even surpass, its sales targets.
Sales management can make or break your company. After all, without revenue, your company cannot survive. This blog offers 9 practical tips that will make you awesome at sales management. After reading this blog, you will know how to lead your sales team to (and beyond!) the sales targets.
1. Prioritize goals
Every day, you face unlimited opportunities while you have limited resources at your disposal to address those opportunities. Without clear goals, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Without priorities, you can find yourself overlooking big opportunities while chasing small ones.
Having goals and priorities allows you to decide what work is most important and what the best order is to tackle that work.
2. Establish a path to reach goals
According to Mark Christie, sales management is essentially about planning: how do you make the most of your opportunities and resources while minimizing distractions and threats? A sales manager must create a clear and achievable plan to reach the company’s established goals. What does your team need to succeed, and how do you get it?
In order to adapt to circumstances, plans and goals must be flexible. Nevertheless, they should still be a steady means of guidance. That means that goals should be changed only after much thought and deliberation, and that plans to reach those goals typically require more frequent adjustment.
Cóbhan Phillipson claims that equipping your team with software that increases its efficiency and effectiveness is now vital. Value-adding content has become essential to the sales call. Case studies and data-driven reports can quickly demonstrate a company’s value to a prospect. Make sure to include this in the path to your goals as well.
3. Earn trust and win commitment
Christie says that many sales managers forget that they are part of the team. It is not only important that your salespeople trust each other; they should also trust you as their leader. Christie therefore urges you to avoid turning work into a zero-sum game, where one person’s success must come at another’s expense. Salespeople do their best work when they know they are valued and when everyone benefits from helping others succeed.
4. Help your sales team achieve its potential
Find ways to help your sales team succeed. This requires training, coaching and arranging responsibilities to play to individual strengths as you make adjustments for weaknesses. Aim to make salespeople better at their jobs over time and fit their positions to their talents.
Recognize different styles of sales management, communication and learning styles. Not everybody is like you. That means you have to help your salespeople do their best in whatever style is natural to them.
Phillipson mentions that you should leverage emerging technologies too. According to him, the best sales managers are constantly looking to get the most out of themselves and their team. New and emerging technologies can quickly add ROI and value to your sales force.
5. Accepts responsibility
I like it when Christie says that praise should always flow down and that responsibility should always flow up. It is easy for sales managers to abuse their power to cover their mistakes, but as Christie says, this is never a good idea. Give credit to those who work for you, do not hog the limelight, and praise in public while you criticize in private.
When giving praise or criticism, always focus on the work rather than the salesperson. Feedback should never be a matter of whether someone is good or bad. Instead, you should focus on specific achievements or particular problems, and offer constructive suggestions for improvement.
In addition, Phillipson says that some sales managers focus on the negative too much; do not fall into this trap. Morale will suffer. Praise and thank your sales team and the individual members every now and then. Celebrate success stories and make sure everybody hears about them.
Phillipson also says that if you want your sales team to accept your constructive criticism, you should be willing to accept feedback from them. You should occasionally even request feedback; that way, you create an open and honest working culture.
6. Delegate work, but not responsibility
Christie points out that, as a sales manager, you are not only accountable for your team’s work, but also for providing all the tools you can give the team members to ensure their success.
This means that you have to train them when they lack the skills or experience that you have, and that you have to explain objectives and issues, so your team is prepared to address them. Be clear about your requirements, standards, objectives and timeline. They should be stated at the beginning of the project and they should change as little as is practical given the circumstances.
7. See opportunities in problems and lessons in mistakes
Life is never perfect; it is just a matter of time until something goes wrong. You should therefore be prepared at all times.
Make certain your team feels safe to bring you bad news quickly. The sooner you are aware of trouble, the better your chances are to minimize its damage.
Sometimes, problems arise because you or your team have made mistakes. Mistakes should be acknowledged and serve as learning experiences. Consider what you and your team can gain from the experience, even as you address the current problem.
This does not mean you cannot hold salespeople accountable, but since everyone makes mistakes, even a large but isolated error says nothing about a salesperson’s long-term value.
8. Identify sales roadblocks
Take the time to identify roadblocks in your company’s sales processes. As Phillipson says, it is important to take time to figure out the most pressing issues and to plan accordingly. It helps to incorporate sales-management software that provides detailed analytics of where deals are breaking down.
Phillipson also urges you to assess how your salespeople are spending their time. After all, time is the most precious resource of all.
9. Keep ill-fitting clients out
Millie Liu understands that it may be tempting to expand your customer outreach to clients outside of your “sweet spot” to hit your numbers, but this is not a good idea. Bringing in complicated or ill-fitting customers will cost your company resources as well as countless hours of implementation and configuration time. Instead, focus on high-quality leads that can turn into valuable customers.
Social Selling
Social selling is now a crucial way for successful sales teams to communicate with their prospects. Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. If you want to learn more about social selling for your sales team, I have a reading tip for you.
The blog ‘The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Social Selling’ demonstrates that social selling increases sales, presents 6 steps to get started with social selling, gives 3 steps to leverage the power of social selling, and it lists the 5 worst social-selling mistakes you can make.