Contrary to the belief of many sales managers, sales, like any profession, is a career that must be constantly improving and edging forward. While there might be many factors why your averages haven’t improved over the past several years like in the case of commission or bonuses, there are other factors that might explain why you might not be moving closer to building a profitable sales team. In other words, is there a specific training element that might be taking more away from your great sales performance?
Be the Salesperson.Don’t be the one who enjoys selling at the expense of your company and its customers. There are several aspects of your sales job that should be under your control like commission performance, contingency planning, professionalism, ethical behavior, courtesies, and a whole lot more. How would you look if you were not the team leader? Do you think those around you would respect and trust you if you were not involved? Do you think you would want to be getting rolled out by your sales team twice a week at the expense of the customers around you? If so, get involved in the early steps of making a sale with your salespeople and campaign against sleepless nights.
Act Like a Manager.You have to act like the sales manager because you really are the sales manager. Your salespeople should trust you and feel comfortable and secure in your presence every day to operate. As the salesman, you have to be all about accountability in every aspect of the sales process. You should never say ” attitude and forget” or ” I know nobody who can help me”. Your team will treat you like the rep who had excessive sales activity and is strung out on commission trying to get be on a six-figure or seven-figure raise. So, by acting like a sales management role, you will leave your salespeople feeling so much more secure and credible in your presence.
Take the extra required sales training.You are expected to increase sales through the use of improving your sales skills, including your closing techniques, and knowing your customers characteristics. Do what it takes to address these three, potentially many, recurring sales training issues. If you don’t, you will become tired, overworked, and probably burned out and have a mission and personal goals that you don’t attain because you have no sales training to fall back on.
Don’t tell your salespeople why!Now, this does not mean you should constantly tell the sales team why they need a certain activity or how sales is a priority. But, as a sales manager, it is your job to take a few minutes every day to explain what the sales objectives will be for each day-isthe case of sales training. If you don’t, you are losing!
Besides wasting much valuable time drumming out the goals of the day, knowing what is expected at the end of each week or every month is a prerequisite for success in sales. This should be part of your daily sales training agenda.
Raise the bar. champion salespeople are all achieving significant financial success in their careers which mean they don’t want to have the same responsibilities your team members have. As a sales management role, you have to dedicate time and energy to helping your team evolve to your new standards. As an example, maybe you have been here before-you know what I talk about. You go to a training company and you take training classes around a sales training methodology you know works. Isn’t it amazing how many your clients have said, “I want to use the system and I want to do everything they recommend”, but they don’t want to continue to on-the-job instructions. Another area of importance is to get to the details or else you get lost in the “pokerace99,” or worse yet, get into a high flying several hundred-dollar software solution. You may not be the technical guru, but you have to combine driven sales training with at least some cold, hard fact based selling.
Suit up the sales team!This one is just a bonus, no doubt about it because you are the one that’s responsible for the sale. You must swiftly and rudely terminate a salespeople’s sales performance when it’s below expectation. I simply love the fact that when a salesperson is not performing or they have dropped the ball, besides being prof ESSIONally rude, I then have the right and obligation to terminate them immediately. If I see a guys a little behind, I am the one that has the choice of either motivating him or finding an internally honest person who can go with them and help them get back on track. Let their bad sales performance result in them losing opportunities. Their improvement on their sales calls or individual performance will not be diminished. I have no time to waste, anymore.
