Sales Management For Dummies
Overview
Guide your sales force to its fullest potential
With a proven sales management and execution process, Sales Management For Dummies aids organizations and individuals in reaching the highest levels of success. Although selling products or services is a central part of any sales job, there's much more to it. With this fun and accessible guide, you'll go beyond the basics of sales to learn how to anticipate clients' needs, develop psychologist-like insight, and so much more.
Because few people go to school to earn degrees in selling, sales talent is developed in the field. Unfortunately, most training efforts fail to reach their objectives, in large part because of the absence of any kind of
reinforcement or coaching. This book is your one-stop guide to managing an existing or start-up sales force to succeed in every area of sales—from prospecting to closing.
- Shows you how to reach your fullest potential in sales
- Helps you effectively inspire great performance form any sales force
- Demonstrates how to prospect, recruit, and increase your organization's income and success
- Teaches you how to manage sales teams to greatness
If you're one of the millions of salespeople or sales managers worldwide looking for a fast, easy, and effective way to get the most out of your sales force, the tried-and-true guidance presented inside sets you up for success.
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About The Author
Butch Bellah is an expert salesperson, trainer, author, motivational speaker, and one-time stand-up comedian. For more than 30 years, he has honed his sales skills and trained others in the fine art of gaining more appointments, winning more business, and retaining more customers.
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sales management for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Being a successful sales manager means so much more than being a good sales person (although that certainly is a big part of it). You have to be skilled at identifying new talent, know how to run an effective sales meeting, and set and track the progress of goals for your team. Nobody said the job was easy, but it's certainly never dull.
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You're the sales manager. You got the job for a reason — you're good at what you do. You've not only exhibited the skills to be a great salesperson, but you've got what it takes to be a manager, as well. If you've been promoted into this position, you'll find yourself now supervising people you recently were working beside.
A good sales meeting can set the tone for a phenomenal day with your sales team. A bad sales meeting or one where they feel their time is wasted can have the exact opposite effect. When deciding to have a sales meeting—or any of meeting where you bring your sales team together, here are five things you need remember.
As the sales manager for your organization, it's your responsibility to lead and manage the sales team. If you're like many first time sales managers, that one statement leaves you glassy-eyed with a bead of sweat forming on your forehead.
Relax. That broad definition can be overwhelming and being overwhelmed kills the very traits you've exemplified in your career: creativity, a positive attitude, a desire for growth and leadership.
Sales
There are two words you must use in order to become a successful sales manager. They're both small words, but they have to be a part of your vocabulary on a daily basis. The words are no and delegate. Nowhere in sales training do you learn to use these words, but as a sales manager they can save you time, frustration, and heartache.
If you’ve got salespeople who have been “in the business” for five minutes, five years or five decades they all need one thing: training. Training is essential to a salesperson’s success and you, as the manager have to ensure there is continuing education happening at all times.
You have to keep them at the forefront of industry knowledge, product knowledge and always be practicing and improving their sales skills.
As a manager, you have to be conscious of the fact that praise is as important for your team as criticism — sometimes more important. Too many times a managers' only feedback to employees is negative — what they did wrong. It's time to change that.
You often fail to acknowledge when people do a good job — every manager does.
Alright sales manager, a segment of your sales team has earned the right — note the word earned — to be considered your top performers. You should align most, if not all, of your systems, reporting, and other ancillary tasks to fit their needs.
But, how do you find out what they need? How can you help them grow?
Closing percentage is an important key performance indicator (KPI) for sales managers to consider. The best way to figure closing percentage is to take the number of sales and divide it by the number of presentations.
Just like every other KPI, closing percentage is designed to provide you with some insight on where your salesperson is either strong or someplace he needs help.
Sales
Complacency is the leading killer among sales teams; it steals enthusiasm, crushes motivation and otherwise saps the energy of your salespeople. As a manager, strive to avoid it in your team members at all costs. Instead, create a little friendly competition and have your sales team stretch.
The best way to avoid complacency is to continually inspire your people and give them incentive to progress, grow, and innovate.
Email has made communication for sales managers more convenient, efficient, and timely, but have we sacrificed clarity for that convenience. Email makes up the majority of written communication in any business and is something you need to be well versed in.
Perhaps more seriously than verbal discussions because there is a record of written communication.
When sales managers must dole out disciplinary action and put together a written warning, be as specific as possible. Even if you and the salesperson both know exactly what happened, you need to spell it out so that an outside party who knows nothing about the situation could read the warning a year later and be able to understand exactly what prompted your actions.
Part of the formula for a manager to build a successful sales team is the everyday work environment. A negative, toxic environment produces negative, toxic results. Sadly, that type of environment still exists.
If you're going to have a winning team, they can't hang out in losing surroundings. If you're going to take care of those superstars, you've got to give them the proper workplace for them to thrive.
If you inherit an existing sales team when you start as a sales manager, you also inherit their compensation plan. Even though there are only three ways to pay salespeople, there are many different ways to twist and turn how you reach the end result. Your choices are:
Salary: Salespeople are compensated with no regard to the sales they make or the profits they generate.
Sales
As a sales manager, it's clear that you work for the sales team instead of the team working for you. However, one of the biggest traps to avoid is to not let yourself be drawn into being nothing but a secretary for the sales team. And it's easy to get drawn in.
As far as you can according to industry and company policies, provide your salespeople with not only the responsibility but also the ability to make decisions for themselves up to a certain point.
Sales
Early in your tenure as a new sales manager, it's important to establish and communicate your expectations to each member of your sales organization. Some have their own ideas of where the lines are drawn, a few may be living in the past with your predecessor, and still others may have no preconceived notions and need the direction immediately.
In your position as sales manager you will be asked from time-to-time to produce a sales forecast for the coming year or financial period. Even though a forecast is all subjective, the more accurately you can predict your future sales the more valuable the information is to others making decisions within your company.
If your sales team is made up of good salespeople they not only pay for themselves, but they contribute to the profits of the company. If they aren't, then you should have terminated them for performance and maybe you wouldn't be reducing your workforce now.
The only case when a sales force may need to be reduced is when two companies merge or one acquires the other and sales territories overlap causing a duplication of duties.
Sales
As a manager, if someone on your sales team isn't producing the desired results, you have to treat them just as you've trained them to handle a prospect:
Ask questions: Never assume you know why someone isn't living up to expectations. Ask questions. Find out what's going on that could be hampering your team member's performance.
It's natural to for sales managers to gravitate toward potential managers — those who actually want additional responsibility and can handle the job of taking it on. You'll know who they are even though they make up only an estimated ten percent of your sales force.
Although you may set up your own criteria and traits you look for, some run through virtually 100 percent of people willing and able to carry your organization into the future:
Positive attitude: These people tend to exemplify what it means to be positive.
As a manager, you've narrowed your search to a handful of lucky sales candidates you'd like to interview. But, where to start? What to say? Prepare yourself for the interview and know what you want to say about your industry, your company, and the specific job available. A
t the same time you're interviewing them, they're interviewing you, and you certainly want to be able to highlight the benefits of your company if you find your next superstar.
Sales
In many cases, being a new sales manager means you were recently a member of the sales team — your friends, your buddies, your girlfriends. Well, not anymore. One of the changes you must make as you accept your new position is that you can no longer have the same type of relationship with your salespeople as you did before.
Sales
When you have to terminate someone based on sales performance, it's not always as cut-and-dried as action-based or behavior-based offenses. Many times performance-based termination is the culmination of a process — you set out your minimum performance standards and determined someone isn't going to be a long term part of your team.
Too many times as a manager you find yourself managing from the bottom up rather than from the top down. You spend your time and energy on the bottom ten percent of your workforce or sales team rather than the top ten percent because they're the ones who have all the problems.
Sometimes you notice the lesser salespeople are the ones creating problems in the first place.
Most successful sales businesses and organizations are made up of many different personality types. In fact, that's what makes them successful — if everyone thought the same, responded the same, and performed the same, any business would fail pretty quickly. It would be a pretty peaceful place to work, though .
As a new sales manager, try thinking of hiring new salespeople in the same way as sports teams do. When a sports team look to bring in a new short stop or a quarterback, they don't put an ad in the newspaper, do they? No, they scout out players they want. So, why can't you find the person you want instead of letting the person find you?
It's time for management and sales teams to dig in and really take a look at how to establish your team's sales goals. Now's the time when you shoot for the moon, go for the gusto, and all those other tired old clichés.
As a manager, require each of your salespeople to turn in her sales goals for the coming year.
Sales
If the easiest sale you will ever make is to your current customers, the second easiest is to a referral. Thus, as a manager, you need to make sure your sales team is asking for referrals. There are many salespeople who have no fear at all when it comes to asking for the sale but can't bring themselves to ask for a referral.
As a sales manager, you have your sales process and your sales cycle — you know how it should work and how long it should take to complete. The next step is putting together a formal training program for your team.
You train your sales team on your sales process. Some members of your team want to tell you how they used to do it elsewhere or to share any number of techniques, and that's fine.
A good manager inspires her staff to be better. In order to really inspire your sales superstars to achieve more and continue to outperform the rest of your team and their competition, you need to give them special treatment.
If one of your sales team puts in the effort to achieve a certain goal or attain a certain level of customer satisfaction and gets the same treatment as the person who underperforms, it's not going to take long for her to become very demotivated.
As a sales manager, you'll have to communicate in writing. Aside from verbal communication, your ability to communicate in writing says a lot about you as a person, a professional, and a manager. Whether you're constructing a sales letter, a memo, or writing an article for the company newsletter, nothing looks worse than misusing you're and your or there, their, and they're.
Sooner or later you're going to find yourself needing to hire a new salesperson and you'll be faced with that daunting stack of resumes or applications. After you work your way through it deciding who to talk to and who to eliminate, you'll need to interview the select few to find your next sales superstar.
Everybody is (or should be) ready to answer the age-old, "Tell me about yourself".
Being a successful sales manager means so much more than being a good sales person (although that certainly is a big part of it). You have to be skilled at identifying new talent, know how to run an effective sales meeting, and set and track the progress of goals for your team. Nobody said the job was easy, but it's certainly never dull.
Sales
Being a professional sales manager has some tremendous benefits. You have the opportunity to grow, develop and impact countless salespeople while building your company. You have the power to influence the direction of their careers and lives — it’s a responsibility you should take very seriously. It can be so rewarding to watch a salesperson flourish under your own leadership.
Sales
You can't operate at your best if you're mentally fried (that's a medical term). You need to keep this in mind as a sales manager, for yourself as well as your team. Many times your top performers possess a drive that is almost insatiable.
They're so driven and laser focused that they fail to take care of themselves — until they crash.
Your sales meeting should be almost sacred ground. You're there for an honorable purpose: to improve the knowledge and skills of your sales team. And, therefore some things just aren't welcome.
It's absolutely acceptable to publish a brief sales meeting rules and regulations outlining what you expect. You can make it fun, but get your point across as seen in the following example.
Sales
So how do you, a sales manager, let your top players know that you recognize them? Here are a few tips for how to let your top performers feel acknowledged, and how to give them what they need to ensure they want to stay and stay motivated.
These are your superstars, the cream of the crop, and while some may know it, it never hurts to hear it.
Sales
As a sales manager, you will have some sales people who are not top performers, but still have potential to grow. For this example, let's call the B and C players. These players aren't your superstars, but they're still important to your team's success. And they're likely the majority of your team, making up 70 to 75 percent of your sales team.
Sales
Just as salespeople need feedback, elite salespeople need to be challenged. One of the traits you find in almost all top performers is a tendency to get bored very easily.
Successful salespeople get their challenge either from you or somewhere else. Don't make the mistake of losing top talent because they got bored.
Here's a quick checklist you can use to help put on the best sales meeting possible. You may have a few more specific to your industry, but this is a good start and will get you thinking. Also, immediately following a sales meeting, have a debriefing with your key people to see what you could've done better to improve your next meeting.
No sales manager has ever been successful without his sales team. There’s no way for you to win if they lose. While the word team gets thrown around a lot and has become somewhat of a buzzword, teamwork is vital to a sales manager and sales organization. For without successful individual salespeople there is no successful manager or company.
Sales
As a manager, you should be managing your sales team and their performance every day — not just when it's time to do performance reviews. Don't look at the performance review as your one chance to talk to team members and either praise positive behavior or critique and analyze negative patterns. Monitoring performance is an ongoing process that happens daily.
The decision to terminate a salesperson has been made and you've decided on the time. Now you need to secure a witness to sit in on the meeting with you. Some may think this is for personal protection, but it's actually to cover your tail and make sure all your t's are crossed and i's are dotted.
Your witness shouldn't be someone from your own department if at all possible.
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