Managing a sales team can seem daunting at first, but this blog is full of applicable insight. Managing a sales team is very important to a company’s success. You are monitoring goals and metrics, so follow these tips so you are in charge of getting the right people on the team, coaching them, and upholding team and company standards.
Tips for Managing a Successful Sales Team
- Be results oriented
You want people with drive and determination. Focus on creating a setting that is crystal clear and oriented on crucial sales metrics. When you have competitive employees working in this type of environment it will drive the whole organization upwards. With transparency it prevents people from being confused between activity and actual productivity.
- Hire teachable representatives
Hire people that are good at accepting and applying feedback. Role play with them where they demonstrate making a sales call on your product/service and once done, ask them how they did. Make it a conversation. Once done, give them feedback. Your takeaways will allow you to grade them on how they did during the role play, their self-assessment, and taking and applying your feedback.
- Volume vs Value
When you have a high value employee they should be spending time on the lowest volume/most important activities (building relationships and securing referrals). Your lower valued employees should focus on higher volume activities (leads to prospects to customers). Go after fewer, but better prospects.
- Make learning a priority
The best culture for a sales team is making sure there is continuous learning. Highlight and invest in training and development. Successful sales teams have a regular cadence of training that helps continually grow the foundations of product knowledge, emotional intelligence, opportunity administration, along with planning and communications.
- One size doesn’t fit all
Just like in clothing, there is no such thing as a true “one size fits all” solution. You have so many personalities working together and your role is to mentor and enable. Your team should not have to deal with internal politics and bad sales behaviors. With different personalities, different people need to be managed differently. Figuring out what motivates each of them is what you need to push them to develop them into better salespeople.
By taking the time to plan and implement these sales management strategies, you should start to see a visible difference and improvement in your sales team. Keep in mind that it is important to start by hiring the right people to build a strong sales team. If the team is compromised already, you will likely continue to see them struggle to find the consistency you are driving.
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