“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results." - Warren Buffett
You have the product, the team and the coveted corner office. But do you have what it takes to be a successful sales manager? Don’t worry – you do.
Here are 5 habits from sales experts you can use to help you win hearts, minds…and deals.
1) Utilize your sales team’s gifts in the right places.
“Great sales leaders possess the knowledge to correctly deploy field or inside salespeople, to segment the market into verticals, and to specialize sales teams by product or customer types when necessary.”
According to Steve Martin of the Harvard Business Review, this strategic approach to sales management explains why high-performing sales leaders reported an overall average annual quota attainment of 105% compared to 54% for underperforming sales managers. Know your market and optimize your teams.
2) Articulate expectations.
“An effective sales manager knows how to enable, explain, and support a sales process to make it easier for sales reps to understand, and relate to, without making the sales process feel like a strait jacket.”
Dave Mattson of Sandler Training knows every team needs a solid methodology to drive performance, but sales teams work best when they know exactly what is expected of them and when deliverables are due. Make your process simple enough for reps to understand, and easy for them to execute successfully.
- 3) Optimize selling time.
“You can’t sell if you aren’t spending time with customers.”
Walter Rogers of Cloud Coaching International stresses that “highly effective sales managers practice good time management habits, and they enable their sales teams to make the most of their time by eliminating demands on their time that don’t directly help drive revenue.” That’s why sales teams love using Rollio. Clearly align sales activities with goals and eliminate any activities that don’t support this alignment.
- 4) Manage on data, not a hunch.
“…you can't overlook activity. A sales rep’s activity creates and drives pipeline, and it provides managers with a true understanding of what’s happening within their business.”
Jeffrey Fotta in his Entrepreneur blog encourages leaders to utilize business intelligence to their advantage. “With sales intelligence in hand, leaders can establish best practices, optimize team performance and gain new confidence in forecasting and revenue goal attainment. By understanding what top performers are doing well and what techniques are successful, managers can employ these tactics across the team to improve outcomes.”
5) Be flexible.
“The ideal sales manager will calmly face chaos, enthusiastically embrace change, and always adjust to whatever tough challenges lie ahead.”
According to Peter Drucker, the biggest and most challenging task of a sales manager is to prepare the sales team for the constantly changing marketplace. "Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does."
Although most of these tips seem like common sense, sometimes it is easy to get caught up in new, shiny methodologies and overthink the game. When executed correctly, the simple “tweaks” can make for a more successful team.
What are you doing as a Sales Manager to help your team succeed?
Rollio is Artificial Intelligence (AI) built into your Sales Team’s core. It powers your sales team’s intelligence, drives sales performance, and of course, makes your team happier now that they can now spend their time closing deals, rather than updating their CRM. Now, you can hand back hours of valuable selling time and improve CRM usage all at once for your company. For more information on what Rollio has to offer, check out our product or contact us.
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