A Few Important Steps can keep a Sales Manager Focused and His or Her Team Accountable

A Few Important Steps can keep a Sales Manager Focused and His or Her Team Accountable

The position of sales manager often comes with multiple responsibilities. Each of which has a direct affect on the success of the organization.  The sales manager is frequently an active salesperson, as well as an administrator. He or she must make sure quotas are being met, margins are in line, pipelines are full, salespeople are making their calls and individuals are realistically matched to their positions and territories.

An effective sales manager realizes that a person’s behavior is the key to success. How a salesperson behaves towards his or her responsibilities has a direct link to results.

The individual who constantly complains about the state of the market, lack of leads and referrals, inability to get to the decision maker, etc. is usually better at making excuses than making sales.

The quandary for the sales manager is – how long should he or she put up with ineffective behavior? 

In order to answer that question, the sales manager must first look at the reporting structure that he or she has put in place for the entire sales team.

All sales teams should meet at least twice a month. I prefer once a week. And each sales person must be ready to report his or her results to everyone in the room (or on the conference call). One easy way to hold each person accountable, while enabling them to communicate weekly progress efficiently, is to use that good old stand-by…paper.

Calls/Contacts (which would include telephone calls, e-mails, etc.), Conversations (this measures how many calls and contacts actually turned into discussions, either on the phone, through e-mail, or one-on-one conversations), Appointments, Meetings Held, Number of Proposals Written, Dollar Value of Proposals Written, Number of Sales Closed, Dollar Value of Sales Closed, and Networking Events Attended. Under the Existing Clients category the headings may read the same with a few twists, such as, Reorders, Stop-By Visits, etc. Each column is then divided into rows, one for each day of the week.

At the sales meeting, each person photocopies and hands out his or her sheet to the others in attendance. This leads to accountability by one’s peers and allows each individual to measure his or her results against those of the others in the group. It is vitally important that everyone is non-judgmental. The sales manager ultimately holds judgment, however at the weekly sales meetings people should be able to ask for help, find out how those who are consistently producing do so, and learn techniques to improve sales production.

All customer or prospect conversations, sales, and other interactions with anyone within your organization’s sales or customer service process should be entered and summarized to enable the sales team, including inside salespeople, sales managers new salespersons, customer service representatives and others within the company to have a complete understanding as to the current situation with every client or prospect. This includes specific problems, new orders, satisfactory comments, etc.

This weekly sheet should also be photocopied and distributed by each salesperson to the others on the team. The “pipeline” sheet gives a snapshot of potential revenues and new clients. It is also a valuable tool in easing potential rough spots that a salesperson may be encountering. By laying out prospective companies and contacts one salesperson may find that another team member may have an alternate means of securing the sale.

A sales manager’s greatest tools are the ability to motivate, communicate with and support his or her team members, as well as measure the results of the salespeople under his or her guidance and the ability to construct a timeline for the of success the team and its members. Once processes are put in place, so that decisions can be quantified and qualified, the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this article becomes easy.

How long should a sales manager put up with ineffective behavior?

As long as the results and the behavior associated with them, within the timeline allotted, indicate it’s time to let the person go.

One last thought. If you are a one-person organization, the tools mentioned in this article work equally as well to measure your own productivity, goals desired and achieved prospects to contact, sales made, etc. You are your own sales manager and while you’re not apt to fire yourself you may find that you need help in the form of adding another person, finding a partner, creating a symbiotic relationship with another firm, or getting coaching or training to overcome your weaknesses and increase you strengths.