Improve your sales management skills by implementing these 5 behaviors to help your sales team drive consistent results.
1. Hiring
Great sales managers that understand hiring salespeople requires a different process than hiring support or admin personnel. No other role in a company faces the same challenges and deals with the same performance pressures as the sales team. No one faces greater scrutiny and is on a shorter leash than salespeople. The hiring behaviors of great sales managers includes but is not limited to:
- A great job attraction post
- Pre-hire, sales specific, evaluations
- Initial phone interview to discover how good the candidate is on the phone
- Conducts interviews like auditions
2. Offer and On-boarding
When the manager finally selects the candidate based on the above steps, the final step in the hiring is to have an effective offer meeting that includes the following:
- They make sure the candidate is prepared to make a decision when the offer is made to avoid using the offer to get a better deal from the current employer
- They lay out all the expectations for sales activity, sales goals, sales meetings, use of CRM, and define being a good citizen and how they will be managed and coached
- They gain agreement on all the conditions of taking the role, and then to solidify the agreement they ask this question: “Are you sure”? To which the candidate will say yes. They then explain that it’s ‘going to be hard’ and then don’t say another word to let that statement sink in
The three behaviors are critical. The reason they are critical is that many candidates that become 'new hires' fail especially in the execution area of sales activity hitting goals, attending sales meetings, using your CRM and responding to your managing style and culture.
Failing to get agreement to performance in these areas will always, ALWAYS, cause you headaches down the road if you fail at the last behavior - gaining agreement.
3. They manage
Great sales managers understand what Jim Collins means when he states: “There is no such thing as micro – managing. You are either managing or you are not managing.” Effective Sales Managed Environments must include managing behavior. The behavior goals must be introduced in the very beginning of their career, and then yearly at least 1 sales cycle before the end of the sales year. The following discussions must be take place:
- What sales results at attached to the words extraordinary, excellent, good, poor, and failing results?
- The conversation to lay out the success formula to arrive at the outcome the salesperson has committed to?
- Making sure they are committed to the activity by asking: Are you sure? And then stating: 'This is going to be hard".
- Finally you must discuss what happens when you see the data is telling you that your new hire is off track. Great managers get permission to coach salespeople when they are failing.
4. They Coach
- 1-on-1 coaching sessions to improve skill and change behaviors
- Pre and post-call strategy sessions to improve the probability of success of each opportunity the sales person is calling on
- They meet quarterly to review activity numbers against actual results to discuss success, where they are headed and or why there is a discrepancy between the behavior numbers and the sales results
5. They Verify
Not being fooled is the behavior driven by a SALES DNA factor called Healthy Skepticism. This doesn’t mean that they don’t believe what their salespeople are telling them or what they are reporting. They have a Ronald Reagan approach: Trust but verify. Great sales managers stay off the “They’re going to make it because they have a big deal that is about to close” bandwagon.
If you and your organization is must drive better sales performance, consider these 5 behaviors. If you would like to find out if your sales management team is capable of executing these behaviors and or how to execute these contact me at tony@anthonycoletraining or jeni@anthonycoletraining.com
