The DriveSales™ | The ultimate guide to sales management and importance of its application!

Efficient management is a crucial task for any sales business. Your company might be the best one out there in terms of the products or services but if the management is not good the chances are likely that the customers will not talk to you about their business requirements.

Your service or your product might be an average one in the market but if you know the key ingredient to sales management you can easily back lions and convert your lead into your prospects.

Therefore, having a sales manager to handle your management team is the way to go towards building a credible and reliable business, one that your clients will opt for.

Sales management will not only help you to boost your deals, but it will also help in training your employees into becoming awesome salespeople.

Now that you know that every successful business demands an efficient and effective sales management team, it’s time that you know of some important sales management strategies, resources, and processes so that you can leave a mark in your respective business field.

Sales management process

Let us first quickly have a recap of what sales management actually is.

Sales management is a well-strategized technique that consists of overseeing and guiding sales reps into creating meaningful relationships with prospects and eventually closing more deals.

It is imperative to understand that sales management is not a streamlined process. It is a personalized strategy that is particular to every business.

Thus, you will have to consider all the business aspects and market trends in order to create a meaningful and effective sales strategy that would further help you in sales management.

Sales management usually consists of four key components, namely people, strategy, activity, and reporting.

People — The core component of any sales team is the people who help in managing, organizing, and closing sales. Thus it is very important to choose the right people fit for your business. This will lead to creating a robust sales team.

Help this process entails strong job descriptions, particular selection criteria, on-point interviews, and HR collaboration.

Strategy — The success of any sales business depends upon a vision and a perfect strategy for the sales team. Thus, it is important to structure and align your entire sales team toward a common goal.

This will help your team to see a bigger picture and invest their time and energy in closing more and more details without any haphazardness. Moreover, it will help to identify and rectify any inefficiencies or areas of improvement.

Activity — The mantra of sales success is to define broader goals and then further streamline those goals into individual day-to-day tasks. Hence, it is important to oversee and manage the day-to-day activity of your sales team.

Moreover, celebrating the wins, understanding the losses, and learning from the feedback will give an additional boost to your employees.

Reporting — Last but not least step of the sales management process is efficiently analyzing and effective reporting of the sales activity. The sales managers should have a detailed idea of the past and present happenings in a deal.

This will not only help to track and measure employee efficiencies but will also give a broad picture of the direction the business is heading in.

Furthermore, sales managers can also use this particular data to predict future sales revenue and team contribution.

Sales management strategies:

1) Have set compensation expectations — It is very important to create and fix compensation plans that not only include basic details such as base salary but also commission and bonus throughout the year. This particular method helps you to set fixed expectations for your sales reps.

To set these expectations and plan for the whole team members it is important to cater to a strong relationship with both the existing clients and potential customers.

A question that might arise in your mind is why this practice should be followed? The answer is relatively simple. If your employees feel that they don’t make a particular commission on house accounts, they might try to focus then their energy and time on finding new prospects and closing new deals.

While you might think that this is great for the business, this will pose a problem in the long run as it directly attacks the credibility and reliability of your business.

2) Fix goals and quotas — Another important step towards building a strong team that handles sales management effectively and efficiently is to have set goals and quotas.

Your business will not work with a hundred percent potential unless your entire team pulls its own weight and concentrate on achieving a common goal.

You can set a broad vision of your business requirements and expectations and then further break it down into smaller chunks of tasks and activities. This can further be segregated into more refined daily schedules.

Thus, you need to effectively communicate your business needs and goals to your team and ensure everybody understands the target they are working towards. This will make your team more invested in the business.

3) Onboarding and training new hires — Onboarding and training new hires are one of the major responsibilities of the sales management team. This particular exercise charters the course for your entire business.

The most important resource for any business to succeed is its labor force. If your employees are well trained in the particular field and know all the details of the key business skills and vision then, half the battle is already won.

All you need now is to contact the potential client and schedule a meeting.

Keep in mind the training your new employees not only entails briefing them about the business vision but also giving them a comprehensive overview of the clients and the technology stack that your company deals with.

Guide your new resource about the buyer personas and all the product features in and out. This will help you turn your new hires into season professionals suited for your business.

4) Motivate your sales reps — It is absolutely crucial to acknowledge the fact that your product or service might not be suitable for every kind of business and prospect. Hence, there will be situations where are your sales reps will lose some deals and the motivation meter will be down.

Thus, as a sales manager, it is your responsibility to motivate your sales reps and bring that motivation factor meter back up.

You can do this by having a quick one-on-one meeting with your team or by planning team-building outings and events. This will help you in gauging the real state of mind of your team.

5) Sales and revenue reports — For any business to succeed, it is important to have a comprehensive overview of the deals and revenue generated.

So, it is absolutely imperative that you have a set pattern for several sales and revenue reports.

This will help you analyze the success or failure of your business so far and to structure and strategize for the future and upcoming deals.

This will give a clear picture of the direction your business to and will help you to decide the relevant steps and procedures that must be taken in lieu of the business.

Moreover, these reports can act as feedback of what your business demands with respect to the clients in comparison with the current sales practices.

Best practices for sales management”

1) Invest in the training, upskilling, and information sharing of your sales reps.

2) Create an employee-centric, motivating, and engaging work environment.

3) Leverage the strengths of your sales reps.

4) Incorporate ethical practices in your work policy.

5) Retain and attract the people suitable to your business.

6) Leverage technology as much as you can.

Now, as an effective SALESPERSON! We can do three things from here.

1. Not ignoring the opportunity and blaming the situation for revenue loss.

2. Taking important notes and going back to revisit your sales strategy with the growth mindset.

3. Reaching out to The DriveSales™ if you need any specialized help for sales.

To conclude, what you choose to think also provides some idea of your development as a consultative salesperson. It is something like Mark Roberge quotes “It’s no longer about interrupting, pitching and closing. It is about listening, diagnosing and prescribing.”

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