Sales Managers are Reporting Regulators

Sales managers are a pivot-point for reporting within an organisation.

Accurate, relevant, simple reports built around appropriate data enable sales managers to know what has happened, what needs to happen and what’s likely to happen if an individual or team maintains the status quo. Running your sales team without effective sales reporting is like riding a motorbike blindfolded.

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it

And just as importantly, as a sales manager you need to be reporting inwards to assist leadership in making decisions and setting priorities. Reports from sales should be providing marketing with the intelligence required to develop appropriate market-engagement plans and content and R&D should be guided by what sales are hearing from the market to guide or confirm development decisions.

One of the challenges I faced in sales management was ensuring the reporting demanded of me, and that I asked from my team, was really necessary and added value to the business. All too often I found management requesting reports that were difficult to justify, time-consuming to produce and added little or no value to the productivity of the business, or my sales team. Likewise, a sales manager needs to ensure the reports that he requires from his team provide measures that help both the sales manager, the team and the individuals achieve their goals. Reporting on appropriate metrics should help identify areas for improvement, not catch people out.
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Sales Manager or Performance Supervisor?

Over the years I have seen all too many sales managers focussed only on results and not what is necessary to achieve the results. The management component of a sales manager’s role is about the planning and control of work processes, but a good sales manager knows that supervision – directing their team towards success – will deliver not just better results for the team and the individual sales person, but greater job satisfaction for themselves.

Supervising the performance of your team is not just about measuring performance against targets (the results), but helping the individual salesperson understand what will help them be successful and guiding them to undertake these actions and develop the skills needed to achieve success. And this will be different for each individual. Once thorough planning has been done and your team know the sales strategy and objectives, they need to have a comprehensive action plan and the skills needed to guide them through the activities needed to achieve their goals.

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go with their old measurements and expect me to fit in”
George Bernard Shaw
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When You’re a Sales Manager, You’re a Leader

It’s not uncommon for good salespeople to be self-directed and accountable individuals, which makes them naturally effective at being the ‘leaders of their own lives’. Good sales professionals are highly results-driven and competitive. These natural traits tend to see them focus on their individual performance, often with little consideration for team results. The fact that the individual success of high-performing salespeople delivers the results required by the company makes them a valuable asset, but they are not necessarily working as part of a team to achieve these results – that was surely my experience when I was enjoying my greatest success in sales. As a sales manager your ability to lead these unique individuals, and achieve synergistic outcomes is what will define your success.

Management is about doing things right, and leadership is about doing the right things.

The above definition from management guru, Peter Drucker does provide an understanding of the difference between leadership and management, what it doesn’t do is highlight, that to be a successful sales manager, you need to do the right things, and you need to do them right – you are both leader and manager. Read more

Managing Sales Performance

Managing the performance of a sales team is about establishing a shared understanding of what is to be achieved at every level within the sales team to deliver the organisational goals. It’s about aligning the goals of the team and the individuals in a way that will allow each team member to achieve their respective goals while making the necessary contribution to the overall team performance.

“Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on…”
Donald Rumsfeld, American politician and businessman.

While there has been much ‘robust discussion’ in recent times as to the benefit of employee performance management and, specifically relating to sales, the use of automated sales performance management, managing the performance of your team and the individuals in your team remains an essential part of sales management.

It’s up to you, the sales manager, to inspire and enable the best possible performance of each member of your team. The performance of each individual is dependent on a complex set of variables that will be unique to each salesperson. These variables include ‘hard’ abilities such as job knowledge, skills and expertise; as well as ‘soft’ capacities such as social and emotional intelligences, attitudes and self-esteem, behaviours and habits.

Adopting a well-defined performance management process enables you to systemically fulfil your role as the team’s ‘performance supervisor’. Read more

Lean Selling

Lean Selling: Qualifying to reduce waste

Did you know that Businesses regularly spend up to five times longer losing a sale than winning a sale?

Wayne Moloney explains why this is so – and what we need to do about it.

In Wayne’s recent appearance on Strategic Selling Group he emphasises the need for a stringent qualification process to ensure we know our opportunity is winnable.

Wayne suggests spending more time on opportunities that have got the greatest chance of success and to help make these decisions he offers some simple qualification questions that will assist in determining if you should invest in furthering opportunities.

Sales and Marketing – More Alike Than You Think!

My ‘Sales Masterminds Australasia’ colleague, Peter Strohkorb is a strong advocate of the need for sales and marketing to be more collaborative. In fact he is so passionate about this he has coined a phrase to cover the concept –Smarketing! His research has shown that businesses where this occurs are twice as likely to be financially successful than companies where sales and marketing collaboration is not present.

Now while I know Peter has strong anecdotal evidence to back this finding, this should not come as a surprise to those who follow trends in how people buy. In days past the lack of information available to buyers meant businesses ‘held the high ground’ when it came to providing information and hence solutions to buyers needs. Marketing sold to the masses by providing general information and creating awareness, sales people followed up and sold to individuals (or individual businesses) by fine tuning offerings to meet specific needs. A bit like strategic bombing or artillery followed by the infantry.

But today, is there still such a delineation? Aren’t salespeople marketers and marketers salespeople?

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks, then it’s probably a duck….

or is it?

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Planning for Sales Success

To enter into a battle without a plan is the height of stupidity and arrogance. Such generals should be put to death for they risk the lives of their warriors…”

Sun Tzu, Chinese Military General, circa 2500BC

In all my years of business development management and consulting, probably the greatest challenge I experience is getting sales teams to invest the proper time and effort in planning. All too often it is neglected or not treated with the seriousness it deserves. And sadly, those who do plan often overcomplicate the process.

I am a firm believer in keeping things simple. Whether it’s a strategic business plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan for a territory, or an individual’s sales plan – it should be short, sharp and to the point.

Your sales plan should detail the how you are going to retain and grow existing business, as well as bring on new business. For both new and existing clients, your plan should include both strategies – the high level plans to achieve your objectives and tactics – the actions necessary to carry out your plan. Read more

Sales Managers LEAD!

Last week I was asked to comment on a query from a new sales manger who wanted to know how best to establish himself as a leader when moving into his new role. I recently wrote a post of ‘leadership vs. management’, but his question prompted me to respond more specifically with respect to a sales manager’s leadership responsibility.

Leadership has many definitions, and sadly many of these suggest manipulative behaviour that is as far from ‘leadership’ as I believe you can get. The definition I find most palatable, valuable and applicable to sales management is…

Leadership is the art of getting people to willingly strive to achieve team goals

My experience in many organisations across various countries suggests, perhaps more than anything else, that great leadership is about dealing effectively with people in a particular situation. A leader is only a leader if they have followers, so leadership is not about competently holding a position of authority, but having an understanding of the principles that underpin the actual development of, and interaction with people in relationship to achieving a goal. Read more

Thinking Outside the Box to Win Sales

In both our personal and business lives, the decisions we make today are largely the result of past experiences, relationships and the values that were ingrained in us as we developed.

Good or bad, our past will have an impact on our future and all too often restrict the decisions we make and limit our growth. This is natural and many of us are aware of this and actively work to address the issue.

From a business perspective, such thinking can limit our careers and our personal and business potential. As markets change so to must the way we approach business. A lot has been said and written about disruptive innovation, and what has happened to those businesses that got stuck in the past (think Sony Walkman, Kodak, Swiss watches), but ultimately it may just be a case of changing the way we think about the obvious.

I came across this story on a friend’s Face book page today which I think demonstrates this idea perfectly. Now I think the story has been around for a while and I am unsure whether this is a true story or not, but it does highlight just how we can be constrained by not thinking outside the box.

Consider this:

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car? Read more

Wayne Moloney

The meaning of the word ‘Waste’ as it applies to the ‘Lean Selling’ Model

In this 3 minute video John Smibert talks with Wayne Moloney about the meaning of the word ‘Waste’ as it applies the ‘Lean Selling’ model.

Wayne explains that there is significant waste in most sales organisation. Recent research indicates that salespeople spend 60% of their time on non-selling activities.

He suggests that the sales process must address a number of questions to determine if we are adding value to the relationship we have with the customer and presenting something that is specific to the customer’s needs. If not by definition the activity will be wasted. Wayne details what some of these questions are and how they should be applied.
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This is one for sales professionals, sales leaders, CSO’s, CEO’s and CFO’s who are striving to improve sales productivity, reduce waste and grow profitable revenue.

Wayne Moloney is a leading business strategist specialising in sales and business development. Wayne has a very specific specialisation in ‘lean selling’.

See more of the Talking Sales series here