by colly | in business | 1 comments

What Makes a Successful Sales Manager Part 2?

New to Sales Management – My First Week as a New Sales Manager

Following on from my first day as a newly promoted sales manager when I discovered 80% of the team was under performing plus I discovered that the four telemarketers were in competition with the sales people on the road plus the whole sales team was a bunch of wild mavericks with no strategy or territory management. What is my way forward to be, where do I start?

Utter chaos! Now the fact two years previously I had been a sales person on this sales team and whilst I was not in the top 20%, I was the plodder who always managed to scrape home just slightly over target. I had spent the last two years selling life assurance and had been promoted into management there in a very short period. I had been headhunted by my previous CEO plus the rest of the board were behind bringing me back to lead the sales team. When I asked “why, they thought I was up for the job,” I was told that I was a steady performer who had added some strategy and structure to my sales methodology plus I was a positive person whom they knew had overcome adversities in life. Strange how we don’t often see these qualities in oneself.

Where to start that was the question. I realised that both strategy and structure were needed in the sales team to succeed. Both the sales team and the telephone sales team were running wild, picking low hanging fruit, tramping over each other’s territories and steal each other’s sales. It wasn’t really a sales team at all just a bunch of mavericks running wild.

Where Do I Start?

I asked myself four questions

1. How do I get the sales team to execute our sales process with more discipline?
2. Do I need more reps to hit the numbers or can I get more out of the existing team?
3. Should I replace my bottom two sales people?
4. Should I invest more in inside sales because they are less expensive, or will my customers reject the notion of a virtual resource?

My first task was to create a sales culture and that is my next blog

Sales Leadership Whitepaper

Part Three coming soon

Sales Team Manager Responsibilities, Sales Team Manager Skills

Sales Team Challenges, Sales Team Coaching, Sales Team Effectiveness, Sales Team Engagement, Sales Team Objectives, Sales Team Training Ideas, Sales Team Uk, Sales Team Update, Sales Team Usa