Thursday, May 20, 2010

A Sales Manager’s Function

Our belief, curriculum, experience and lessons tell us that sales managers have five fundamental functions that they should be spending 80% of their time on.

Accountability - The manager is responsible for holding everyone accountable not only to the company goals and quotas, but more importantly, holding each sales person to view the company as a vehicle to reach their personal goals and improve the quality of life for themselves and their loved ones.

Coaching – This means three things: A) being an 800 lb gorilla, B) acting like Jiminy Cricket, and C) providing encouragement.

Pre and Post Briefing - sales meetings so the right lessons are learned from each selling situation.

Motivation - If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it, and therefore, you can’t motivate it. In a perfect world, sales people are motivated. It is not a perfect world and Sales has more negativity in it than any other profession - except for weather men. Ironically, they are the only two professions that can be wrong 80% of the time and still keep their jobs.

Identify, Attract, Screen, Interview and Hire Stronger Staff – Always be recruiting. Plain and simple: always be looking for better, stronger people so you may raise the bar for the group.

For more information about sales development go to www.mytraininganddevelopment.com