How Does The Sales Manager Improve Sales Results?

When you take a look at the most successful sales managers in the world, you quickly figure out that they come from various different working backgrounds. Many of them do not even have management experience before they start working as a sales manager. This is due to the fact that the sales manager position revolves a lot about how the team is managed as opposed to what we normally look at when thinking about a manager.

Ryan Grigson states that the only real situation when this position stands out as true management is when someone is fired and when someone is hired. Most of the job is similar to what a coach or what a mentor does. Similarly with sports, sales coaches would need to perform some specific tasks. Those that are by far the most important are those mentioned below:

• Making sure that every single team player is giving individually best performance. All this happens while being sure the entire team is functioning in complete harmony.
• Teaching sales nuances that are specific to the job while drilling in basics. Sales training has to be properly delivered, on a regular, consistent schedule. This should always include role playing.
• Studying the competition in order to identify clear weaknesses and strengths. After this, team members need to be taught how to do exactly the same thing.
• Picking up new sales team members whenever they are needed. This also involves giving an extra motivation kick if it is necessary.
• Leading by example and setting the tone of how the sales team acts.
• Teaching from personal experiences as the sales representatives are pointed towards discovering what works best for them. This is something that is quite tricky. The best sales managers do not stand out as being arrogant or knowing everything. Sales reps have to see managers as equals to some extent, all while experience is showcased as being highly important.
• Standing up for sales team members whenever it is necessary.
• Setting an example through positivity. The sales manager is the one that cannot show is something bad happened at home. This is when the sales team ends up thinking that something bad was done at work, by them. You want to be sure that you have people that trust you and unfortunately, this means you need to be positive, no matter what happens.
• Developing a trust based work atmosphere. If trust is not present, nothing is going to be effective on the long run.

In so many cases we can track poor sales results to inefficient, ineffective or weak sales management. It is the job of the upper management team to talk with sales people about training and there is often the belief that this is why sales are low. In only some cases we see upper management actually talk with the sales manager in order to see if additional training is actually necessary.

The best sales managers are those that manage to talk with everyone in the company in a way that showcases problems and finds solutions. This is much easier said than done.