How can you make your role as a sales leader easier? It might be as simple as stepping back and evaluating what made you a great salesperson AND applying those same tactics and strategies to your role as a sales leader.
Stop making sales management so hard!
Take a look at three areas of the sales process that you can apply to your sales management process.
Prospecting
As a successful salesperson you recognized—and probably learned the hard way—that successful prospecting begins with getting crystal clear on your ideal client profile. Without such clarity, you wasted a lot of time trying to sell to prospects that aren’t willing or able to buy.
Once you clarified your ideal client profile, you created a prospecting plan with defined activity metrics. You learned very quickly that inconsistent prospecting leads to empty sales pipelines and desperation selling. As a result, you always practiced the ABP principle:
Always be prospecting.
Take these sales prospecting strategies and apply to your prospecting efforts that are directed at finding a different type of prospect, top sales talent. Get clear on your ideal “hiring” profile. Without this clarity, you’ll end up trying to coach and develop a person that isn’t willing or able to be coached.
Like a good salesperson, create a defined activity plan for interviewing and recruiting. Avoid the bad practice of interviewing only when you have an opening. Without consistent recruiting efforts, your people pipeline will be empty, resulting in bad decisions and desperation hiring. Practice the ABR principle:
Always be recruiting.
Discovery
Your prospecting activities are working and you have a full people pipeline. It’s time to qualify or disqualify your potential candidates.
Go back to what you did as a top salesperson. You had a defined set of questions by which you qualified or disqualified a prospect. One of your questions may have focused on the prospect’s commitment to change and improvement. Or, some of your questions were focused on bringing up potential objections that could lead to deal fallout.
Sales managers need to create a defined set of interview questions that are specifically designed to qualify or disqualify a potential candidate. Just like a prospect meeting, you’ll ask questions around your potential candidate’s commitment to embracing change and improvement. Some of your questions will focus on bringing up potential objections such as travel, ramp up time to quota or the need for new business development every year. Bringing up objections helps you avoid deal fallout, better known as retention.
Account Management
You’ve landed that new client. Congratulations and now it’s time to on-board that new client and install an account management program to ensure retention. The on-boarding process may involve taking the time to introduce your new client to other people in the organization that will be helping with the account. These introductions reassure your new client that there is a team working towards a successful client engagement.
Account management involves monthly or quarterly meetings with the clients to ensure that results and goals are being met.
Apply the same account management strategy with your new hire. When on-boarding your new hire, make sure they meet with all the other decision makers in your company. This helps your new hire feel like a part of the team, a part of a sales village.
Good account management in sales management means setting up weekly one-on-one meetings to ensure that results and goals are being met.
Stop making sales management so hard.
By leveraging the strategies that made you a successful salesperson—clarity on ideal clients, structured prospecting, effective qualification and diligent on-boarding—you can simplify your role as a sales manager.
Good Selling!