The sales team in any organization is at the center of a business' success. In 2019, sales managers faced obstacles to meeting quotas, with 57 percent of sellers missing their quotas. They also dealt with a 35 percent turnover rate among sales team members.
Even with these disappointing numbers, sales managers can draw from several strategies to build successful sales teams. Sixty-five years ago, an article in the Harvard Business Review mentioned current issues for sales teams and focused on the role of the sales manager. One of the significant issues was understanding the role of sales management and the manager in driving sales for the company.
The same article stated that sales managers needed to hire, train, direct, and motivate the people on their teams to drive sales in the function of management. However, the sales manager in 2021 must go further in setting up quotas and helping them achieve these goals. Moreover, today's sales manager has to derive these quotas and goals from sales activity metrics and other data.
Improving soft skills is one strategy needed to lead a sales team. One valuable skill is consistency, which involves establishing rules for work and sticking to them. For example, a sales leader shows a policy for following up on leads to retain or attract customers requiring sales reps to contact customers twice a month.
Closely related, sales teams flourish under a leader who treats members equally. While some members are recognized for their stellar performance on the team, preferential treatment can erode team morale. Establishing clear sales goals and protocols with everyone is the foundation of all team members feeling treated fairly.
Sales managers are also faced with making difficult choices. However, their conviction can stave off poor decisions that have long-term adverse effects, whether these choices involve delivering bad sales news, giving criticism, or any of the numerous conversations a leader can have with their team.
Finally, as stated earlier, sales managers oversee a lot of the work of the team. In doing so, better sales managers do so without micromanaging their subordinates. Delegating responsibilities allows employees to have freedom in doing their best work, and it builds trust between leaders and their associates.
Delegation is a strategy that can facilitate another related to helping team members set SMART goals or specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Using SMART as a guideline for goal setting can help team members set realistic sales goals that can place them on track for meeting their quotas.
Once goals are set, the sales manager can delegate work using one of two strategies. The island approach requires individual team members to generate leads, closing their deals, and making their own sales calls. Alternatively, the assembly line approach assigns duties among four groups, lead generation team, account executives, sales development representatives, and customer success associates. As the work comes down the pipeline, each team deals with leads and customers at different stages.
Finally, sales managers should consider creating sales systems that can be scaled or grow as the team does. This system will accommodate new team members, ones that can be trained and on-boarded effortlessly.
