Managing a sales team is not an easy task, especially during the last quarter of the year. As a manager, your role can be essential to your company’s success. It’s more than just monitoring quotas and meeting target metrics. You are in charge of coaching your reps and helping them get to the level that they need to be and making sure their morale stays high. As the team leader, you can make or break your sales organization. The role comes with a fair share of pressure, but following a few of these steps, sales team management best practices, you can set yourself and your team up for success to end the year strong.
Being a sales manager can be very challenging. You have to gather resources for your team, manage reports coming in, and still have to make sure your sales numbers are on pace to where they need to be. If you are looking to have your sales team reach their performance goals, one on one meetings can be very useful. It can allow you to get to know each member of your team individually and give you some time to learn more about their long-term and short-term goals. Growth is important for many people and as a manager, it’s important for you to guide them to where they need to be so they can reach that next level. Your sellers will appreciate the time you took to get to know them and their goals. It also will provide them a safe space to open up and express how they are feeling, which can be helpful during difficult times.
Having a clear strategy gives your sales team direction on what the team’s goals are and what needs to be done to get there. Having an overall goal that is transparent to your team makes it so everyone is aligned and is aware of what everyone is working on in the team. Leverage the one-on-one meetings with sales reps that we mentioned earlier, and develop a personalized strategy that’s based on your sales rep’s role or account that they are working on. Each client’s needs vary so you want to make sure that your sales reps are in the best position to be successful. By focusing on individual team members, you can get a clear picture of what issues your team is facing. You can track team-wide barriers, as well as nail down individual issues.
Sales is known to be a beast and can burn out even the hungriest of sales reps. It’s possible that your sales already have a compensation package, but to keep your team motivated, it can be helpful to have some incentives in place. Money can be the ultimate motivator for some people but it never hurts to get creative to shake things up. Try some tactics like free lunch for sales most meetings set in the week, or you can even let a seller have the last Friday off if in the month if they hit their monthly sales numbers. Putting incentives in place will keep your sales reps focused and can create a competitive and fun environment for your team to work in. And when you are enjoying what you are doing, that’s when you can see great success.
Every company is defined by its culture, but the best companies are the ones focused on how their culture impacts their employees.
Along with money and benefits, company culture is highly emphasized as one of the most important factors for sales job seekers. Most sales leaders understand that culture should be a priority, but it can be difficult to understand what a good sales culture looks and functions like. Unlike sales, you can’t measure culture like you do sales volume, opportunities, and conversions. Create a culture that is team-oriented. Sales can easily turn into a competition between sellers but it’s more important if your reps are working towards achieving the team goal rather than personal ones. You want to create an environment where each team member is transparent to what their teammates are working on and want to be a contributing member to help reach the team goal. Here are some other qualities your company culture should consist of:
As a manager, understand that this all starts with you. It’s up to you to create an environment where your sales team will succeed and enjoy every minute of it. It’s important that you understand your team so you can lead to being as successful as possible. Managing a sales team shares many of the same challenges as sales itself. Find your way as a sales leader by becoming the leader you always needed.
