Sales Management: How do you manage a sales person, when you haven’t been one yourself?
How do you manage a sales person, when you haven’t been one yourself? a very interesting question.
By the way. High everyone , I am Sharon the other part of managing sales people. Well I am excited to finally be able to have some time to share a few thoughts and ideas with you.In case you have been wondering, how come our blog posts have been written by Denise so far?, I have been out and about working with some of our clients and delivering a variety of management and leadership training.
During some of my leadership training recently, some new sales managers have found themselves managing sales people when they have not been a salesperson themselves. At times, they have experienced a few challenges that initially they believed were
unique to themselves.The reality is though, that the only thing they haven’t experienced is the salesperson’s situation and also understanding the role of the sales person.
Of course, just like many other specialist roles, a salesperson is a unique individual. The highly motivated ones are driven by the chase of the next sale. They are focused and thrive on the challenge of finding a potential customer, building loyal long term relationships, identifying a need for a product, selling their product or service and then closing the sale.
Oh and potentially earn some bonus or commission too.
Occasionally I come across managers who believe sales people are loners. Well it is true that they often work and sell on their own. Sales people are often highly driven by results and what they can achieve.
They can also be quite focused on ‘what is in it for them’. This can be judged by others as ‘being a loner’, or even ‘selfish’.
However remember people are individuals. You will also find many sales people today work as part of a business development team and need to be as good a team player as they are at working on their own.
Whether you are managing a sales team and have or haven’t done the role of a sales person, if you aspire to be a successful sales manager here are a few things that highly successful
sales managers do.
Have a success focused ‘mindset’
What I mean by this is, believe in yourself and your abilities. In contrast, if you believed that you are at a disadvantage because you haven’t done a sales persons role, these thoughts will affect how you manage your sales people. Ultimately these thoughts will affect your success.I’ll be talking more about ‘Mindset’ over the coming weeks so look out for these blog posts.
Manage your sales people as individuals:
Everyone is special, treat them this way.Sales people are motivated by many things:
Recognition, money, incentives are only a few. Take the time to find out what else, you
may be surprised!
Let your sales people know what you expect from them:
Then let them get on with the job.
Recognise and reward your sales people and team:
For their successes and fortheir efforts. People can work incredibly hard even if the end result isn’t what you wanted. Let them know how much you appreciate their contributions.
Finally, walk your talk.Be prepared to do what you ask your team to do and set the standards in terms of the behaviours you expect.
It’s good that you have considered the impact of having done the sales persons role.
What’s even better is that you have invested your time in reading this post.
I’m not sure when now might be a good time to start practicing the suggestions above. How about now?
Take Care,
Sharon
PS Early next week look out for a post on the difference between training and development!
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