How to learn to manage a sales team?
A competent director will undoubtedly think about how to manage the sales department, he will also motivate his collaborators so that as a team they achieve the goals of the company.
Sales management is effective if it contains two types of skills: hard and soft.
Sales management through its hard components
The hard skills (solid) are to be implemented through clear and understandable actions. These can be broken down into a series of simple operations. Hard skills can be described and formalized for a specific specialty.
When applied to sales management, hard skills should provide the sales executive or sales manager with the ability to effectively perform each of the five management functions:
1. Planning
2. Organization
3. Control
4. Motivation
5. Selection and training of employees
Actions are defined for each of the five sales management functions. Effective sales management is impossible if at least one of them is not carried out by the department head.
1. Planning
The planning is a comprehensive business process that extends the entire role of the sales manager. In general, all competencies can be divided into three groups depending on the particularities of the planning process:
1. Sales , which includes the preparation of strategic (annual or more), tactical (quarterly, semi-annual) and operational (monthly, weekly, daily) plans.
2. The work of managers .
3. Self-planning .
2. Organization
This functional area refers to the organization of the unit and is related to all the resources managed by the sales director:
• Business processes
• Employees
• Related parties
• Information systems
3. Control
This functional scope is one of the key areas. If the sales manager has not developed control skills, the performance of the unit as a whole and of the managers, in particular, will be poor.
4. Motivation
The ability to motivate salespeople in a way that keeps the entire sales team energized is an important component of company success, including the profit goal.
When it comes to the motivation package as a financial component, the sales manager must be able to:
• Determine the salary structure of employees, taking into account the salary, the variable parts: bonuses, bonuses, minimum wages.
• Develop KPIs with the specific roles of managers in mind: what works for farmers will never be relevant to fishermen.
• Develop thresholds for bonuses that are charged for compliance with the plan: if the threshold is not reached (a bonus is not received, if the threshold is exceeded) the accumulation of bonuses is doubled.
In the area of non-material incentives, the sales manager must be able to identify the leadership needs of employees that drive them to achieve goals and develop:
• Contests, the participation of which will allow sellers to receive useful gifts.
• Conditions to receive additional benefits as a reward / incentive for solving complex tasks.
5. Recruitment, adaptation and training
The hiring, adaptation, and training processes must be carried out jointly with the HR specialists since their competence allows the construction of a hiring methodology to implement the hiring process. The sales manager should help create cases, tasks that can be used to test candidates.
Therefore, it is important that an effective sales manager has the skills to:
• Development of requirements for candidates, especially in terms of professional skills.
• Prepare the basic materials and tasks for the evaluation of the candidates.
• Participate in evaluation interviews.
The same thing happens with adaptation processes. It is the manager's responsibility to take action in time if the adaptation process is difficult or deviates from the plan.
Therefore, the skills that are relevant to the sales manager are:
• Complete and maintain an induction plan.
• Evaluate the progress of the trial period.
• Organize training on the product.
Employee training is a functional area of ROP work, which is organized differently in companies. The implementation of the training depends on the existence of an internal sales trainer, a product tutorial, and the creation of a training and staff development department.
If the sales manager is to be a game coach, the level of demand for his skills in the area of training will be quite high. Must be able to do:
• Conduct field training , which is relevant for units with sales representatives or agents.
• Conduct sales training.
• Prepare training programs and workbooks for apprentices.
• Form groups according to the levels of competence of the managers.
• Evaluate the results of the courses and training in practical work.
• Form the terms of reference for the development of training manuals on sales and products
Sales management through its soft components
The soft skills (soft) are qualities of the personality of a manager motivate salespeople to develop, to get results, team spirit, to healthy relationships, to act more than prescribed instructions and regulations, finding non-standard solutions in each case with a client and, finally, to be proactive, ensuring firmness when working in a cold market and resistance to stress when it comes to customer objections.
The problem of the lack of desire to destroy the market and sell more than what stimulates the Motivation System and the Sales Plans is not cured only by mechanical means with the introduction of a new script in sales management, or with the implementation of a new CRM.
The soft skills are not quantifiable. Applied to sales management, they include:
• Empathy capacity: determined by the level of development of Emotional Intelligence.
• Ability to train and guide.
• Leadership.
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