Slide SUSTAINABLE Introduction Solution Challenges

INTRODUCTION

Identifying and addressing areas that are limiting growth is an ongoing challenge for many organisations. Whether you are planning to grow organically or through acquisition, understanding the current maturity of all aspects of the sales organisation is key. This will allow you to prioritise investment where it will drive most impact.

The most important role in a revenue driven organisation is that of the sales manager. Your sales managers will set the tone for sales approach, discipline, demand creation, revenue generation, culture and more. Sales managers are typically promoted from the best sales representatives but the role is fundamentally different! It’s a sad reality that we also often under invest in our sales managers. Have you set your sales managers up for success?

Challenges

The role of sales manager is a tough one! It is also a role that is often misunderstood and lacks sufficient developmental investment.

Without proper investment your sales managers will revert to default sales representative behaviours – get the deal done at any cost! This typically means focusing on the deal and customer at the expense of the overall revenue and people management. This is necessary at times but as a default is dangerous behaviour – both your sales executive and sales manager are now doing the same job.

As the focus of the sales manager shifts to key performers and must win deals your ‘middle’ players will become neglected. The majority of your sales team is not working to their greatest potential. What’s more, it’s a vicious circle. Your sales managers will step in to save the day on deals but how will your sales team ever learn? Heroics aren’t scalable but they are gratifying which establishes a pattern of behaviour that is difficult to shift.

If your sales managers are not leveraging the full team, they are leaving money on the table.

 

Solution

The role of sales management is twofold

Steward of the talent: leading, managing and developing the team to ensure that each member is operating at peak performance and that the team is a well oiled machine.

Steward of the numbers: ensuring demand creation activities are ongoing, that the team has a healthy and well managed funnel, that the appropriate sales processes are followed, that they remove internal red tape and that the team gets the support required to maximise their win rate.

A well balanced approach to sales management can have a dramatic impact on performance. Purely improving the time and quality of coaching can increase sales team performance by 19% and increase win rate of forecast deals by 20%!

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