3 Top Strategies for Sales Managers

Three Strategies You Must Master

Here are three fundamental things you must do to become an effective manager of a sales team.

1. Hold Yourself to the Same Standards You Expect from Your Team

If you want your salespeople to hit their targets continuously, then you need to do the same. You set the pace. If you exhibit lackluster performance, your team will figure it’s OK for them to do the same.

So push yourself to reach ambitious goals, and make sure your team notices the effort you’re making. Setting a good example helps you build trust and confidence with your sales team.

2. Earn Your Team Members’ Trust

Your team members won’t open up to you unless they trust that you will make time for them and consider their needs seriously. If staff members worry that they can’t tell you about challenges they’re facing or coaching they need, you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity to help them improve.

To encourage open communication, start by making it clear to your team that you value feedback and want to know how you can help each member succeed. Be the first to approach each member; don’t leave it up to them to approach you. Then schedule one-on-one meetings to understand each team member’s goals and motivations and get individual feedback. Use this information to coach your team members on how they can succeed.

When someone shares his or her thoughts with you, let them know you take their opinions and feelings seriously and appreciate their help.

3. Create a Winning Process

To mentor your team members effectively, first you need to recognize their unique qualities and know how to use them successfully in a team environment. In sports, winning coaches don’t focus on just one play at a time. The game is made up of a series of plays and strategies, not isolated moments. Winning coaches know that success takes using the team as a whole to move through a series of steps to reach a common goal. Use the same practice with your sales team.

This means:

• Making it clear what goals you want them to reach
• Helping define, broadly or narrowly, the actions necessary to reach those goals
• Leading the team in developing the competencies required to take those actions

Revisit this process regularly, and you’ll soon have a winning team.

3 RedRock Leadership Tools Proven to Help Your Sales Team

At RedRock Leadership, we have a number of powerful tools proven to accelerate the success of any sales team. Here are just three examples:

1. One-Page Sales Plan

Every sales team needs a plan. You’ve probably heard the expression, “Fail to plan; plan to fail.” It might be cliché, but it’s true. Having a plan comes with several benefits:

• It gets everyone on the same page.
• It allows team members to be proactive.
• It makes it easier to evaluate changes and opportunities.

Our one-page sales plan is as simple as it is effective. Once you’ve completed yours, you’ll have a road map to follow to the success you want.

2. Annual Goal-Setting Booklet

Think how good it will feel 12 months from now to look back at all you’ve accomplished. That feeling is available only to those who commit to long-term planning. But most people have a tough time planning just their week.

This is why our Annual Goal-Setting Booklet is such a popular tool. It gives you a step-by-step process for planning your upcoming year. The plan features plenty of regular milestones so you won’t have to wait 365 days before you get to celebrate.

Verbalizing and writing down your goals makes them more concrete, and it gives you and your team something real to work toward. Checking off milestones helps build a sense of accomplishment and makes it easier to see what still needs to be achieved for annual success. Don’t let your goals live as half-formed ideas, or overly broad concepts. Use the Annual Goal Setting Booklet to set down exactly what you want to achieve, and celebrate as the achievements are realized.

3. Priority Stabilizer

Did you know there are 168 hours in a week? Even setting aside time for sleep, which is important, you have dozens of hours to use every week for the things you deem important.

To use these hours in a way that brings life to your day instead of stress, first set aside time to determine what your priorities are. You want your energy to build throughout your day, and that might mean approaching your day differently than you have in the past. It’s not about the quantity of time you spend on a task but the quality of the time you set aside.

Aligning your time with your priorities not only brings structure to your week; it also gives you room to breathe and the power of flexibility. Now that you know which tasks need your attention and how you feel about each task, you will know how to optimize the way you schedule your time.

Our Priority Stabilizer can be your guide. You won’t have to set aside more time every week, either. Instead, this tool will help you make more of the time you already have.

Invest in Your Success as a Sales Manager

As the manager of your team, we welcome you to take a look at our Take the Lead!™ sales and leadership development program. We crafted it to help you understand the best possible ways to motivate your team toward ambitious goals, hold your people accountable and foster that all-important environment of trust.
If you want to go beyond sales team management 101, consider joining us for our Systematic Foundation™ program. Together we’ll discuss what truly motivates buyers, how to better leverage your time and how to negotiate win–win scenarios.

Becoming a great sales team manager is much easier when you’re coached by people who have already achieved the results you want. Trust RedRock Leadership with your goals, and you’ll be surprised how quickly you hit them.