How can the sales manager increase sales?
Before I tell you how a sales manager increases sales, let me first define what a sales manager means: No matter their actual title, sales managers are anyone with salespeople reporting to them. Some people may have the title sales manager, but I am not speaking about them if they don’t have salespersons reporting to them.
So with this definition in mind, a sales manager’s responsibility is to grow sales. They don’t do this directly but through their people. They must find a way to leverage their skills and knowledge to help the salespersons under them do a better job. They will accomplish this through a few different functions. They must:
- Define the sales process
- Hold all the salespersons accountable, and
- Mentor the members of the sales team
Everyone on the manager’s team must know what the sales process is. Whether there are five steps, seven steps, or nine, everyone on the team must know these steps.
They must use the same terminology to label them and have the same goal or outcome in mind for those steps. To use a sports metaphor, the sales manager must ensure that everyone on the team uses the same playbook.
The Sales Manager Holds People Accountable
They must also hold everyone accountable. By accountability, I mean accountability to activity. Whether it’s X amount of cold calls, X amount of appointments, or X amount of proposals, most companies have some activity quota to which the salespersons are held.
A sales manager must monitor those numbers and ensure they are happening if he or she waits until the end of the month. You can’t do anything about it at the end of the month. Either you hit your numbers, or you’ve missed them.
They must check the numbers throughout the month and motivate everyone to stay caught up. Monitoring activity is like a gas gauge. When it gets close to “E,” you must pull over and get some gas, or you won’t get where you are going.
In addition to accountability to activity, the manager must hold his people accountable for the process.
He must ensure that everyone is following the process and no one is skipping steps or not following through.
Manager as a Mentor
Finally, a manager is responsible for mentoring, coaching, and developing the people on their team. Sometimes the manager may lead by example, and other times, they may observe, then coach and develop the team. The sales manager’s job is to grow his people.
So a sales manager must define the process clearly, monitor the activity and adherence to the process, and mentor, coach, and develop the sales force. If they stick to these fundamentals, they will see sales increase and the sales organization will produce more.