sales management: get team buy-in for great results

Sales Management

Get Your Team Buy-In for Great Results

What makes good Sales Management…

Is it a Top-Down Approach…?

…Or a Bottom-Up Approach?

What is the best Management Style to improve performance and

productivity?

How would I know?

Over the past 15 years, I have been asked to turn-around over 50 Inside Sales and Teleprospecting

Organizations.

Yes…15 Years…Don’t ask about my age…

Here is my method…

…create Task Forces!

You might wonder what Task Forces do…

…it is really quite simple….

…resolving Issues, of course!

Hmmmm…Issues?

What Issues?

Task Forces

Key Performance

Indicators

Commission Rates

Quota

Contracts

Etc…

CRM

But how do I do that?1. Brainstorm sessions – collect all possible ideas

2. Review – pick most suitable ideas

3. Recommendations – summarize ideas in PP deck

4. Presentation to the Manager

5. Task Force Leader presents approved recommendations to the team

Does this really work? Like…in Real Life?

Well, it has worked for me many times.

Let me tell you a story:

I was asked to turn around the Inside Sales team of a company that had lost half of its clients and had not seen any new customer sales since the recession. The

Inside Sales team had not hit their revenue targets in many years.

This is what I found:

- The Sales Team had no metrics- There were no set quotas- 80% of opportunities in the Sales

Funnel no longer viable- There was no sales methodology

to move deals through the Sales Funnel

- Each team member made only made 10 or fewer dials per

Here is what we did:

Created and worked in Task Force Teams

Agreed on Minimum Metrics and assigned Quotas

Developed Sales Methodology that helped to

meet the Metrics

And here is what happened…

At the end of the first year, revenue had increased by 57% and revenue from new

prospects had increased by 80%.

But what if it doesn’t work straight away?

As a manager, if you don’t agree with the recommendations, work with the team to

align their ideas to what you know will work.

This is a continuous process. If there is no improvement within 90 days, regroup and come up

with a better process/set of metrics.

I also recommend that the team reviews their recommendations and results every quarter.

Why does this management style work?

There have been many studies on the subject of employee involvement:

C. A. L. Pearson

• Experiment:– Group 1: workers were

included in goal setting– Group 2: traditional work

procedures

• Results:– Participative goal setting is

positively connected to performance and increases job satisfaction

S. Fernandez & T. Moldogaziev

• “empowered employees improve performance largely by finding innovative ways of correcting errors in service delivery and redesigning work processes.”

See, that’s just what I was saying…

When teams are given the opportunity to provide their input on specific

aspects of the job, the manager has their “buy-in”, and team members are more likely to work toward the “team”

assigned goals.

And I mean, Why not?

It is their plans and their ideas, and it’s their responsibility to make them work.

So what should you take home from this?

To a great extent, good Sales Management requires a bottom-up approach. Rather than telling the team what to do, give

them the latitude to determine their destiny.

For the full article, visit http://www.somametrics.com/sales-management-team-buy-in/

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About the Author• Alicia Assefa has over 25 years of Telebusiness and Sales Management experience.

• Her experience at over 50 companies (including CA, Oracle Corporation, Informix Software, Granicus and Blaze Software, to name a few) has helped her to create a set of field tested best practices that massively ramp sales funnel and revenue.

• Alicia is the Chief Operating Officer at SOMAmetrics, a business consultancy practice that provides effective Inside Sales and Teleprospecting Services.

• If you would like to ask Alicia a question about Inside Sales or Teleprospecting email her atalicia@somametrics.com

www.somametrics.com510.206.9263