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/
26
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 [email protected]
www.somametrics.com510.206.9263