SALES LEADERSHIP
1. Sales Leadership

SALES LEADERSHIP: 
8 TIPs for effective people management

Reading time:  5 min  |  Time to finish this chapter: 25 min

We hope not to be too idealistic, claiming that sales leaders progress to their sales leadership role from sales. They probably struggled with sales first but then managed to master it. If you find yourself in a sales leader position and maybe struggle a little, remember that leadership is a skill, and just like with any other skill - by practice, you can learn to be good at it. It’s great if you have the predispositions, but that’s not the sole success determiner. 

Most sales leaders tackle hiring, onboarding and offboarding, training, coaching, performance overseeing, sales plan setting, sales operations, and sometimes even their own sales. It is no wonder they can struggle to find a healthy balance of it and be liked and respected by the sales team.

Sales team leadership can be improved just like any other skill - by learning, undergoing mentoring and coaching, simply having a hands-on approach, evaluating, bottlenecks finding, and then repeating all of it until mastery is achieved. It’s timely and energy-consuming.

Therefore, we want to share this set of 8 tips that’ll make every sales leader AND representatives’ office life more comfortable and manageable.

As a sales leader, pay attention to

Do you have good watch?

TIME DISTRIBUTION

Sales leaders still work with quota just like their sales team. However, the quota should match their team’s quota, meaning leaders should not work on their own customers. Once you are a sales leader, you have to lead, motivate, inspire, and help your team members achieve defined goals. 

Chasing customers on your own has nothing to do with leadership. It is just a distraction. It doesn’t improve your team, doesn’t help them achieve their targets. 

People, more people!

Hiring

Sales people know how to sell themselves. It can be hard to see through their sales charisma and people skills to truly get to know them before hiring them. The final decision is probably your call, and the company relies on your pick. 

Sales leaders have to hire great sales representatives who will create an even better sales team. Company size, type, maturity aside, these are 3 essential tips to stick to when hiring their sales team.

Prefer attitude to experience - we’re sure that you could find tens of people who have a broad network in your industry. These people can bring customers easily and quickly but think about them in the long term. Will they still be this kind of an asset to the company in a year or two?

Test coachability - get inspired by Mark Roberge from Hubspot - give the potential hires a case study they didn’t see before. Provide feedback on areas they need to improve in and do the very same case study again. This will show you whether they truly listen, understand and value your/other people’s input. Don’t focus on the first-round performance. Focus on the progress in the second one.

Hire hungry, humble, and smart - hungry enough to achieve and learn, humble enough to know there’s always space for improvement, and smart enough to understand what you do and why you do it.

CASE STUDY ON RAYNET BLOG

Learn RAYNET CRM'S unique pipelines and start to orchestrate your new biz like no one before

READ

As a sales leader, pay attention to:

SALES COACHING

Coaching culture is crucial for an effective team. A study by CSO insight discovers that coaching culture leads to an increase in win rate by 27,5%. Ok, now we know it’s important, but what is coaching culture anyway?

Coaching culture is crucial for an effective team. A study by CSO insight discovers that coaching culture leads to an increase in win rate by 27,5%. Ok, now we know it’s important, but what is coaching culture anyway?

In a coaching culture, leaders resemble great teachers. They:

What do you need to set up a coaching culture?

What about teams?

Team accountability

As a leader, you have to spend time with your team to help them achieve their quotas. Still, each team member has to be accountable for their progress regarding quota and personal development.

The very first requirement for accountability is that your salespeople believe in the possibility of achieving the objectives. Once they believe, you should be their support on the path to hitting the quota.

Regularly, in a healthy sales department, at least 70% of them should achieve it.

By supporting, we mean, for example, that if they aren’t on track with their goal, you help them by asking how they would fix it, what happened they got off the track, analyze it, reflect on mistakes, and design a new action plan. Do not solve their problems on your own.

If each of your representatives’ problem was a monkey sitting on a table, you would have a zoo in your office by the end of the week. Guide them to solve the problem but don’t do solve it of them.

Sales quota must be something the whole sales department goes after. Each sales representative should know their quota and know how much was and still is to be delivered.

newsletter icon

Text1

Get weekly dose of your sales wisdom. Subscribe and we will send you one article each Friday. Just give us your email.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
MARTIN'S POINT OF VIEW

How we think about this in Raynet? Read detailed look of our CEO Martin Bazala from our new office. Yes, we rebuild casino!

Martin Bazala / CEO

Superman, Batman, they all had some

SKILLS & ROLES

See the potential and predispositions in your team. Analyze their skills and allocate them just the roles that fit them.

Do this with your current team and be careful when hiring - if you have a salesperson with experience in enterprise sales, it doesn’t mean that this person would be successful in selling small solutions.

Vice versa, some people just don’t enjoy managing complex deals; they like quick wins every month. Make sure you have the right person for the right role.

Follow the rules!

GIVING GUIDELINES

The absolute must for your sales department is to have a sales process. Not only it’s the primary deal guide for your sales team, but it also helps you analyze what happens with each of their opportunity in detail.

You can’t fix someone’s performance and improve sales skills just by asking how many calls or meetings they made.

Once you start analyzing their calls and meetings closely, you’ll discover the reasons behind the low performance (meeting wrong clients, using an incorrect value proposition, asking wrong questions, etc.).

Positive feedback is a gift, meh?

QUOTA FEEDBACK LOOP

By giving frequent feedback (on each weekly/monthly sales status or review) on sales quotas fulfillment, both you and sales representatives know whether you’re on track, discover bottlenecks, fix blockers, etc.

Paying this amount of attention shows quota is important. If you discuss it once in a time, your team will not remember it.

Activity report in RAYNET

When you use a calendar in RAYNET CRM it is automatically monitoring sales rep activities. So the activity report is just click away…

DISCOVER CRM FEATURES

The next big thing is...

PEOPLE EFFECTIVITY

Let your sales team do what they were hired for. You and your team have to always think about how you could increase the number of hours spent with clients.

Even though it’s important to do desktop research on your customer, or complete a lead list, have a designated assistant do this. Minimize all the repetitive manual tasks. E.g., sending emails can also be automated, so save precious time.

Wrap up

When applying our practices to your team, please, use common sense. Although some of the tips mentioned above may make you lean towards micromanagement, try to avoid it at all costs.

People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. Therefore, consider your company’s maturity and culture, and pick a strategy that works for you the best.

Changes always hurt, and it’s a long process. But do not add to it by clinging to details. Be patient, and the results will come sooner than you think.  

SHARE ARTICLE:
FOLLOWING ARTICLE

Metrics that Matter

In this chapter, we’ll tell you how to measure your sales performance — we’ll describe 8 metrics that are essential for your business growth.

READ NOW

"SALESDOCk is one of Startup Wise Guys' trusted partners in working with early-stage technology businesses. Their involvement has succeeded in helping teams to excel.

About SALESDOCk