C. Lee Smith, SalesFuel Founder and CEO
Stepping into a sales management role means taking on responsibilities that go far beyond being a top-performing salesperson. As a new sales manager, you’ll need to set clear goals, track team performance, and motivate your salespeople to succeed. Making this transition requires developing new leadership skills, along with the right training and tools to help you excel in your new role.
What do the best sales managers do?
You probably have a good idea of what sales managers do based on your interaction with them throughout your career. In addition to setting goals and managing your team, you may be called on to develop a sales plan to present to leadership. You may also need to terminate underperforming reps and hire replacements.
How do sales managers set goals?
It’s not enough to hope your reps hit their quota, as Donald Kelly points out. As a new sales manager, you can help team members achieve success by setting goals. At least 46% of sales managers responding to our Voice of the Sales Manager survey noted that goal setting and accountability are requirements for their job.
Using the S.M.A.R.T. goal approach can help. Specifically, this acronym stands for:
- Specific: Encourage your team to aim for a specific number such as a 7% jump over the previous year.
- Measurable: As the year progresses, keep your team informed about the progress they are making.
- Achievable: Talk with your team members about what will be achievable, not impossible. Failing to do this will leave some team members feeling demoralized.
- Relevant: Review individual goals with team members to ensure they are relevant. You can gain insight into what motivates them by reviewing the psychometric assessment offered by the TeamTraitTM platform.
- Time-limited: Giving your team a deadline will help them plan their workflow. Whether it’s for the next week or month, a deadline frames the work effort.
How should you monitor team performance?
Sales managers use a variety of metrics to keep tabs on how well their reps are performing. Panelists in the Voice of the Sales Manager survey noted the following metrics were most important:
- Sales growth rate 40%
- Conversion rate 39%
- Annual/Month/Recurring revenue 39%
You may have established team member goals based on their job type. In those cases, you may also be reviewing data points such as emails sent, calls made or deal size. The key is to stay on top of the data points and work with team members to help them improve their productivity
Effective communication
Regardless of the metrics you track, a new sales manager needs an effective way to communicate with each team member. Regularly reviewing progress, measured against their goals, is an important part of one-on-one meetings.
Speaking the language of your sales reps is also critical. Some reps prefer the direct approach; others would like you to ease into a conversation when you’re assessing the ways they can improve performance.
TeamTrait provides this information on every rep who takes the psychometric assessment.
How should you motivate your team?
Around 50% of sales managers believe they must excel at sales training (50%) and sales coaching (47%) according to the Voice of the Sales Manager survey.
They use coaching and training to help reps to master necessary sales skills. Across the board, sales managers believe their team’s biggest weaknesses are discovery, handling objections, and connecting with the budget person.
But not every sales rep needs coaching or training on the same skills. With your limited time, you should direct resources to where you can make the biggest impact.
To learn exactly where your reps are struggling, review the details of the psychometric assessments. TeamTrait will show you if a rep is struggling with discovery or closing. Use this information to help them efficiently improve those sales skills.
For the best chance at success, work with each rep to modify goals and meet regularly to discuss challenges and measure progress.
It may be intimidating to take on the role of a new sales manager. But with practice and focus, you can avoid what many sales reps don’t like about their current manager. The following data points popped up in our Voice of the Sales Rep survey regarding manager weaknesses:
- Shifts blame 24%
- Micromanagers 24%
- Doesn’t motivate 25%
When you meet your team’s needs, you’ll see the glowing reviews we found in our survey results, including the following praise for sales managers: “They always had my back and were knowledgeable in all areas of the company.”
