Sales Managers Are The Swiss Army Knives In Your Organization. Give The Tools They Need To Shine.

If you ask most Sales Managers, they will say they wear many hats and assume many roles on a daily basis. If you look at sales managers in professional sports terms, they would have to be a GM, coaches, players and cheerleaders. Let’s not forget equipment managers.

IN A SPORTS SETTING:

A GM is a generalist who is familiar with all areas of the business and can coordinate processes and operations across the organization. A general manager must speak the languages of finance and accounting, operations, sales, marketing, human resources, R&D and engineering

IN A BUSINESS SETTING:

Sales managers, like GM’s have to be the connection between all the departments in an organization because their team’s activities affect other parts of the organization and others affect theirs. Sales managers must develop processes to keep the sales landscape from resembling the Wild West. With workflow automation, sales managers are able to set guardrails to keep the team on task and get consistency with engagement internally and externally.

IN A SPORTS SETTING:

A coach is a professional at training and developing athletes to perform at a high level. Their responsibility is to prepare the players for the game.

IN A BUSINESS SETTING:

In order for Sales managers to be effective coaches, they need to know what their players strengths and weaknesses are. Like a coach looking at a player’s stats, a sales manager must have good analytics and reports to identify what areas a rep performs well in and what best practices higher performing reps apply that can be copied to others. Having insight into best practices comes into play when onboarding new reps to the team by starting them off with good habits.

Four really interesting stats from 21 Mind-Blowing Sales Stats help illustrate the point.

• 55% of the people making their living in sales don’t have the right skills to be successful.

• Continuous training gives 50% higher net sales per employee.

• The average company spends $10K - $15K hiring an individual and only $2K a year in sales training.

• It takes 10 months or more for a new sales rep to be fully productive.

Rather than looking at game film to review performance, Sales Managers can use tools like phone call recording and content reviews on emails sent to assess areas of improvement.

Without good training and onboarding processes, reps can take a long time to actually be effective at their job, and there is a cost.

IN A SPORTS SETTING:

A player has to actually get on the field and play the game and put into practice what has been coached.

IN A BUSINESS SETTING:

From time to time Sales Managers need to get involved in bigger deals by getting on the field of play. Ideally they have trained their team members to score for themselves, but sometimes there is a certain finesse and experience that is needed to be able to close the deal. In those moments, hopefully the manager will view those as teaching opportunities and pass along those best practices to their team.

IN A SPORTS SETTING:

A cheerleader is there to keep players and the crowd motivated and keep their attention on the game.

IN A BUSINESS SETTING:

Sales Reps are not robots. They need encouragement when things are tough and praise when things are good. Sales managers have to keep their reps motivated and give them a morale boost when needed. Whether that motivation be provided through financial rewards or performance incentives, managers and organizations need to find a way to keep their players in the game on a psychological level.

Dissatisfied employees can negatively affect a company because they typically lack motivation, perform poorly and possess negative attitudes. These symptoms have a way of spreading to other employees, infecting entire departments and the company’s bottom line.

IN A SPORTS SETTING:

An equipment manager provides equipment for coaches to train the players in addition to providing equipment that enables players to play.

IN A BUSINESS SETTING:

Sales managers are often key decision makers when it comes to the equipment or tools that their team uses. Many times Sales managers are giving their teams equipment that is outdated, cumbersome, or is simply ineffective at impacting productivity and sales in a positive way. When sales manager don’t provide their team with the right tools or solutions, there is an issue with performance.

Bigger is not better when it relates to the number of applications a company uses. In a survey commissioned by harmon.ie, the results revealed that the so-called “digital transformation” of the workplace, fueled by a plethora of mobile and desktop apps, may be doing more harm than good for the average knowledge worker.

Some of the key findings were:

• The average number of apps used by the modern worker is 9.39

• 43 percent believe that they have to switch between too many apps just to get basic work done

• 67 percent believe it would be easier to focus on work if important information from all of their apps appeared in a single window

• 70 percent don’t care which app they use as long as they can find information quickly and easily to get their jobs done

• 41 percent can find all the information they need to do their day-to-day work just by opening a few apps. However, 35 percent said they have to open multiple windows to find the information they need

Having the RIGHT equipment is one of the most important factors in doing a job effectively and it is key to preventing employee frustration. You wouldn’t give a basketball player a pair of ice skates or use golf balls in a football game would you?

Sales managers are one of the most important roles in an organization. They are the connection between so many other departments, so it makes sense for them to have a “Swiss Army Knife” solution that enables them do their job at their fullest potential. Salesvue developed our native Salesforce application to solve all of the aforementioned challenges by providing a single platform, single console solution. Regardless of role, our goal is to empower everyone who uses Salesforce to fill their position like a pro.

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