Sales Manager — The Toughest Job
by Brad Huisken
I really believe that the job of sales manager is one of the toughest, if not the toughest job in retail. Too often a person is made the sales manager simply because they were one of the best salespeople. Too many times the sales manager is given the job without any formal training or guidance, and they are expected to get salespeople to perform. Hopefully this article will shed a little bit of light on the expectations and the strategies necessary to be a successful sales manager.
Here is what I find happening in many retail furniture organizations: The salespeople are given the job, not knowing if they are any good, no one checks in on them, and then nothing is done to help them improve. On the other hand salespeople take a job and reach a level of competency or incompetence depending on how you look at it, and then they let their knowledge and education stop.
In your sales management career there are three basic types of salespeople that you will encounter. Each type is uniquely different and require uniquely different sales management strategies and techniques.
The three types of salespeople are:
1. Under-Achievers
2. Safe-Zoners
3. Over-Achievers
Of these three types of salespeople:
10 percent are under-achievers
80 percent are safe-zoners
10 percent are over-achievers
Your responsibility as a sales manager is:
1. To move the under-achievers to the next level or replace them.
2. To increase the productivity of the safe-zoner.
3. To keep the over-achiever operating at a high level of peak performance.
I believe: Your success as a sales manager is measured by the percentage of your salespeople that reach their individual sales goals.
If 100 percent of your salespeople reach their goals, you are an effective sales manager. If only 50 percent of your salespeople reach their goals and yet your store reaches its goal, you are missing a tremendous opportunity to be a quota buster. If the store isn’t reaching its goal then you are looked down upon as not being an effective sales manager. Get all your people hitting and/or exceeding their individual goals and then the store goal will be shattered.
In order to fulfill your responsibilities as a sales manager you must: Provide the leadership, knowledge, training, incentives and consequences to recruit, hire, develop and maintain successful salespeople.
That is an extremely heavy statement. Look at each of the words and think about what you need to do to accomplish each and every one of them. Do you know how to handle objections effectively; do you know how to turn a sale over without seeming pushy and aggressive? Do you understand the biggest deterrent to an effective T.O. (turnover) program is the ego of the salespeople? What does it take to be an exceptional leader? Do you provide on the spot coaching, positive reinforcement, communication and so on? Your company and people are looking to you to be the leader in your workplace. You are expected to have the answers to the questions. The only way for you to successfully answer the questions is to have the knowledge yourself and to have walked in their shoes.
Adhere to the following 16 principles of sales management and I know you will be well on your way to being a successful sales manager.
The 16 Principles of Successful Sales Management
1. Manage your people individually.
In order to be a successful sales manager you cannot manage your people in groups, they must be managed individually. It is perfectly all right to give praise and accolades in a group environment, as a matter of fact, I would encourage you to do so. In any situation where you are training, giving constructive criticism, taking disciplinary action, or having a coaching session, it must be one-on-one in a private setting.
2. Lead by example.
Your people are looking to you to provide a positive example. One of the reasons that managers lack the respect of their staff is that they are guilty of the old saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” In sales management you must follow all the policies, procedures and standards of your company. As a matter of fact, a successful sales manager has higher standards and stricter policies than the company requires. You cannot be an effective leader without the respect of your staff. You have to be self-disciplined in order to be a leader.
3. Instill discipline in your organization.
The way to gain respect is through instilling discipline in your organization. People want to live and work in an environment that has justified rules and regulations. Could you imagine living in a society without laws and an entity to enforce those laws?
If, in fact, people want to live by justified rules and regulations, it is then up to you to:
A. Know the reasons and justifications for the rules and regulations.
B. Be able to explain the rules and regulations.
C. Enforce the rules and regulations.
D. Take the disciplinary actions necessary to maintain the rules and regulations.
E. Have all rules and regulations written down. If it is not written down, it isn’t real!
4. The Golden Rule of sales management.
Treat others as you want to be treated. Everyone wants and needs to be treated with respect. If you treat people like children you will have nothing but children working for you. If you treat people as adults then you will have adults working for you. You want a professional, mature staff. The only way this will happen is when you treat them as mature human beings. The days of managing by fear, intimidation and immature penalties are long gone.
5. Manage on objective information.
The main reason that salespeople despise their sales managers is due to the sales manager doing his/her job based on opinion rather than on objective information. Everyone is entitled to his/her opinions. However, there is no place in sales management for opinions; your coaching, training and discipline must be based on fact and not fiction. You can not manage on subjective information, it must be objective. People will improve what you inspect not what you expect.
6. Be goal oriented.
As a sales manager you have to establish goals and then be insistent upon achieving them. In many cases the only thing that you have in common with your salespeople is the quest to achieve goals. Through talking numbers and goals you will be able to instill and maintain a goal-oriented operation. Through consistently talking goals, targets and numbers, your people will know that hitting the goals and targets is the primary purpose of being
in business.
7. Get on the floor.
You cannot be effective from behind a desk. The only way to be an effective sales manager is to be involved in the sales process. If you are in a store situation you have to be on the floor listening in on your salespeople’s presentations. Being involved is the only way you can know precisely how to help your people. Ostrich management doesn’t work for successful sales managers.
8. Be direct and to the point.
When giving your salespeople coaching or training, it is essential that you be direct and to the point. It is very easy for your people to become confused or misunderstand what you are saying if you are beating around the bush. People need to know exactly where they stand. Through your direct and to the point conversations they will get the message that you are conveying to them.
9. Catch them doing something right.
The most dominate reason that salespeople leave their position is due to their inability to be or feel successful. It is up to you to let your salespeople know what they are doing right. Your positive feedback ratio must be 10-to-1 over any negative feedback. If, in fact, you are giving your people positive feedback and coaching, when it is time to deliver negative feedback your point will be made much faster and easier. Separate positive from negative. The two don’t mix. Don’t give both positive and negative feedback in the same session. You need to either have a positive session or a constructive session. Keep in mind you need to deliver positive 10-to-1 over negative. If you are one that only gives negative coaching and feedback, it then becomes nagging and not the constructive session you were intending.
10. Your sales force is either getting better or worse. Nothing ever stands still.
As an effective sales manager you can never be completely satisfied with the performance of the sales staff. Unless they are maintaining a closing ratio average (CRA) of over 75 percent and not only meeting but exceeding your goals, there is room for improvement. No one ever stays the same. If your sales staff is maintaining their performance level, then they are getting worse. This is due to the fact that everyone around them is working to improve. You have to have the mind set that your people can always make both higher quality sales and a higher quantity of sales. This is where your true training, coaching and knowledge come into effect.
11. You must know your people well enough to know how to move them individually.
In order to manage your salespeople effectively and individually, you must know what moves your people individually. People are inspired and motivated by different factors. Some work for money, others for personal time, etc. It is your job to find out what moves each of them and what it is that will inspire them to reach for higher levels of performance. People work for personal satisfaction; you have to find that element.
12. Be firm but fair.
Sales management by exception does not work with the vast majority of people. To be effective you must treat people equally and fairly. If one person is written up for an offense then anyone else who commits the same offense must be treated the same. As stated earlier, you need to instill discipline. Your disciplinary measures must be delivered firmly and fairly just as your positive measures must be delivered in an equal and fair manner.
13. Give them quality time.
One of the biggest reasons that sales managers aren’t as successful as they could be is that they are too busy doing all the other functions of their jobs and end up ignoring their salespeople. Effective sales managers have to be able to both delegate duties and responsibilities and manage their time well enough to allow for quality time with their salespeople. Get the operational tasks done and out of the way and you will have time for your people. My suggestion is that you have individual weekly scheduled meetings that last for 10 to 15 minutes in addition to you regular sales meetings.
14. Business is business.
Personal relationships have no place in business for an effective sales manager. You have to be able to maintain a professional business relationship with your sales staff. Your people work for you; they are not your friends. If in fact you do have a personal relationship with someone, or all of your sales staff, you have to keep the two relationships separate during business hours. It is rare that you can or would want to be friends with everyone on your staff.
When you have one person that you are personal friends with and others that you are not personal friends with, the people that you don’t maintain a personal relationship with will feel as though they are being treated differently or not given the same attention as the friend is getting.
15. Let them know what is expected of them.
Just as people want to know how they are doing, they also want to know exactly what is expected of them. If they don’t know what you expect them to do, how could they possibly meet your expectations? In all areas of their position, you have to let them know what you expect of them. Whether it be sales goals, operational tasks, customer service standards, or policies and procedures, they need you to let them know exactly what it is you want and expect.
16. Make it fun.
Just as your customers want to have fun spending their money, and you want to have fun at your job, your salespeople also want to enjoy and have fun at their profession. As the leader of your organization, it is up to you to make it enjoyable and fun for your sales staff. You want a sales staff that actually gets up in the morning wanting to come to work and reach their performance targets and goals. Through your positive feedback, training, coaching, contests, games and knowing each of your people individually, you can make it fun for them. People want and need to be successful, you owe it to them to give them everything you can to insure their success.
A successful sales staff is: completely trained, working toward objectives, held accountable for performance and rewarded based on results.
Author, trainer, consultant and speaker Brad Huisken is president of IAS Training. Mr. Huisken authored the books “I’M a salesman! Not a PhD.” and “Munchies For Salespeople, Selling Tips That You Can Sink Your Teeth Into.” In addition, he publishes a free weekly newsletter called “Sales Insight.” For a free subscription or more information contact IAS Training at (800) 248-7703, www.IASTraining.com or fax (303) 936-9581
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