Better Managing Tips

Posts Tagged ‘hiring process’

In my last post I mentioned that I will go through some skills you need to be an effective manager.

First and foremost, you need to have an understanding of the concept of coaching. If you see yourself strictly as a manager who is tied to the administrative tasks of the role, then you have already failed. Sure, the admin stuff is important but, if you don’t have sales coming in, you will have no admin to do eventually. You need to work with your team and develop their sales skills, work on strategies with them, provide feedback on their performance and to make sure in general that each and every member of your team meets their sales target for the month. What I used to do was get into the office early and take care of all the admin crap while there was no one around to distract me. That way, the day was free to concentrate on all the sales related issues with my team. If you feel you need additional training yourself to become a better coach, then ask for it! There is no shame in doing that. Its better for your management to see that you are expanding your skills to do your job more effectively. Its a win win situation for both parties.

You also need to have an effective hiring process. The people you choose to be a part of your team can either make or break you, so be choosy. Dont just rely on intuition. I have done that in the past and let me tell you, I hired some absolute tossers in my time.Your company probably has a procedure for hiring people so follow it. Your gut feeling is important too but it should be used in conjunction with a proper selection process system. If your company doesn’t have one, suggest that they develop one NOW!

A very important system that you have to make sure is in place is an effective selling system.I have worked in some places where they had the best products and services, but no one knew how to deliver it to the customers because they didn’t have an effective selling system. Its part of your role to make sure your sales team has a clear set of guidelines, procedures or in other words, a repeatable formula for sales success. A step by step guide on how to close a deal, what to do after you have closed the deal, proper filling out of paperwork, the procedure to hand in paperwork and the list goes on. All of this is your job to make sure its in place. There is nothing worse than trying to track a sale and not being able to find it or not sure what happened to the paperwork associated with that sale. Believe me, by not having a proper selling system in place, you are making a rod for your back. In the end, you are responsible for what goes on in your department. If you don’t have this system in place, coaching becomes harder because you don’t know at what point in the sales process a sales person is failing.

There are many additional things you can do to make sure you don’t fail as a sales manager but these few points should be a great start for you.