Sales professionals can tell you that, like in almost any profession, change can come in an instant and you need to be ready. With the speed of technology, whole industries can be turned upside down almost overnight. For a sales manager and their sales team, if they are not equipped with the proper tools, change can be devastating. A sales manager must train their team to be ready for just about anything in order to survive in business today. There are critical tools that must be in place to find success in the wake of constant change.
A good sales team needs to be flexible. Individually and as a whole, they need to have the ability to adapt. Being flexible means being prepared. As a sales manager, you need to understand the market place that you are selling in. You, and your sales team, need to know your clients and know their market as well. You need to be well versed in the outside forces that affect not only your market but the market of your clients as well.
In addition, you need to stay on top of what your competitors are doing. There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a sales presentation and being thrown off course when the client asks about a competitor’s new product and how it compares to what you are offering. The more you know, the more flexible you can be in any given situation.
Every member of a good sales team needs to be analytical. Again, being prepared by analyzing all of the data that is available to you is of the utmost importance. As a sales manager, you need to train your sales team to look at the facts and the data and relate it back to how it affects your company, your competition, your clients and your sales. Collecting and analyzing comprehensive data is a part of every sales person’s job description whether they realize it or not. From understanding the demographics of your particular clients to keeping abreast of the changes that are occurring in technology that affect your product, you need to stay on top of the information and figure out what it means. Once the data is analyzed, you need to determine how to use the information to help your sales team increase their sales.
For a sales team to be effective, everyone needs to communicate. From the top down and from the bottom up, information sharing is a key to success. As a sales manager, you need to make sure that you have created an environment where everyone is not only comfortable sharing information, but also understands how critical it is to share. Even the smallest piece of information about a client or a competitor can have a drastic impact on your sales. Your sales team needs to constantly be on the lookout for new information and be ready to share it.
You should be holding regular sales meetings for your sales team. These meetings need to be more than a report of sales quotas and product presentations. As a team, you need to discuss what is going on in your market and what is the potential for increasing or decreasing your sales success.
As a sales manager, it is important that you train your sales team to incorporate these critical tools as the develop their sales plans. In a market place that is ever changing at a rate that is ever increasing, you need to be flexible, analytical and communicative to insure continued success for your sales team.
Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.