Sales Management Training: 7 Tips for Long-Term Success

Do you sometimes feel like you’re not the best sales manager that you can be? If so, don’t despair. Many managers often have moments where they feel hopeless. Despite trying their hardest, their teams keep coming up short. If this is you, you’re in the right place.

This article examines the key lessons that taught during sales management training sessions. You will be able to learn new techniques and strategies. These will position your team for success in the long-term. Here are the 7 best sales management training tips:

1) Hire better sales reps. 

Say your team has continued to struggle despite your best efforts. Then it might be time to consider hiring higher-skilled reps. After all, it’s a sale manager’s responsibility to find and attract new talent. If you think your company needs to invest more money in reps, let upper management know. When you hire cheap reps, you usually get cheap results. Sales management training helps managers learn what to look for when hiring reps. Most training programs tell you to focus on the resume. But the resume is only a piece of paper. Pieces of paper are incapable of making sales. This is why it may be best for you to do a trial-run when it comes to bringing reps onboard. Give them a few weeks to work and show off their skills. Next, if you like how they operate, you can hire them full-time. If not, all you have to do is inform them that you don’t see a good fit at the moment.

2) Give your reps clear goals to achieve.

You already know your company’s goals. But do your reps know what your goals for them are? If not, they need to get communicated as soon as possible. Your department’s goals should align with your company’s goals. But you’ve got to go a step further. You should take a few moments to reflect on determining realistic goals. That’s because goals are only empty words if there’s no chance that they can get achieved. So, what’s a goal that can get achieved? Below is an example.

A sales room that isn’t managed well has no expectations about how many calls reps should make each day. Some make one-hundred and fifty. Some make seventy-five. Some make thirty. Now, does that sound like a winning formula to you? It shouldn’t. This means that there are no clear expectations for how many calls should get made per day. How is a rep supposed to stay motivated if a clear line hasn’t gotten drawn? This is where the manager must lay down the law. He or she must state the following. “From now on, each rep’s required to make over one hundred calls per day. No exceptions.” This will get everyone on the phones fast. Goals affect your company’s bottomline. The more calls that reps make, the more likely it is that more money will also get made. Do you see how a simple goal leads to more money in your pocket?

This concept also applies to delegating tasks. Goals, expectations, and responsibilities all go hand-in-hand. As you have realized by now, a manager can’t do everything at once. This is why he or she must become experts at delegation. The secret weapon to delegating is understanding what your team members’ strengths are. Delegating work means playing to those strengths. This will ensure that your team is as productive as possible. You’ve also got to become aware of your reps’ weaknesses. Salespeople work best when they understand what they’re expected to do on a daily basis.

3) Provide feedback.

Billions in the Bank’s sales trainers are often shocked. By what exactly? By how many managers don’t understand the importance of giving feedback. Sales managers have an unfortunate tendency. It’s that they wait until a disaster occurs to correct someone’s behavior. By then, it’s too late. Revenue has already gotten lost. And it’s never coming back. This is why managers must be proactive and assertive. Sales reps need to know what they’re doing well and what needs to get fixed fast.

The easiest way for you to check on your reps is to listen in on their calls. Write down everything that works and doesn’t work. Next, arrange a one-on-one meeting with the person that you evaluated. Be nice, but don’t hold back. Inform him or her of what they need to change. This might be difficult for your more sensitive reps. After all, no one likes getting told that they’re not good at their job. But if love got the job done, we’d all be rich. But love does not do that. And your mission is to make yourself and your company rich. That’s why providing feedback needs to be one of your top priorities. Your one-on-one meetings with reps shouldn’t be random. You should meet with each of them at least once every two weeks. This will motivate your salespeople to try their best. After all, who wants to walk into their boss’ office knowing that they’ve done a bad job? If you have a rep with this mentality, you’ve got to let go of this person.

4) Hold yourself accountable.

Like you hold your salespeople accountable, it’s time to do the same thing for yourself. Why? Because a manager’s own actions can make or break the performance of his or her team. This is why you’ve got to coach and inspire them every single day. No breaks. No procrastinating. No exceptions. Otherwise, the reps aren’t going to get motivated. They are not going to be knowledgeable enough to make consistent sales. But don’t get carried away and micromanage your team.

Micromanagement almost always does more harm than good. There’s a big difference between micromanaging and leading. “Micro” means little. Are you a little, insignificant manager? Of course not. You’re a strong leader. Or, you need to become one. So, it’s time to start acting like one. Like you have provided goals to your reps, you need to set management goals for yourself. These are goals that you don’t need to share with the team. They are for the sake of your own career. Although many of your goals will involve your reps’ output. Remember, their success is your success. That’s why you’ve got to hold yourself accountable by motivating and coaching your reps every day.

5) Streamline all processes.

Managers have to play the role of thinkers. This doesn’t mean you need to become the next Socrates or Aristotle. But you should always be thinking of ways to make your sales operations run in an efficient manner. Remember this- everything can get streamlined. It’s only a matter of how to do it. Say you spend 30 minutes per day thinking about how to make your reps’ jobs easier. Before you know it, you’re going to come up with some solutions. If your reps aren’t reaching their full potential, it means you’re not reaching your potential. And it’s time to take charge of your career fast.

But let’s think about streamlining your sales room in a realistic manner. You’re not superhuman. You don’t always have the answers. So, who can you turn to for help? Your reps. That’s right. They’re a sales manager’s go-to resource when streamlining processes. Why? Because they are the ones in the trenches. They can tell you what is working and what is wasting their time. But take each opinion with a grain of salt. You can’t change polices and procedures based on one random opinion. You’ve got to do more investigating on your own. Next, you can automate certain procedures or create an entire new process.

6) Use technology to your team’s advantage.

Here is some great news. Sales technology is improving at a fast rate. What was best three years ago may now seem obsolete. This means a manager should take initiative. He or she has to research all technology that may need to get upgraded. This needs to get done every few months or so. Anything that can make your team work faster is worth investing in. For example, if your team is using an outdated CRM, they are most likely wasting 20 minutes per day. If you manage a team of twenty-five sales reps, that’s five-hundred total wasted minutes per day. That’s ten thousand wasted minutes in only one month! If this doesn’t motivate you to invest in better technology, I don’t know what will. The key here is to stay proactive and stay on the market for better sales technology. Speak to upper management if you need more funds to get better technology. Convey to them how much time will get saved per day.

7) Consider hiring a sales consultant or coach.

Sometimes, after training,  managers continue to have poor results. Even when they think they’re doing everything as best as they can, they’re still struggling. When this is the case, it may be the right time for you to turn to an outsider for help. A third-party sales coach or consultant can step in and check out your team in only one day’s worth of time. Next, the coach or consultant can assist you in correcting all problems. Their decades of experience is a valuable resource. Do not ever feel embarrassed to hire a coach. Many of the top salespeople in the world attribute their success to hiring a great coach. Head over to BillionsInTheBank.com if you’re interested in hiring a sales consultant.

In Conclusion

Use the tips in this article to take your management game to the next level. Don’t expect immediate improvements. The key here is to stay consistent and proactive. Over time, you’ll start to see your reps performing better than they have before. They’ll start pocketing more and more revenue. And this means that you will too. Thanks so much for reading. For more sales tips and strategies, please continue to browse BillionsInTheBank.com.