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11/04/2020

Make It a Process…Key Elements of Sales Management

Presented by: Joe Ellers, Owner, Palmetto Associates

Sales management is not equal to sales measurement—it’s a lot more important.  Over the years, a lot of sales managers have been focused on looking at reports and analyzing numbers and trends---all good stuff, but this is really like trying to drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror.  There is very little a manager can do to affect what has already happened. (The same thing goes for reading call reports).

Professional sales management = proactive sales management.  The goal is to make the right things happen (on a daily basis) to ensure that you are truly getting the results you want.

Take a simple example:  Most sales organizations want to add new customers.  Sounds great…may be great, but from a management perspective, you have to do more than simply acknowledge the sales that are coming from new customers.

Here are a few diagnostic questions:

  1. Does each salesperson have a goal for the number of new sales they are supposed to generate?
  2. Does each salesperson have a specific list of prospects you want them to call on?
  3. Do you have any visibility on the number of sales calls that have already been conducted on this list?  Do you have any visibility on the number of sales calls scheduled on this list?
  4. Do you know the dollar volume of opportunities being worked at the new targeted prospects—as of right now?
  5. And, have you ridden with each member of your sales team as they make introductory calls on some of those prospects?
  6. Think about how you can apply the same process for selling focus products and opening up target market segments.
  7. The information presented above moves your organization from reactive sales measurement to proactive sales management.

The goal of this program is to provide sales managers with some key definitions and a handful of tools and processes that you can implement---the day you get back—without any investment in technology.  A lot of being a good sales manager has to do with intangibles…no one can teach you those.  But you can add a process component to the approach and not only improve effectiveness but spend less time doing it.  More effective less work---not a bad combination.

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