Tips of sales planning

The role of a sales manager is not an easy one and I have seen many fail. Some have failed because of their own abilities but most have failed due to the company they work for. So in this article I will outline the top 5 reasons why they fail. This is not by all means the only reasons but the ones that I have encountered the most over the years of training, coaching and mentoring sales teams. The list is not in any order.

Promoted to Manager because they are an excellent salesperson - Most organizations have the misconception that if a salesperson is excellent in selling then they should naturally be an excellent Manager. While some are most aren't and the end result is that the organization will lose an excellent salesperson to another company. In my experience an excellent salesperson should continue to sell because that is what they are good at. In most circumstances they will normally revert back to selling and neglect the requirements of being a the sales manager.

The sales incentive scheme - How a salesperson is motivated is critical to the success of a sales manager. If the sales team is not making their sales targets or quotas this is a reflection on the performance of the manager. But how are they suppose to help their team if the incentive scheme is counter productive. A good sales incentive scheme is essential to the success of the managers and their team members.

Teamwork - As salespeople normally operate as individuals they find it difficult to function as a team. They will fight for the same opportunities and in some cases they act like children. It is the responsibility of the manager to bring the individuals together and this is possible in many different ways.

Taking sales from their sales team - Normally a manager has been a salesperson in one stage of their career and it is their instinct to try and win business. For some their ego takes over and they believe that certain opportunities can only be won by them, so they take it away from one of their team members. This also occurs when the organisation forces their managers to have an individual sales quota as well as a team sales quota.

Sales Management is Very Important for Your Sales Team

From you role in sales management, do you manage from a perspective focusing on existing talents (strengths) or from non-talents (weaknesses)? If you truthfully answered from a more negative than positive perspective, then can you answer this question: Why do winning teams win because of their strengths or their weaknesses? Possibly, now is the time to change your management style especially if you wish to increase sales and have a high performance sales team.

To be an effective sales manager means you must know the talents of your team and each team member must know his or her talent as well. Unfortunately, because most human beings are negatively conditioned from the No's to the Don'ts to the Cant's. This previous negative conditioning reaches far into future behaviors. Until awareness is achieved regarding these negative almost self-fulfilling prophetic behaviors, any attempts to improve results will probably not be as successful as they could be.

One way to know the talents of your people is to engage in performance appraisals using proven assessment instruments. With technology being what it is, many of this performance appraisals can be delivered online. Sales Coaching Tip: The assessment instrument to be 100% effective must be accompanied by a detailed debriefing allowing the participant to take the information and begin to immediately apply it. There should be some additional sales coaching beyond the initial debriefing.

Another proactive management strategy is to have all team members create both their own personal sales and life action plans. Sales is very much a contact sport in that your force is out there every day talking to meeting with potential customers (a.k.a. prospects). To stay fully engaged, everyone needs to be healthy. Unfortunately, given all the research, many people fail to focus on their health causing additional cost to their employers as well as to their own personal finances. Poor health also leads to additional stress and this in turn affects the entire team from reduced productivity to toxic cultural environment.

Good salespeople have always talked about creating value. Now we need to put ourselves in our clients' shoes and be creative. We must get in and get started. Think smart, not big. It's always smarter to have a smaller piece of something, than a big piece of nothing. Begin with a smaller project, a reduced order, or a regional, rather than global, implementation. Get in, and get to know the client. Let them get to know you. Get to know their business.

Sit on the same side of the table as your client. Work together to determine the best way to get started. Always, always, create metrics with your client. How do you, together, define success? Get agreement that once this project is successful--according to the metrics you've agreed upon--that the client will work with you to identify other sales opportunities within their organization. A successful project breeds a successful relationship, which leads to successful referrals. This means more sales leads and more money for you.

A healthy and Positive Approach is very important for your Sales Team

In sales Team Sales managers try to give the best effort and spend a lot of time in meetings and attempting to motivate their sales teams. But Generally Much of this time is truly wasted and not invested because the focus is on existing problems such as failure to increase sales, declining customer loyalty, etc instead of focusing on solutions.

Problems in any organization are far easier to identify and in many cases re-identify. However, determining solutions and then executing those solutions is far more difficult. Possibly that is why there are endless meetings and far fewer results happening in many businesses. Sales Coaching Tip: Problem re-identification is another word for insanity - doing the same thing over and over again hoping for different results.

If you are facing the endless meeting behaviors as a sales manager, have you considered this one simple strategy to reverse those non-productive problem identification meetings - a proven goal achievement process reinforced with a proven goal setting tool.

For example, the weekly sales meeting discusses the ongoing problem of inability to increase revenue. Instead of beating this dead horse, write a goal statement that the sales team will increase sales by 2% during the next week. Sales Coaching Tip: Break large goals into smaller ones. Remember to eat the elephant one bite at a time instead of attempting to eat the entire elephant at one setting.

Before you jump into the action steps, invest the time to build the emotional buy in from each team member. List all the gains for achieving this objective as well as all the pains associated with failure.

Next work through all the known and unknown (potential) obstacles preventing that goal from being achieved. This is the time for active brainstorming. If your selling team is large, break them up into smaller groups.

Now bring the sales team back together and list all the possible obstacles on a white board or flip chart. Either collectively or again in teams start thinking about possible solutions for each obstacle. Then as a group determine the best solution for each obstacle.