How To Plan And Prioritize Your Time As A New Sales Manager

Plan and prioritize your time! was the first instruction ever given to me by my very first sales manager. He was ex army and I was fresh out of

university.

I had a whole lot of enthusiasm and not much else. He had the experience, though maybe not the best coaching skills.

I laugh now about how bad I was. I can honestly say planning was one of the best and most productive skills I ever learnt.

Time management and organization are like evergreen trees- they never lose their importance and are frequently discussed topics in managing a sales team.

With the economy the way it is it is so easy to panic and run around,trying to do every thing. Where as, if you take time to sit down and really think about what you want to achieve, your focus and results can’t help but happen.

Everyone tends to understand that the key ingredient to living a life that is less stressful, moreenjoyable and one that allows you to find the time to fit everything into a jam-packed schedule is proper planning and prioritizing of your time.

What most people don’t seem to know is how to make that happen!

How can you prioritize your work and tasks so that you have enough time for it all, and still keep your sanity?

Get a Calendar/Planner/Diary

Regardless of what you call it, you need to have some sort of calendar that you use to plan out your time.

Preferably one that you can carry around with you, and physically write in- but some people might find the digital versions to be just as effective.

The trend is for everything electronic. It doesn’t really matter as long as it happens. You might be surprised to know that I have actually gone back to a page a day large diary.

Its great to be able to write things down quickly. The bonus is psychologically I feel great to when I see how much I have got through.

The night before each day, take 15 minutes to plan the following day.

Using To-Do Lists Effectively.

Making a list of 50 things that need to be done is not the best use of your time; nor will it actually help you manage your time better.

I follow a great tip that you will find in a number of books. Look at your major goals that you want to achieve say over the next 90 days.

Focus on your top five.

You could make these business or a mix of business and personal. Then committ to do something each day with each one. It could be minor.

Let me give you an example. Say you decide that you want to have a team vision by the end of the 90 days.

So your week might look like this:

Day 1: Decide and brain storm all the positive things about having a vision.Set your outcome.

Day 2: Research in full the company vision and how that could translate to your team.

Day 3: Email your boss to let them know what you are

doing.

Day 4: Plan out an email to the team

Day 5: Email the team to test the water

Each of these things won’t take long. Do these for each of your goals and you will be astounded how quick things happen.

A great top tip is when creating your list of things to do. Be realistic on how longs thing take. I have a theory that at birth all sales managers have a chip that is planted.

This makes us think we are superhuman. Fast does not always mean best.

Prioritise Tasks

Most Sales Managers are overwhelmed with a large number of activities that need to be done on a regular basis.

The best way to effectively plan your time and keep things under control is to prioritise the tasks according to their level of importance.

When working through the creation of your to-do list; you would want to schedule your urgent, or most important tasks for earlier in the day, to make sure they get completed.

As the day goes on, unexpected interuptions may cause some of your tasks to go undone; so it’s always a good idea to do the most pressing activities before doing those that are not quite as important.

It also has a psychological effect.It gives an energy boost.

To be technical its actually an energy release.

Think of how you feel when you have gone through your expenses finally and they are emailed or posted to the boss. Feels great don’t you think?

Delegate, Do, or Schedule

You’ve no doubt heard the saying:

Don’t put off til tomorrow what can be done today.

While this is true for avoiding procrastination, there is nothing wrong with scheduling less-urgent tasks for a later day or time- as long as you are actually scheduling them to be done and not just avoiding them!

When things come up during the day that you can do in under two minutes, just do them right away.

This could be answering an email, filing information, or putting a client’s folder in the file cabinet(versus setting it on the desk to do later!)

If there are tasks that you are faced with completing that someone else on your team could do just as well- quickly delegate those items to the proper people with a scheduled deadline for completion.

This only works effectively if you don’t have to spend as much time explaining the project as you would just completing it yourself, so make sure the activity is really something that can be delegated before passing it off.

The keys to successful delegation are that the person is capable of completing the work; they know when it’s due and will keep to that deadline; and it is a task that delegation results in giving you time to work on a more urgent matter.

Survival Tips for the New Sales Manager

Survival Tips for the New Sales Manager

When I was a young, sales manager it was not really that hard to be good—even great. The recipe for “good” back then was fairly simple: work long hours, teach some type of sales strategy (by example) and occasionally have a pep talk with your team. If you wanted to be “crazy good” you held a sales meeting once a week, worked individually with reps and devised some type of incentive for getting people to do pretty much whatever you wanted. Sure there were challenges and competition and the need to get traffic through the door but somehow we overcame it all and were able to succeed and prosper with a fairly uncomplicated process. That was a long time ago.

Being great in today’s market comes with many of the same challenges as before—but they are challenges on steroids. Today’s sales manager must contend with tough competition, generational issues, a much more sophisticated buyer, a volatile economy and deal with major management and corporate office changes with regularity. Today’s sales manager must be a disciplinarian, a therapist and a recruiter–not to mention a stickler for managing by the numbers.

Can it Be Done?

So is it impossible to be a great sales manager? Absolutely not! There are definite strategies that can be employed to ease the challenges facing today’s managers. The modern-day sales managers must learn to be supreme sorters among the endless to-do lists that threaten to overwhelm them and must also learn to embrace change—to name a few. While we cannot cover ALL of strategies in the scope of this article—we can certainly hit on a few that might make an immediate difference.

Coping With Change-Whoever said “Change is Good” was on crack. (Actually I think it was President JFK –so no disrespect intended). Change is great until it happens to you. Departmental reorganizations, budget cuts, mergers, acquisitions and new bosses can rattle even the most solid among us. Even seemingly “smaller” changes like delays in a promised promotion, or a change in comp plan we have to sell to our team, or even a marketing strategy we completely disagree with, can be rattling because they have a direct effect on our jobs. It can feel like gut-punch and frankly being punched can elicit all kinds of inappropriate responses from us. So the next time you get hit by an email or piece of news you do not like do three things:

First: Do nothing. That’s right. Do nothing at all. Don’t send the email, the announcement, the letter or have that conversation. Just take it in. Do nothing. You need a day to think about this if you don’t have a day, take an hour a minute or a walk. But do nothing with your first impulse.

Second: De-personalize the situation. While this dramatically affects you; it is not necessarily about you. Chances are this change is part of a much bigger issue that you may not have the details about—and likely never will. Try and imagine what those issues might be. Your next move will be a lot smarter, more tactical and strategically beneficial to you if you can take your personal feelings out of the equation.

Third: Make a list of what you believe in. Not what you think or do—what you believe. And not just work beliefs—true, deep down, life beliefs. What do you believe about adversity? About change? About integrity? Now is your chance to live by those beliefs and make your next move.

The bottom line with change is that you need to get yourself into a state of mind where you expect it, deal with it and even welcome it. To accomplish this you must have a strategy for coping–otherwise the stress will kill you or will certainly impair your ability to succeed.

Combating the Overwhelm-If you have been staring through your computer or wandering around aimlessly lately you might be in a state of overwhelm. Check your Thesaurus for other words to describe the feeling and you will find: confounded, dismayed, dumbfounded, shocked, and thunderstruck among them. Anyone who as ever been overwhelmed knows that overwhelm leads to paralysis and paralysis in sales equals failure. Try these 3 steps:

1. One of the best strategies for dealing with overwhelm is to start by making the longest to-do list known to man. When I am overwhelmed I write down literally any item floating in my mind. If I am particularly breathless with To-dos I will take out several note pads (or Word documents) and categorize them by month or department or client or whatever. Just get it down on paper.

2. Next prioritize the list by writing down the top 5 things you MUST accomplish to be a success right now. The truth is that we all have way too much to do and telling ourselves that everything is of equal importance only makes things worse. Look closely at that list and ferret out the items that will directly affect sales, client or employee retention, morale, reporting and profitability. Chances are, if you succeed at the critical items on your list the other things will fall into place or fall away.

3. Once you have your list it is time to ORGANIZE your world. There is almost no chance that you are totally overwhelmed and working at a clean desk with organized files, a tidy home and a clean car. What is more likely is that you have fallen way behind on these items and the disorganization is adding to your sense of overwhelm. Take your anger out on your office. Clean it up, organize it and rearrange it and THEN attack that to do list.

Much of what it takes to survive and thrive in today’s workforce falls under the category of perspective. You need perspective to remind yourself that not every change is about you. You need perspective to sort through the increasing number of things that are now “your job” and do what really, really matters first and you need the perspective to know that you got this job by succeeding at something and you can succeed at this too.

Hire the Right Sales Manager

Although every organization is different, hiring a sales manager is not as simple as it looks. In fact, the wrong sales manager can quickly damage morale, if not scare away the sales reps and potentially injure the firm.

A common mistake is to promote a high achieving sales rep who wants to move up in management. Unfortunately, a highly successful sales rep may be exactly the wrong candidate for sales management. Often aggressive sales reps are impatient, lack team-player characteristics, and tend to have huge egos; these can be exactly the wrong characteristics for a sales manager.

In my opinion, the following general characteristics or traits are needed for a good sales manager:

1. Teaching skills- This includes the ability and interest to help others learn.

2. Empathy- A good sales manager needs to understand how reps feel and how to react accordingly. Sales teams can be highly emotional and fragile. Insensitive sales managers fail.

3. Ego in check- A strong ego is required, but the needs of the team are greater than the manager’s.

4. Communication skills- This skill is an obvious requirement that includes the ability to lead the sales team and to work with the other departments.

5. Relationship skills- This is the ability to create long term relationships with internal and external customers. Sales managers must be likeable.

6. Analytical skills- The best sales managers must be able to decide the strategic options in complex sales situations. They have to make the tough calls.

7. Wins through the victories of the team- Gets satisfaction by helping sales reps win; this is knocks out a lot of reps who want to be managers.

8. Ability to handle pressure- On a day to day basis, the sales manager is “under the gun” more than any employee in a typical firm.

9. Continuous learner- I find that the best sales managers are always looking for new ways to get things done. They are naturally curious.

10. Sales manager experience- I always favor gray hair when it comes to hiring a sales manager. Conversely, rookies will likely make mistakes and those mistakes could be costly.

Remember to do an extensive background check on external candidates. Look for a history of strong performances with good references. Life is short, so hire winners.

5 Keys to Hiring the Right Sales Manager

There are few decisions more critical for a company than the hiring of the leadership of their sales organization. Yet, few know how to do it well. Many err and promote their best seller to a sales management position. Why this is called a promotion is beyond me. The job of the sales manager is vastly different than that of a sales person, so why is this considered employment elevation? Often times, sales managers earn less than the top sales people. Promotion?

Some sales people make the transition successfully, but many struggle with the change. Sometimes, it is a mismatch of the person to the role. However, more frequently, the struggle is caused by the lack of recognition by the company that this is not a promotion, but rather a move into a completely new job. How do you handle an employee in a new job? You train, mentor, and monitor their performance! Look, most people do not come out of the womb with the skills required to be an effective manager. Thus, it is a key responsibility of the company to recognize that when moving their top sales person into that role they need to own the development of that individual. A congratulatory handshake and smile just will not get it done.

Many companies look for their sales management candidates from outside their organization. This approach also has its challenges. Whether you promote from within or hire from outside, consider these five points to make sure you find the right person for the role.

Selling versus Managing. If you consider the broad spectrum of responsibilities from selling business directly to managing a team, what percentage of the time do you expect this person to be focused on personal selling versus managing? As mentioned above, the skill set required for those two responsibilities is vastly different. It is also difficult to find professionals that have equal strength in both skill sets. Often times, there will be a trade-off. If there is a sacrifice to be made, it makes the best sense to select someone who has their primary strength in the more predominant part of the responsibility.

If the decision is made that the position has equal responsibility for selling and managing or the dominant responsibility is selling, it may make sense for an internal hire. This allows the company to develop a new manager. However, the plan falls down if the company is not committed to a development plan.

Creating versus Executing. Another consideration is what your expectations of the sales manager are relative to developing the corporate sales architecture (the framework of the sales organization). In some companies, there is a plan already in place and the job of the sales manager is to ensure the plan is executed as written. In essence, the job is to motivate the troops and coach them to make sure revenue targets are achieved. This is usually the case for mid-level sales managers.

In other situations, the primary job is to establish the overall direction of the sales organization, formulate the compensation plan that supports that direction, and execute the plan. Needless to say, this is a very different profile than the sales manager described above.

Title versus Responsibility. Check any job board and you will find a plethora of titles referring to sales management. However, there is not a direct correlation between title and responsibilities. This can create a disconnect with the new manager and with clients if those two are not synchronized. If you are going to give someone the title of Vice President, there is an inherent expectation that this is a high-responsibility, high-authority position. When clients hear that title, they believe that this person is a senior-level person in the company and can make decisions. Thus, this can create client frustration if the responsibility and authority are not consistent with the title.

At the other end of the spectrum, calling this person a sales manager creates a more junior-level perception. There is nothing wrong with the term, but it is important that you recognize the created perception. Again, this can cause issues with both the person in the role and clients if the responsibilities does not match the title. Some very good sales management candidates will elect not to apply to your company because they believe it is a junior-level role.

Interviewing. Probably the toughest role for which to interview is the sales manager. For one, they are experienced in interviewing. They know the desired answers. They know the sales lingo and buzz words. How do you get past the fluff and get your real answers? One way is to develop a list of benchmark questions that candidates are asked. This allows for comparison of answers among the candidate pool. (Send me an email and I will send you my favorite 20 questions.) It is important that the questions not follow a sequence so that the candidate cannot build off their prior answers. Be sure to document the responses to each so you can review them later. You will be amazed by what comes out of this step of the process.

Another important consideration when interviewing these candidates is with whom they will need to have a healthy business relationship to be successful in their role. For example, there is an inherent strife between sales and operations. However, the company will fail if the leaders of those two areas are not able to work together in a productive manner. Consider the various department leaders with whom this person will interact and engage them in the process. This also helps the new manager assimilate into the organization once they are onboard.

The Ultimate Screening Tool. The most effective tool that I have found in screening sales management candidates is the request for the submission of a written business plan. When the candidate has satisfactorily completed all of the other steps of the pre-offer process, the request is made for a one-page business plan that shows how they would approach the job. I mention the one-page scope three times in the conversation so my expectations are clear. The candidate is asked by when they can submit the document. It is important that the submission date be asked of the candidate, not the other way around as you will see in a moment.

The benefits of this step are numerous. For one, it shows if the candidate can communicate in written form. Writing is a lost art in business, but a critical one for someone in a leadership role.

Another benefit is that it shows if the candidate understands what the role entails. A number of hours have been spent with the candidate by this point. If they are near the finish line, they should have a clear vision of the expectations.

Another is to see if there is a synergy in the approach to the role. It is best to see before the marriage is performed if their approach is aligned with the vision of the leadership team.

Still another is the ability to see if this person can meet a self-imposed deadline. I asked when he could have the plan to me. He provided me with a date and time. If it is late, the candidate is no longer considered for employment. End of story.

Finally, in this role, I am the client. I have asked for a one-page plan, not an epic. Do they follow directions? Or do they ignore what the client desires and do whatever they want. While I do not eliminate candidates solely for this, I refer to this in a follow-up session with the candidate.

One final point that is critical when hiring is to background screen. Resume fraud is at an all-time high! Candidates lie about employment history, salary history, and their education experience, not to mention criminal history. Find a reputable firm to do this work for you. If you would like my white paper titled, Are There Criminals On Your Sales Team?, send me an email.

Finding the right person for your sales management role is difficult. It is also expensive. These five keys will help mitigate the risk and create a happy, healthy sales marriage between you and your new employee.

Sales Manager Training: the Critical Advantage

Being a salesperson is one thing; managing a team of several sales professionals is entirely another. Sales management brings more people in perspective along with a completely different set of goals. Thus, sales manager training is a wholly separate tract in business management education. Be that as it may, sales manager training is something which cannot be overlooked for it is the pivotal point at where business proficiency and management acumen must be fully demonstrated by the person in charge — that is, the sales manager.

Among all departments in a business, it is perhaps the sales department that has the highest turnover rate not just among the basic sales staff but also among sales managers. It is also the department that has the quickest rate of promotions and expansion. The sales manager position is therefore the most dynamic post in the business hierarchy and requires the most attention in terms of learning solutions and continuing education.

Hence, sales manager training is at a critical position. A good and sufficient training can provide an advantage for the company; however a training that is less than ideal may prove inadequate in helping sales managers excel in their businesses.

Focus on Managerial Skills

Most sales managers go up the ranks from being sales agents, to holding supervisory positions, until they get the managerial job either when the previous manager have gone further up the hierarchy, have left the company or when the business unit expands. Sales manager training should already be enacted at the supervisor level or even earlier among key sales personnel.

The primary learning requirement for upcoming sales managers involve augmenting their knowledge and skills to effectively perform their managerial duties. Most rookie managers have not been in a leadership position before. And the tools and know-how expected of seasoned managers are still all new to them. These include, planning skills, organizational skills, ability to motivate their respective teams, what to do during difficult situations — all these and more go into the content of sales manager training to allow new managers to adjust accordingly to their new duties.

Through sales manager training, the trainer brings together the novice manager’s new found skills and knowledge with his or her achievements and proficiency as sales professional. This brings about profound potentials that tend to improve performance of the manager and the sales team.

Discovering Strengths and Weaknesses

One additional benefit of training up sales managers is the opportunity to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the firm’s sales managerial talent pool. This allows higher management to adjust accordingly either at the individual level or as a team. A sales manager with a weakness on a certain area may be given additional training to help the manager improve. Otherwise, at the team level, certain adjustments can be made to let managers and teams complement each other’s respective strengths and weaknesses.

The importance of sales manager training cannot be watered down. A company that provides continuing sales manager training is sure to reap its benefits of a high-performance sales force.