Ralph Paglia; Internet Marketing and Sales Director at Courtesy Chevrolet


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Be a Successful Sales Manager, Not a Super Seller

There is a major difference between being a sales manager and a top-notch seller as there is a great deal of responsibility that goes along with being a manager. For starters, a manager must provide sales force motivation for the staff, as his or her career is dependent on how hard these other individuals work. In order to be good at your job, you must master sales order management and sales process management, as both of these skills will help you a great deal along the way. Motivating your team is the perhaps the most important aspect of this job, so your management skills will definitely be put to the test once you start.

The first thing that you must do is figure out what will provide sales force motivation for your team. This will allow you to develop your coaching skills in a manner that will serve each team member. Since you are attempting to build a long-term relationship with these team members, you must build their confidence in both themselves and in you as a leader.

Another extremely important aspect of being a leader is that you must realize that everyone has different sales abilities. You will find that certain members of your team will be more successful than others and there is nothing wrong with this. If you look at a professional sports franchise, every member of the team has a role. Not every player can lead the team in scoring, so part of your sales force motivation should involve getting these team members to embrace their roles within the company.

You must also be willing to relinquish your previous role of a seller, in order to become better in your new sales process management role. If you are still committed to selling, you will not be giving your team members the chance to flourish as sellers. A major part of this job is learning that your hard work will be seen in orders, rather than in your own statistics.

Make sure that you are always checking on your team’s sales force motivation, as there are many things that they should be aware of while selling. Make sure that you are not constantly telling them what to do, as this is not good for the sales process management of the company.

Finally, make sure that you are aware of the trends that are present in the industry, as this will allow you to connect with the real world and with your staff. Your sales order management will be highly dependent on this connection with the trends, so do not avoid these issues. Sales order management is a major key in this industry, as you must give your staff items to sell that people truly want to purchase.

The sales force motivation that you will instill in your team will go a long way in determining how successful you are at your job. These individuals should be able to learn from you and they should be positively motivated by your presence within this company, which will make both you and your staff successful.

Take Your Sales Team from Good to Great with Sales Management Training

I recently reread Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t and found that many of his ideas can help you improve performance of your sales team.

Collins’ book answers the question: How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Using tough standards, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of “comparison” companies that failed to make the leap from good to great.

Over five years and 15,000 hours of research, Collins and his team deduced the key determinants of greatness – why some companies make the leap and others don’t. Here are a few of their findings and what, I think, Collins’ findings mean to you and the development of your team.

Good is the enemy of great

Some sales teams will never be great because their sales managers settle for being good. It’s easier than being great. We have also found that a lot of sales manager do not send their salespeople to any sales seminars.

First Who… then What

Collins expected to find that Good to Great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. What their research discovered, however, was that the best leaders first got the right people on the team, de-hired the wrong people, and got everyone in their optimal position… and then decided what the vision and strategy was. The saying, “People are your most important asset” is incorrect. It should be changed to, “The right people are your most important asset.” Then, put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Application questions: Is there anybody on your team who shouldn’t be? Do you have any team members in a less-than-optimal position, a person whose skills are not being fully utilized? What, and when will you rectify these situations?

Confront the brutal facts, but never lose faith

One of the most important findings from Collins’ research is that breakthrough results come about by a series of good decisions, diligently executed and accumulated one on top of the other. You don’t need to be perfect, but to be great you do need to make many more good decisions than bad ones. And good decision-making requires accurate information, which can be difficult to obtain. Collins writes:

Indeed, for those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.

Winston Churchill understood the liabilities of his strong personality. He was concerned that he wouldn’t get accurate information from his subordinates, so, during the darkest days of World War II, he founded the “Statistical Office”, a separate department outside the command structure that fed him the most accurate, indeed brutal, facts of the war. Churchill also possessed the second requirement of greatness — an unwavering faith that Britain would survive and thrive, even when things looked so bleak.

Application questions: What’s one great dream you would dare to dream (for your team) if you knew you could not fail?

Your “Stop doing” list is more important than your “To do” list.

Many sales managers lead busy lives, accomplishing task after task after task. Interestingly, the leaders studied in “Good to Great” companies made as much use of “stop doing” lists as “to do” lists. They continually asked themselves:

What can we do better than anyone else? What type of opportunities are we passionate about? And, what segment of customers allows us to make the most profit?

Good to Great leaders instilled the culture of discipline – by teaching their team where to focus, and what to ignore.

Application questions: What opportunities, or customer segments, can your team make a compelling case of being the best choice? Which of these opportunities are most profitable, and why? Finally, what can you become passionate about?

Is your team brilliant on the basics? If not, you may be losing sales you should be winning. At TopLine Leadership, we help salespeople re-focus on the fundamentals of effective salesmanship, and sales managers to master the basics of management / leadership. We can help you and your sales team with these concepts with our sales management training seminars and coaching.