6 Helpful Tips for Newly-appointed Sales Team Managers
If you've achieved a promotion from the position of Sales Representative or have just landed your first role as a manager in charge of a sales team, you'll immediately be aware that to be a successful team leader you'll need a whole new range of knowledge, skills and management strategies.
Presented by management training specialists Maguire Training, Managing the Sales Team is an essential and comprehensive course that provides delegates with everything they need to successfully manage and motivate their sales team. Delegates will acquire skills such as effective goal setting, delegation, recruitment, market analysis, behaviour assessment and much more.
Getting to grips with managing a sales team - particularly for someone new to the role - can represent a significant learning process. Here, Maguire Training offers 6 helpful tips for newly-appointed sales team managers.
1) Accept and embrace different sales styles
As individual salespeople, your team members may take an approach to sales that is completely different from your own. Rather than trying to impose your own methods and values upon your team, encourage them to develop their own successful sales styles and techniques. Remember; you are now a manager rather than a salesperson and must respect that the sales tactics which worked for you may not be as effective for your team.
2) Lead from the front
As a new sales team manager, you'll earn respect by working closely with your team rather than hiding yourself away in an office. Working alongside your team means that you can lead by example, coach individuals to develop their skills, monitor their progress, deal with issues as they arise and foster team spirit and morale.
3) Lay down your rules and expectations from the start
Now that you're a sales team manager, it's vital to let your team know what's expected of them and that they are aware of any ground rules that they must adhere to. The aim is to create a culture of teamwork rather than a dictatorship, but respect can be earned by demonstrating your leadership and knowledge and by setting transparent, realistic goals and targets for your team.
4) Provide meaningful incentives for good sales performance
Whilst commissions may be a prime motive for your salespeople to achieve and exceed their targets, these should be combined with other rewards for performance and should be sufficiently incentivising as to ensure that staff remain keen to earn them by making sales.
5) Encourage 360-degree and external feedback
As a manager, you are likely to need to provide feedback to individuals, and the team as a whole, regarding performance. Feedback is a two-way street and encouraging your sales team to provide constructive observations and feedback on your own performance can help your development as a manager. Valuable feedback about you and your sales team might also be collected from your prospects and existing customers.
6) Make achieving sales performance improvements a team exercise
Involve your sales team in regular meetings and brainstorming sessions in order to gain a range of perspectives on performance and different suggestions and ideas as to how it can be improved moving forward. An inclusive approach to problem-solving and improving performance builds trust and strengthens the sales team/manager relationship.
Obtaining help in the form of professional and comprehensive training is the best way to get your career as a Sales Team Manager off to a flying start. Maguire Training offers a range of invaluable courses for people who have made the transition from employee to manager. Some, such as Moving from Colleague to Manager and Moving from Salesperson to Sales Manager, can be accessed as online training through Maguire Training's innovative eLearning system.
